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What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

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Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#191

Post by wolco2 »

borroka wrote: post #155
Judgmentality wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going back to nsenifty: > A week later, instead of the offer, they just said they ran out of headcount. Never heard back from them again (even though they said they'll reach out when they get headcount back). Saying you'll get back to a candidate, especially when that candidate has already been told to expect an offer, and then ghosting is not polite. Any framing of this as acceptable behavior, be it polite or impoli…

It is unacceptable in theory, in practice it sounds like most of the ghosted in this thread would gladly work there, given the opportunity. Money and visibility (and beauty) make many sins forgiven. I had terrible interview experiences (rudeness, ghosting, and making zero sense) with Lyft, Airbnb, Twitter, but if they make the right offer, I might say yes (although I have quite a strong memory).

Catch the next wave. The interesting problems may have moved on but the aura around those names continue.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#192

Post by mytailorisrich »

Judgmentality wrote: post #85
mytailorisrich wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying that they ran out of headcount is both telling that they won't offer and offering a reason, which is exactly as your example: they filled all the positions. It's a polite and somewhat sugar-coated reason instead of bluntly saying that they thought the person was not good enough, but it's standard to be polite when rejecting candidates.

Going back to nsenifty: > A week later, instead of the offer, they just said they ran out of headcount. Never heard back from them again (even though they said they'll reach out when they get headcount back). Saying you'll get back to a candidate, especially when that candidate has already been told to expect an offer, and then ghosting is not polite. Any framing of this as acceptable behavior, be it polite or impoli…

They did not ghost him.

They came back to him to tell him his application was rejected. That was obviously the end of it.

I don't understand the anger here.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#193

Post by ethanwillis »

thaeli wrote: post #180
billclerico wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ultimat…

I'm American and I've never seen this and I've been in a good amount of the country. What region is this in?

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#194

Post by arcticbull »

ethanwillis wrote: post #193
thaeli wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ultimat…

I'm American and I've never seen this and I've been in a good amount of the country. What region is this in?

Works everywhere I’ve seen. Give it a try next time you fill up!

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#195

Post by arcticbull »

digianarchist wrote: post #183
thaeli wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ultimat…

Companies like GoCardless exist for this reason. Problem is that fraud is still a thing and cash payments over the internet aren’t possible.

Interac Online in Canada offers this, for Canadian merchants with Canadian customers. It’s basically cash over the internet. Makes sense you wouldn't have tried this if you weren’t :) [1]

[1] https://www.interac.ca/en/consumers/products/interac-debit/e...

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#196

Post by ethanwillis »

arcticbull wrote: post #194
ethanwillis wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm American and I've never seen this and I've been in a good amount of the country. What region is this in?

Works everywhere I’ve seen. Give it a try next time you fill up!

I guess I really haven't been paying attention!

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#197

Post by rochester46 »

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…

>For whatever it's worth, we issue CSAT surveys to every candidate who interviews (about 6,000 onsite interviews in 2019)

I interviewed in 2019 and never got a CSAT. The recruiter (and rest of the team) completely ghosted me after telling me an offer was coming. No further communication, and certainly no CSAT.

It seems that could be a huge hole and your entire CSAT program is subject to confirmation bias if you are not even sending them to the people who are most likely to respond with a negative experience. I'm not sure I would trust this "empirical data" you have.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#198

Post by hakfoo »

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…

Couldn't much of this be scaled back if we removed some of the layers and intermediaries?

If we had a single state-run bank (even if it were just as the fulfillment "back end" behind different consumer-facing servicing organizations), then a transfer would occur on a single ledger in a matter of milliseconds, rather than waiting for the East Podunk Bank, Trust, and Pork Cannery to pull a batched update file over a T-1 they put in in the first Bush administration.

Fraud could be handled better than it is now. We have terrible security/convenience compromises (Chip + Signature, anyone?) and when we try to improve matters (3-D Secure) it is presented so badly and clumsily that it basically dies on arrival (it's coming back, but mostly because the EU is cramming it down people's throats)

Chargebacks are a weird case. It feels like they come from two places-- either as the first response to a fraudulent transaction, or as an escalation for when there's no other way to get satisfaction. If you're fair with your refund policy, your chargeback rate should be close to nil.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#199

Post by hakfoo »

NateThePirate wrote: post #146
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 mo…

Interestingly, I tended to prefer Authorize.net to other alternatives. But a lot of that is likely a 'moment in time" thing when I got into development.

There were a few years where Authnet was the "default" gateway. Other gateways offered compatibility modes for their SIM and AIM APIs, and if you had some random off-the-shelf cart, it probably spoke AIM out of the box.

Part of the difference in experience is also likely due to their model. The Authnet model was very much "take direct card data and relay it to your server and then to us", and the Stripe model is very much "JavaScript up your checkout process to do tokenization, so you never see the card number." If you're at a point in time when JavaScript is a bit sketchy (the IE6-is-the-dominant-browser era), you might be more willing to go for a worse PCI compliance scope in exchange for the comparative bulletproofness of doing things server-side.

Now I work for a firm competing with both of them, so I can hardly express a preference today. :)

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#200

Post by desas »

thaeli wrote: post #180
billclerico wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ultimat…

That doesn't have to be how those transactions work. In the UK that goes: park, fill, go to cashier, pay. It's still a little bit more inconvenient.
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