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What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

kalzumeus.com

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Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#251

Post by alisonkisk »

C1sc0cat wrote: post #208
arrel wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like a lot of people are defending credit card pricing, but the idea that they’ve been charging the same % since before the internet and are still absorbing the same “cost” of fraud protection is absurd. I would love Stripe to start advocating for lowering credit card fees, either through regulation or providing more avenues for competition.

Be careful what you wish for the EU mandated reduced fees - the backs just stopped doing cashback cost me almost £20 a month. Of course the reduced savings where not passed on to the end consumer

That working as intended. Now vendors can lower prices for all users instead of being held hostage by credit card banks/processors/users taking money from cash/debit users to divide among themselves.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#252

Post by alisonkisk »

C1sc0cat wrote: post #209
cycrutchfield wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s too late. Much of that extra savings on fraud protection has already been funneled back to the card owner in the form of cash back or reward points. Not a whole lot can be done to break that unless the government comes in and legislates something as they do in Europe.

The benefit went entirely to the merchant the consumer lost out in the EU

If your merchants are charging monopoly prices then you need antitrust enforcement.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#254

Post by jgalt212 »

>Stripe is, qualitatively and quantitatively, about as different counting from my start date to today as it was counting from launch to my start date.

We've been using Stripe to accept payments for longer than Pat has been there. From the customer perspective, Stripe is largely unchanged from when we first started using it. i.e. easy to use and no complaints (other than the high fees which are probably in line with other processors given our low volume).

We tried to use Atlas to set up an Ireland sub, but had no success. I was not involved, only my COO, so don't have much to add on this.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#255

Post by enz »

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.

Every gas station in France does that. If you leave the station without paying, the station may report (sometimes in real time) your car to the police (which is sometimes very close on certain highways) and the manager can even submit a complaint against you.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#256

Post by skrebbel »

daveoc64 wrote: post #220
skrebbel wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just credit card stockholm syndrome. Nearly all the risk you mention is because of the insane and greedy design of credit cards. In most of Europe, people pay with debit cards and the money goes straight off their bank accounts. If there's insufficient funds, there's no purchase. If the network fails, there's no purchase. If your bank goes bust 5ms before your purchase would clear, there's no purchase. I'm no…

Fraud is still possible with debit cards. Chargebacks are also still possible. Disputing them is expensive.

Fraud is substantially harder because you always need to authenticate payments (above a tiny amount) with a PIN, even when buying online. It's been 2-factor authenticated for 2 decades now.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#257

Post by wolco2 »

blntechie wrote: post #207
wolco2 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any positive glassdoor post should be suspect. You generally visit glassdoor for three reasons. 1. You are researching a company. 2. You own or work in hr at a company or have been told to post a review by management. 3. You are angry/unhappy at your current role or that you were let go. You go on to warn others / get even. Rare is the person who is working a company and is happy who decides to visit glassdoor and te…

Glassdoor asks to leave a review for your current company or share your pay before looking up in detail about other companies. I wrote a review about my current company just for this reason but it was a honest review and not overly positive etc.

Why provide any real information vs filling in random data?

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#258

Post by borroka »

mbesto wrote: post #186
borroka wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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." It is not inevitable and there are company that do recruiting better and other worse. For example, asking for a cover letter at Stripe and then ghosting people liberally even after multiple rounds of interview does not sound tremendously good…

> but respecting candidates should be a priority of any organization. Sorry, but it's not. I'm not giving Stripe a pass here per se, but the priority of an org is to make money so that they can offer positions. Scaling recruiting is hard . Just like you might want an org who see thousands and thousands of applications every day to act more benevolently, the opposite also holds true.

Yes, it is not, but it should be. And not "the priority" of the organization, which is, as you said, making money, but one of the priorities. In fact, using the double KPI method, "finding great candidates and treating all with basic respect" should be the guiding light/mantra/KPI of any recruiting team.

"Scaling recruiting is hard". Sure, plenty of things are hard when scaling, but calling back candidates after multiple rounds of interviews (just to highlight one common complaint) is not. That is a cultural problem.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#259

Post by borroka »

webmaven wrote: post #219
borroka wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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." It is not inevitable and there are company that do recruiting better and other worse. For example, asking for a cover letter at Stripe and then ghosting people liberally even after multiple rounds of interview does not sound tremendously good…

> I understand that working with recruiters is hard (who ever said: I know a recruiter who is a genius? Or even the lesser: I know that recruiter, they are brilliant), but respecting candidates should be a priority of any organization. Generally speaking, the same sort of superlatives used for high IQ aren't used to describe high EQ, but we probably should. I have interacted with a few recruiters (not at Stripe, I've…

My "genius" comment above was a bit salty and over the top. But, I had so many bad experiences with recruiters (of a company, independent) that is quite difficult at this point for me to take them seriously or offer any (professional, I am not talking about human of course) respect beyond what I grant to anyone, from poor to rich companies, from guilty to innocent managers, from stripes to stars. I understand it is the nature of the job, but also that the nature of jobs tends to attract certain people.

For example, the most common behavior with these recruiting companies (and I am fully employed and paid very well) is that they take 30 minutes of my time with the usual general questions, then they make me chat with some sort of hiring manager of the target company, then they send an email "I will let you know in a few days", and they never write back. I send an email saying "so?" and I never get an answer. Then, I find out they moved into real estate. Ten, 15 times over a few years (why I continued answering? The hiring companies were quite interesting, one in Vegas, some in the East Coast where I don't have much of a network, they could, with emphasis on the conditional tense, be useful).

We can say that they are just a little piece of a bad process, or that it is the hiring manager/company fault, or "yes, but you did not have to deal with certain rude candidates" (and I have seen plenty of those rude candidates, there I certainly offer my solidarity). And if we go on with the circumnavigation of people, we find a justification for any sort of less-than-good behavior. If telling lies is part and parcel of one's job, they (recruiters/hiring managers/C-level) are still liars, they don't get a pass in my book.

It sounds like you found a decent recruiter and it is quite telling that a recruiter re-initiating a conversation and apologizing, things I happen to do also in my job, is now an "off-the-charts" EQ genius. That's the 101 for anyone with a modicum of professionalism. I am sure there are great recruiters around like there are plenty of needles in haystacks.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#260

Post by patio11 »

zJayv wrote: post #139
debunn wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

Believe they're referring to: "Stripe is a celebration of the written word which happens to be incorporated in the state of Delaware. We produce prodigious amounts of it internally, most of it widely visible within the company." - https://www.kalzumeus.com/2019/3/18/two-years-at-stripe/

Yes, that.
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