What Working At Stripe Has Been Like • Hacker News Board

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#241

Post by VBprogrammer » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 10:07 AM UTC

ffggvv wrote: post #80

patio11 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A quirk of Silicon Valley culture is that senior employees on the inside of it tend to be rather sophisticated about how they think about equity, and they also tend to be rather reticent about talking about that externally, because of factors such as legal and PR risk. This is immensely frustrating to me, because thinking lucidly about equity is incredibly important for career planning for engineers who are startup-a…

I don't think the equity is worthless. I just think an engineer can work at Facebook with a monthly vest and their equity is as good as cash. An engineer at stripe has illiquid shares that they hope they can convert to cash in 3+ years. Usually the hope of a large return would offset that (time value of money) but thats cancelled by the fact that stripe's private valuation is 30B+.

Maybe I'm misreading what Patrick is saying here but personally, if I believed that the equity part of an offer was worth near zero, then I'd ensure that the cash part of an offer met my needs and aspirations for the medium term.

Perhaps there is an argument that by being so focused on the cash part of an offer I probably left equity on the table, if the IPO lottery ticket came in perhaps I would find myself regretting that.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#242

Post by vbsd » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 10:16 AM UTC

names_are_hard wrote: post #240

_where wrote: post #218

This is a great read, but for the feedback, I stopped here: “I cannot say this enough: pick your peer group wisely because you’re giving them write access to both your conscious thoughts and your entire worldview.” I’ve heard this, but here there’s an ulterior motive, which may not benefit. Stripe benefits from startups, and if you hangout with successful professionals and mentors and people that don’t bring you down…

> But the greatest person that ever lived had a bad friend that got him killed. He wasn’t like, “sorry, I have dinner plans.” Is this a reference to a well known figure? I'm trying to think about who this might be and I'm drawing a blank. Who was the greatest person that ever lived?

Probably a reference to Jesus.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#243

Post by swyx » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 10:30 AM UTC

NKCSS wrote: post #227

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…

Here in The Netherlands, we have a platform called iDeal. All dutch banks are connected and all webshops accept it (it's hard to find a place to use your creditcard here). Transactions are instant and non-refundable. Costs are around 0.35 per transaction and NO % fees. Just a fixed amount per transaction. For big volumes, that per-transaction amount can be lower. It's amazing and I wished they'd just roll that out wo…

do they handle sales taxes? for in country vs out of country sales?

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#244

Post by NKCSS » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 10:33 AM UTC

swyx wrote: post #243

NKCSS wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in The Netherlands, we have a platform called iDeal. All dutch banks are connected and all webshops accept it (it's hard to find a place to use your creditcard here). Transactions are instant and non-refundable. Costs are around 0.35 per transaction and NO % fees. Just a fixed amount per transaction. For big volumes, that per-transaction amount can be lower. It's amazing and I wished they'd just roll that out wo…

do they handle sales taxes? for in country vs out of country sales?

Here in The Netherlands, everyone is charged sales tax (it's always included in all prices that's communicated to consumers, required by law).

Companies pay sales tax to the state and can deduct sales tax they paid to other companies.

There are rules for applying sales taxes to other EU countries and it get's complicated fast; once you do more than X amount in another EU country, you're supposed to register in that country and file taxes in that country. Thresholds here: https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/sites/taxation/files/r...

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#245

Post by YawningAngel » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 10:47 AM UTC

NKCSS wrote: post #227

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…

Here in The Netherlands, we have a platform called iDeal. All dutch banks are connected and all webshops accept it (it's hard to find a place to use your creditcard here). Transactions are instant and non-refundable. Costs are around 0.35 per transaction and NO % fees. Just a fixed amount per transaction. For big volumes, that per-transaction amount can be lower. It's amazing and I wished they'd just roll that out wo…

This doesn't really solve the problem, it just shifts all risk onto the buyer. Under this system, if you take my money and run, I have no possible recourse

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#246

Post by VBprogrammer » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 11:02 AM UTC

phist_mcgee wrote: post #232

VBprogrammer wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is common in Europe too. I guess the point from the retailers point of view is that they eliminate the risk of you driving off without paying. It's extra annoying on a motorbike where you only have a rough idea of what your fuel level is and you absolutely need to fill it to the brim (typically you only get 150-200 miles out of a tank). At least in a car you can wait until you have a quarter of a tank and the pu…

But why not have security cameras that record your face/license plate? People steal fuel here every so often, and you can be damned sure that the police will knock on your door asking about it within 24 hours.

Yeah, they have cameras and even ANPR in the UK. It's probably a easy one for police to deal with in most cases, often where someone has driven off accidentally, but anyone really trying to steal from them would presumably have the sense to use fake number plates.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#247

Post by sobani » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 11:52 AM UTC

_where wrote: post #218

This is a great read, but for the feedback, I stopped here: “I cannot say this enough: pick your peer group wisely because you’re giving them write access to both your conscious thoughts and your entire worldview.” I’ve heard this, but here there’s an ulterior motive, which may not benefit. Stripe benefits from startups, and if you hangout with successful professionals and mentors and people that don’t bring you down…

I don't see anything in the article close to implying that you should drop people who are down on their luck.

All I read is: If you talk a lot with finance oriented people, don't be surprised if you start thinking in finance oriented ways.

To give a different example from me personally: For a while I read red pill material, because I thought I could take lessons from it, while dismissing all the women hating parts as I had no reason to be angry with women. Guess what: if you read about a lot of anger towards women, you become angry towards women yourself as well!

So the lesson I took from that was: pick your peer group wisely because you’re giving them write access to both your conscious thoughts and your entire worldview.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#248

Post by anonymoushn » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 11:55 AM UTC

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…

I had an on-site interview in your San Francisco office in 2019 and did not receive a CSAT survey

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#249

Post by NKCSS » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 12:09 PM UTC

YawningAngel wrote: post #245

NKCSS wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in The Netherlands, we have a platform called iDeal. All dutch banks are connected and all webshops accept it (it's hard to find a place to use your creditcard here). Transactions are instant and non-refundable. Costs are around 0.35 per transaction and NO % fees. Just a fixed amount per transaction. For big volumes, that per-transaction amount can be lower. It's amazing and I wished they'd just roll that out wo…

This doesn't really solve the problem, it just shifts all risk onto the buyer. Under this system, if you take my money and run, I have no possible recourse

It's something that works very well here in The Netherlands. Also, because it's directly linked to bank accounts and you have to identify yourself, etc. to set it all up, it really isn't a problem here. If people see they can pay with iDeal, people will trust it and it really has not been an issue that I know of.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#250

Post by cyral » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 12:16 PM UTC

akhilcacharya wrote: post #159

cyral wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I applied for the new grad position too a couple months back, having a previous FAANG internship and starting (and selling) my own startup during college. Never heard back or even got the coding challenge. I’ve used Stripe in my own projects a few times and have also heard good things so I’m bummed too.

When I was an undergrad I applied to Stripe several times with a FANG on my resume as well without any responses. Two reasons for that are: 1) I went to a state school (NC State) 2) The FANG in question was Amazon, which I don't think they "count". I have friends that applied when they decided to leave Amazon and they didn't get interviews either. If your FAANG was Amazon I'm guessing you're in the same boat.

Haha, you guessed it. I wish I knew how much my school would matter when I applied to colleges, and that Amazon isn’t as well respected as I hoped. Unfortunately Microsoft gave me a LeetCode hard for my internship interview and google auto declined me so I didn’t have a chance at them. Not sure what was up with that either.