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What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

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Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#111

Post by pc »

ss3000 wrote: post #65
ditonal wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stripe was founded over ten years ago, is worth tens of billions of dollars, thousands of employees, and has tons of software expertise. And the excuse for bad candidate experience is a lack of resources.

Exactly, it's clearly not a lack of resources, but explicitly not prioritizating candidate experience for candidates you're not actively pursuing. Which, by the way I think is a totally valid decision to make, but let's not kid around and make it sound like your hands were tied.

There are two somewhat separate issues, I think.

(1) The practical reality that a lot of people will have a suboptimal experience until we (both "we Stripe" and "we the industry") figure out more scalable ways to assess people. We'll do the best we can to identify promising people but a lot of people will get something somewhat functionally equivalent to a form rejection. You could argue that this is merely a prioritization decision -- we could keep hiring recruiters until everyone could be individually assessed -- but doing so would require a recruiting team of comparable magnitude to the rest of the Stripe organization and so the current state is an unfortunate compromise given the current constraints and given the decision to have an open application form (which is, I think, on net better for everyone).

(2) Cases where people at Stripe mishandled the process. I know for a fact that some of the anecdotes shared in the thread are from many years ago, and I know that our process has improved since then (we have empirical data to this effect), but we're also acutely aware that we continue to make mistakes -- recruiting is a high-stakes and complex process with a lot of fallible moving parts. For whatever it's worth, we issue CSAT surveys to every candidate who interviews (about 6,000 onsite interviews in 2019), and track the results both at the aggregate Stripe level and at the individual recruiter level. And I get why some people here sound so annoyed -- what might be "another entry in a database" to a recruiter or hiring manager is "the future of my career" to someone on the other side. While it's always hard to know what to make of a set of anecdotes, and while our referral rate among Stripe employees is very high today, I'm nonetheless bothered by the number of cases shared here, and we're going to be digging in. (Specific anecdotes with more concrete dates or data are welcome at patrick@stripe.com.)

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#112

Post by absherwin »

daltonlp wrote: post #84
absherwin wrote: post #74

"every time I convince a Stripe customer to raise their prices ... we benefit directly" sounds like the exact words of an illegal cartel. While I doubt that that is Patrick's intent, if I were an antitrust attorney, this would convince me that the notion of payment processors as clearinghouses for price-fixing merits investigation. This is a great example of how one can do something well-meaning at small scale (Advis…

Those sound like perfectly legal words. A stripe customer is free to tell Stripe "Your fees are too high, and I'd prefer switching processors than raising prices". I could be wrong. Is there an example of an illegal cartel, trying to persuade customers from whom it makes transaction fees, to raise prices? Surely this isn't a new thing under the sun.

Of course the customer can say that. And nowhere does Patrick suggest that taking his advice is a condition of continuing a relationship with Stripe. That's not the issue.

The issue is that coordinating pricing is illegal in any form. In any industry, each company could make more money if they knew their competitors would raise prices. Even calling a competitor to tell them that you are raising prices is illegal if they raise prices.

If there's even a single incident of two companies being advised to raise prices on products which compete with each other, it's about as close as it comes to an open and shut price fixing case. And this post makes it easier to prove because it suggests that companies know he's giving the same advice to their competitors. Whether that's said explicitly or not won't matter.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#113

Post by biztos »

jariel wrote: post #102
ionwake wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol the worst job application turn down I ever received was from Spotify. They said “ we don’t want you in our band “ It was oddly personal and upsetting. Lol How tone deaf is hr sometimes

The level of unprofessionalism is just ridiculous - all these 'great companies' with 'billions' can't f ing manage to tell someone what time it is. So much ghosting, don't know what's going on, left in the lurch etc. Is there literally not a single HR Portal that tracks status? That flags 'pending'? Notifications for '2 weeks no reply'? The HR person can't grab the hiring manager and hand-hold the response? An automa…

Years ago, before "FAANG" was a term, I was flown in for an interview with Amazon in Seattle, a city I like enough to have considered moving there. They put me up in a grimy capital-M Motel by the airport with a cracked sink and a $50 cab ride into town (back when that was expensive).

OTOH they were quite efficient with their response. It was a mutual "no" and they spared me the trouble by getting to me, with useful feedback, within 48 hours.

