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What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

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Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#171

Post by tptacek »

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…

The idea that any form of price optimization among firms violates antitrust laws would put basically all management and marketing consulting at antitrust risk. This doesn’t sound plausible.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#172

Post by stainforth »

koltzu wrote: post #108
jariel wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Is there literally not a single HR Portal that tracks status? That flags 'pending'? Notifications for '2 weeks no reply'? As a hiring manager, absolutely all portals/HR management software I have used up to this moment have this feature. Most of them highlight the application and put them in a visible 'No progress for X time' category; some even send separate e-mails for each long overdue candidate. The truth is tha…

Maybe these HR people should have to go through some whiteboard algorithm gauntlet of their own.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#173

Post by marcinzm »

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…

It's not hard to have an automated system that tracks if a candidate that's been interacted with has been ghosted. If the candidate has been previously contacted then require communication with the candidate for any archiving or other rejection. Hell, require communication even if you reject them without ever talking to them. Sending an automated email tied to the HR system candidate status isn't expensive or hard. You can then reprimand the recruiter or their manager as appropriate if they don't do this or try to get around it

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#174

Post by jmillikin »

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 work at Stripe. From a quick browse through my inbox and Chrome tabs, I see multi-thousand word documents in: Google Docs, Dropbox, markdown in Git, internal wiki, _other_ internal wiki, email to mailing lists, custom software, and internal wiki pages generated from markdown in Git.

All of these tools have weird superpowers and limitations that prevent them from becoming a unified catalog. Google Docs can do live concurrent editing between 40 people but can't relax width limits (e.g. for code listings), and ${WIKI_SOFTWARE} can embed every document format in the world but can't require certain pages to be changed via code review.

There's another internal meta-tool that acts like a search engine across the various vendor platforms, so I can search for [network egress policy] and be assured of somewhat reasonable results.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#175

Post by wingerlang »

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…

Just to give another anecdote. I went all the way to the onsite and within a couple of days I was given a few notes from each separate interview and a fairly clear reason for not proceeding with the hire at the time. They also did this in a video call. This was in either late 2016 or 2017.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#176

Post by Riverheart »

titanomachy wrote: post #71
dmazin wrote: post #33

Every time I read about Stripe, it seems that the most interesting people work/have worked there (Julia Evans, Aditya Mukerjee, Mudge, Brandur, Greg Brockman). And it seems like a great culture. But the CEO's "progress studies" thing repels me because it reeks of the Kochs' efforts to implant conservatism into education. I don't want to enable that. It sucks. BTW, I am one of the people who had their YC app reviewed…

Can you explain what stood out to you as conservative about the "progress studies" article? Wikipedia defines conservatism as "a political and social philosophy promoting traditional social institutions in the context of culture and civilization". Patrick Collison's article [1] to me seems to be saying "we should be a lot more systematic and scientific in figuring out the drivers of societal progress, and aggressivel…

He's not saying its conservative, he dislikes business leaders using their influence to pursue ideological change in society.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#177

Post by billclerico »

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…

One thing that often gets overlooked with respect to payments is consumer preference (and this is actually the primary driver of cost).

Why do credit cards cost 2-3% to process? Because of expensive rewards programs given to the consumers who use the card. Why are there expensive rewards programs? Because consumers like them! And they insist on paying with a credit card because of them. Except in edge cases, merchants have no choice but to accept credit cards despite the cost.

While Visa, Mastercard & Amex frequently get the blame, the lions share of the processing fee flows to the issuing bank of the card, and the lions share of that fee goes to fund rewards programs. (There are other perks to credit cards that encourage consumer usage, including chargeback protections, free 30 days of float, near universal acceptance, etc)

Payment costs won't materially decrease unless someone invents a form of payment that consumers prefer which doesn't have these cost burdens. Or if you, as the merchant, have such market power that you can mandate a less preferred but cheaper form of payment (like cash or debit card or ACH - this is why you often can't use your credit card to pay a parking ticket or your taxes)

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#178

Post by [deleted] »

pc wrote: post #21
_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 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.

[deleted]

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#179

Post by meowsnow »

pc wrote: post #21
_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 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.

My college classmate put in a referral for a specific role a couple of weeks ago, and no word. Not even an email acknowledgement that my job application is in the system.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#180

Post by thaeli »

billclerico wrote: post #177
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…

One thing that often gets overlooked with respect to payments is consumer preference (and this is actually the primary driver of cost). Why do credit cards cost 2-3% to process? Because of expensive rewards programs given to the consumers who use the card. Why are there expensive rewards programs? Because consumers like them! And they insist on paying with a credit card because of them. Except in edge cases, merchant…

At many American gas stations, (I don't know how applicable this is in other countries) there is a lower "cash" price because the station doesn't have to pay credit card fees on the transaction. It's less convenient, because you have to park, go to the cashier, give them cash, go back to your car, fill up, go back to the cashier, get your change, and then go - versus put credit card in pump, fill up, go. It's ultimately a consumer choice and some choose each option.

I'd love to have something similar for online payments. Give me a price, then charge transaction fees for credit and lower fees for debit or ACH, etc.

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