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What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

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Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#141

Post by OliverGilan »

znull wrote: post #98
_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…

I'm surprised to hear so many in this thread had negative experiences. My experience as an applicant at Stripe was stellar from beginning to end, probably the most professional and well-executed interview process I've seen in my career. I can say that without bias because I ended up choosing another offer, but it was really difficult to turn down Stripe's after that.

When did you go through this process? I imagine they get a lot more applications nowadays

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#142

Post by mc32 »

singhrac wrote: post #132
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…

This is another phrasing of what jackdeansmith says, but this is not right: > Payments are transferring bits, and should be effectively free. Payments is taking on a short term risk that the (slow) transaction between a customer's bank and a vendor's bank will not settle, because of (a) fraud, (b) chargeback-like issues, (c) insolvency. This isn't exactly right, but overally its not quite 0 risk without crypto, which…

Agree. I think that’s a very glaring omission in the original argument and one can interpret that as a simple misunderstanding or purposeful omission to misrepresent the totality of what comprises the cost to present a biased argument for more favorable terms.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#143

Post by zJayv »

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 am also very curious about this. I've been keeping track of knowledge mgmt tooling (esp. plain text) and approaches (e.g. ADR) for a couple years. Grand Unified Theory forthcoming :)

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#144

Post by brianwawok »

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…

As a user of stripe I agree

However the biggest slice of the pie is Visa and MasterCard.

Stripe could release no new features in a year, if they could lower my rate by .1% I would be far happier.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#145

Post by brown9-2 »

biztos wrote: post #117
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?

It means they were early employees

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#146

Post by NateThePirate »

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…

I worked on a project where the client wanted to switch to Authorize.net from Stripe midway through because of Stripe’s cost. From a developer perspective, it was a lot more miserable to work with than Stripe. Other projects I’ve worked on have had a similar motivation for not using Stripe.

Annoyingly, the cost of implementing the replacement and getting it working with React Native (which involved creating native modules for iOS and Android) ended up costing them as much as several years of fees. Also the client was a startup that went bust, so they never really got the value out of it that they hoped.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#147

Post by mcpherrinm »

Waterluvian wrote: post #127
abstractbarista wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They're only free in certain circumstances: personal transfers, and only for some bank accounts. It wasn't that long ago that all e-transfers cost $1, which makes them pretty impractical for giving a few bucks to a friend to split a pizza or whatever. Venmo's been around longer than free e-transfers.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#148

Post by gault8121 »

pc wrote: post #111
ss3000 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 priorit…

Couldn't you "pen test" your own hiring process? Have some folks stage applications and see the process failures first hand. You might get better data from running these experiments yourself rather than through a survey.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#149

Post by awakeasleep »

mc32 wrote: post #142
singhrac wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is another phrasing of what jackdeansmith says, but this is not right: > Payments are transferring bits, and should be effectively free. Payments is taking on a short term risk that the (slow) transaction between a customer's bank and a vendor's bank will not settle, because of (a) fraud, (b) chargeback-like issues, (c) insolvency. This isn't exactly right, but overally its not quite 0 risk without crypto, which…

Agree. I think that’s a very glaring omission in the original argument and one can interpret that as a simple misunderstanding or purposeful omission to misrepresent the totality of what comprises the cost to present a biased argument for more favorable terms.

It's basic human nature.

Out of sight, out of mind- and I could build it in a weekend.

But aside from that, the risk of payments is not intuitive. We regularly see threads on Hacker News where people pile on PayPal for 'seizing' the money of an entrepreneur with a business model that involves collecting payments up front and then delivering their good or service at a later date.

Unless you've worked in the space, or read the fine print of the agreements, it's easy to get upset about that.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#150

Post by shalmanese »

ahmedalsudani wrote: post #118
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.

It's not a lack of discipline, it's a recognized medical condition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-24-hour_sleep%E2%80%93wake...
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