What Working At Stripe Has Been Like • Hacker News Board

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#121

Post by strbean » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 11:01 PM UTC

wbronitsky wrote: post #50

slumpt_ wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I wouldn't be shocked if a lot of these blog posts are just astroturfing. Well designed astroturfing, nonetheless. Edit: Astroturfing is the wrong word, perhaps. What I mean to say is vocalized better in the replies. These all should be taken with a substantial grain of salt. A rock of salt?

I don't see how that would be possible. If you say you like working someplace, we know that you work there. You couldn't possibly be hiding who is paying you. I don't think that is a fair accusation. I think it would be much better said that we should take with a grain of salt anyone's assessment of their current job.

Astroturfing just means faking grass roots / community movement. Makes less sense here than in politics, but it would be possible if the marketing department was writing these blog posts on behalf of engineers.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#122

Post by mchusma » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 11:01 PM UTC

I mean this in the most constructive way possible.

As a stripe customer for 6 years, I effectively only care about reducing transaction costs. Period.

Stripe's core business is being a part of a "credit card sales tax" that is substantial. Much of this is the fault of Visa/Mastercard/Amex, but that is the problem-space they exist in. Payments are transferring bits, and should be effectively free. If they want to "make the world better", that is basically the only problem that matters in their space, and I never see any recognition of this fact in anything Stripe puts out.

They do a LOT of work to try and make me feel better about the tax (e.g. your money goes towards book publishing!). None of it works, it just seems like the "your tax dollars at work" road signs.

Now maybe people at Stripe are working on ways to reduce the tax on businesses/consumers. It is not a technical problem, its societal. I hope they are, and they will announce something amazing and I can worship at their feet.

Please Stripe, work on reducing the costs to transact online by 1-2 orders of magnitude, where it should be.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#123

Post by mjayhn » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 11:04 PM UTC

defen wrote: post #83

pc wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry to hear this and apologize. We're definitely still a comparatively small team wishing we had more efficient ways to handle our inbound funnel. (We do have some ideas here.) But this is good feedback and we should absolutely have provided a better experience.

Crazy suggestion: figure out a way to dogfood your hiring process. Have an engineer with a few years experience at Stripe try to get through the application process and see what kind of feedback they bring back. Kind of like secret shoppers but for hiring.

Don't forget to send often marginalized people through as well!

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#124

Post by nimish » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 11:09 PM UTC

mchusma wrote: post #122

I mean this in the most constructive way possible. As a stripe customer for 6 years, I effectively only care about reducing transaction costs. Period. Stripe's core business is being a part of a "credit card sales tax" that is substantial. Much of this is the fault of Visa/Mastercard/Amex, but that is the problem-space they exist in. Payments are transferring bits, and should be effectively free. If they want to "mak…

Turns out private taxes aren't good!

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#125

Post by debunn » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 11:09 PM UTC

ihnorton wrote: post #99

I've heard several times about the Stripe "Library" and "written culture", both in previous patio11 posts [1] and elsewhere. I understand part of that comes from the top and screening for writers. But I'm also curious about the basic mechanics of the library; wordpress? big ol' mediawiki? git repo of markdown docs? custom software? How has the library process (if any) itself changed over time? I've worked at non-star…

I may be mistaken here, but I think Patrick may be referring to the library of Stripe Press published books, which are available internally (and externally, if purchased)?

https://press.stripe.com/

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#126

Post by abstractbarista » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 11:10 PM UTC

mchusma wrote: post #122

I mean this in the most constructive way possible. As a stripe customer for 6 years, I effectively only care about reducing transaction costs. Period. Stripe's core business is being a part of a "credit card sales tax" that is substantial. Much of this is the fault of Visa/Mastercard/Amex, but that is the problem-space they exist in. Payments are transferring bits, and should be effectively free. If they want to "mak…

Transferring those bits with just the right logic for each transaction scenario is what still costs something. I'm sure the margin is massively excessive today. But I don't think it can be quite 'effectively free'.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#127

Post by Waterluvian » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 11:12 PM UTC

abstractbarista wrote: post #126

mchusma wrote: post #122

I mean this in the most constructive way possible. As a stripe customer for 6 years, I effectively only care about reducing transaction costs. Period. Stripe's core business is being a part of a "credit card sales tax" that is substantial. Much of this is the fault of Visa/Mastercard/Amex, but that is the problem-space they exist in. Payments are transferring bits, and should be effectively free. If they want to "mak…

Transferring those bits with just the right logic for each transaction scenario is what still costs something . I'm sure the margin is massively excessive today. But I don't think it can be quite 'effectively free'.

Debit e-transfers in Canada are free (and have been around a long time). It makes the Venmo thing a real head scratcher.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#128

Post by jackdeansmith » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 11:15 PM UTC

mchusma wrote: post #122

I mean this in the most constructive way possible. As a stripe customer for 6 years, I effectively only care about reducing transaction costs. Period. Stripe's core business is being a part of a "credit card sales tax" that is substantial. Much of this is the fault of Visa/Mastercard/Amex, but that is the problem-space they exist in. Payments are transferring bits, and should be effectively free. If they want to "mak…

> Payments are transferring bits, and should be effectively free

Payments are also about establishing trust, which goes wrong a lot. You can in practice make payments very cheap with some cryptocurrency schemes, but don't get fraud protection, chargebacks, and customer service that credit cards provide (unless you introduce another party in the middle taking a cut).

It seems to me the innovation required to actually reduce costs would replace the credit card system, not build on top of it.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#129

Post by amelius » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 11:16 PM UTC

Either the post is missing something, or this particular job didn't involve a lot of "high-tech". Which is ok, but perhaps not particularly interesting for most "hackers". At least, that's the feeling I was left with.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#130

Post by dexterdog » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 11:17 PM UTC

gavinray wrote: post #90

polote wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you want him to say publicly ? Do you want him to say that he doesn't care about developers he doesn't hire ? Even if that's what every business owner thinks, you can't tell it because you will sounds like an arrogant person. They don't have (and you should not expect them) to give a feedback to anyone who apply (as it is the case of the parent comment)

I don't have a horse in this race, but I always get surprised when people critique responses from high-profile members of organizations. Have you ever seen a businessperson make a public statement on behalf of a company that espoused or accepted negative/neutral sentiment? I dunno why people even bother responding or reacting internally to these statements. There's not a human being behind them -- there's a corporate…

Can we get a citation on that last one?