There is a lot of BS around the hiring process these days, but some parts of it are still in HR's control: namely the "before" and "after" of the actual interview day(s).

If that part is bad, it indicates rot in HR, which will be a problem every single time you interact with them.

I have nothing against Stripe, just commenting on the general case.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#114

Post by biztos »

wbronitsky wrote: post #40
ryanSrich wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man. I have a juicy Stripe story from a friend, but I'd rather not share all of the details in case anyone from Stripe is here listening. The gist is that I had a friend apply, go through a few interviews, and then just get completely ghosted. After several emails and attempts to reach out, the hiring manager replied to his email with a two word reply when my friend asked about his application status. That reply w…

In my experience, stories like this are par for the course. While at Stripe, a few of my close friends and former co-workers were treated so poorly during the application process that I stopped referring anyone over a year before I left.

Wouldn't it make sense to give referrals some kind of VIP treatment, just to keep a pipeline of referrals open from any employees who are happy with their jobs?

I can't understand why a company wouldn't do that, even if they were overwhelmed with the challenge of hiring in general. The win is potentially exponential, if you get good people who come to work with people they already know how to work with.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#115

Post by ng12 »

ryanSrich wrote: post #39
_corym wrote: post #12

Kind of crazy how all these articles come out about what it's like working at Stripe and how to apply. Everyone I've talked to who has applied has not received a response from their application. Even in my most recent experience I wrote a cover letter, reached out to multiple Stripe recruiters. Most of them either ignored me, or said that they were not working on that role and said my status is still "pending". I ima…

Oh man. I have a juicy Stripe story from a friend, but I'd rather not share all of the details in case anyone from Stripe is here listening. The gist is that I had a friend apply, go through a few interviews, and then just get completely ghosted. After several emails and attempts to reach out, the hiring manager replied to his email with a two word reply when my friend asked about his application status. That reply w…

Doesn't surprise me. I did an on-site a while back and several of the interviewers seemed like they'd rather be anywhere else rather than in the interview room. It's a good thing the product has scaled well because it seems like the culture hasn't.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#116

Post by AlchemistCamp »

> My sleep schedule has ranged from atypical to disastrous, but that has been true for almost all of my adult life.

This is been my life as well, with the exception of a few years when I was doing over an hour of cardio per day (first on a swim team and later as a hobbyist distance runner).

It's so hard to shut down after just a 24 hour cycle but not doing so always catches up with you.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#117

Post by biztos »

ping_pong wrote: post #87

One of my friends worked at Stripe but left because she said that management is made up of young OGs that don't know how to manage but they've been at Stripe for so long they are rich and think they know what they're doing. It's hard to get real work done because of this from what I've heard.

I'm sorry, but isn't "young OG" a contradiction?

How can someone be "OG" (Original Gangster, i.e. really old school) in a very well-funded company founded ten years ago?

Am I misunderstanding something?

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#118

Post by ahmedalsudani »

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #116

> My sleep schedule has ranged from atypical to disastrous, but that has been true for almost all of my adult life. This is been my life as well, with the exception of a few years when I was doing over an hour of cardio per day (first on a swim team and later as a hobbyist distance runner). It's so hard to shut down after just a 24 hour cycle but not doing so always catches up with you.

Yup, same here. It takes a ton of discipline to keep a 24-hour cycle.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#119

Post by biztos »

zuhayeer wrote: post #2

"You minimize (and regret) nuisances like incorporation, setting up payroll, and the gigantic productivity tarpit that is fundraising" Basically the exact work of Stripe Atlas

I find Atlas really interesting and may yet use it, but how does it reduce the need for fundraising?

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#120

Post by lioeters »

varjag wrote: post #63
ignoramous wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stripe likely has pick of the cream for open positions. It has been public knowledge for a while that they're a rocket ship, and that attracts top talent by definition (in addition to sharks and wolves [0] I'd presume). [0] https://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/06/great-story-from-s...

Overwhelmed or not, ghosting after coding challenge/technical interview is unacceptable.

Totally agree. From what we can see in this thread, when a recruiter / hiring manager / HR department makes it a regular practice to ghost interviewed candidates, it has a significant effect on the company's reputation - that they lack common decency and respect. It does not seem worth it for whatever time/effort they might have saved by such behavior. To put it another way, it seems it'd be worth spending time and effort to improve the process and experience, to improve such a reputation.
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