[HN Gopher] What Working At Stripe Has Been Like
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What Working At Stripe Has Been Like
Author : yarapavan
Score : 234 points
Date : 2020-10-08 16:58 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kalzumeus.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (kalzumeus.com)
| _corym wrote:
| 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 imagine that Stripe's recruiting team is overwhelmed but it was
| unfortunate that they weren't able to get back to me. I ended up
| accepting an engineering manager position over payments at
| another company.
| [deleted]
| mgraczyk wrote:
| I interviewed in March, thought I did really well in the
| interviews, had great conversations with the hiring manager
| etc. After Covid hit they told me they were postponing hiring
| decisions and I never heard anything since. Sort of a weird way
| to manage things but I suppose the lockdowns have added quite a
| bit of chaos.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| Oh man. I have a juicy Stripe story from a friend, but I'd
| rather not share all of the details in case anyone from Stripe
| is here listening.
|
| The gist is that I had a friend apply, go through a few
| interviews, and then just get completely ghosted. After several
| emails and attempts to reach out, the hiring manager replied to
| his email with a two word reply when my friend asked about his
| application status. That reply was "no thanks".
| ionwake wrote:
| 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
| jariel wrote:
| 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 _automated_ response would be just fine.
|
| And just _cordial_ as a minimum you know 'Thanks so much
| for turning out, but we can't move forward at this time'.
| biztos wrote:
| Years ago, before "FAANG" was a term, I was flown in for
| an interview with Amazon in Seattle, a city I like enough
| to have considered moving there. They put me up in a
| grimy capital-M Motel by the airport with a cracked sink
| and a $50 cab ride into town (back when that was
| expensive).
|
| OTOH they were quite efficient with their response. It
| was a mutual "no" and they spared me the trouble by
| getting to me, with useful feedback, within 48 hours.
|
| There is a lot of BS around the hiring process these
| days, but some parts of it are still in HR's control:
| namely the "before" and "after" of the actual interview
| day(s).
|
| If that part is bad, it indicates rot in HR, which will
| be a problem every single time you interact with them.
|
| I have nothing against Stripe, just commenting on the
| general case.
| koltzu wrote:
| >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 that - at least in the orgs I've been part
| of - the trend for HR is to be apathetic to the needs of
| the team they're hiring for and tone deaf in
| communication. Recruitment has been the least favourite
| bit of their job.
|
| Over the years I have received Linkedin messages from a
| number of candidates whom I have referred to other
| teams/department after they interviewed for a position in
| mine. HR should've followed up with them; they didn't.
| AA-BA-94-2A-56 wrote:
| I'd become an apple music or google music user for life
| after that
| wbronitsky wrote:
| In my experience, stories like this are par for the course.
| While at Stripe, a few of my close friends and former co-
| workers were treated so poorly during the application process
| that I stopped referring anyone over a year before I left.
| slumpt_ wrote:
| Yeah. I wouldn't be shocked if a lot of these blog posts
| are just astroturfing.
|
| Well designed astroturfing, nonetheless.
|
| Edit: Astroturfing is the wrong word, perhaps. What I mean
| to say is vocalized better in the replies. These all should
| be taken with a substantial grain of salt. A rock of salt?
| neilparikh wrote:
| These blog posts claim that they enjoy working at Stripe.
| The comments claim that the application/hiring process at
| Stripe is not great.
|
| It's entirely possible both are true, since they're
| mostly unrelated, so I don't understand the accusation of
| astroturfing.
| angel_j wrote:
| The connection is obvious. If you hear it sucks to apply
| or work there, you may decide against trying. If a dude
| with HN blogging cred says it's cool, you reconsider.
|
| It's a terrible read, all sugar and good-buddy fluff. One
| could easily question the motivation for such cheese.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| It's possible for both (a) people to enjoy working at a
| company and (b) for that company's recruitment process to
| be abysmally bad.
|
| The people handling the recruiting functions are usually
| not the people you would be working with (unless you go
| into HR), and generally if HR starts ghosting you during
| the recruiting process it's because they're putting their
| efforts into the candidate they are trying to hire.
|
| EDIT: Conversely, the opposite is also true. I used to
| work for a firm that was an absolute nightmare to work
| for, but the HR process was _amazing._
| busterarm wrote:
| patio11 quite famously on here had a recruiting startup
| before going to Stripe. Recruiting is likely the only
| reason they hired him.
| mattmanser wrote:
| He's more famous for generally being a developer blogger,
| he was well known here well before Starfighter. I think
| he always had the most karma before they got rid of
| 'top'. He was always very open about his bingo card
| creator software, and then his appointment reminder sass.
| His yearly round up of BCC was always a top voted post.
|
| Afaik he originally became well known for his helpful
| posts and advice on Joel Spolsky's business of software
| forums before HN even existed. That's where I first came
| across him, useful info about SEO.
|
| This is a long way of saying I thought he'd been hired as
| a developer advocate for their startup thing, Stripe
| Atlas, rather than a recruitment advisor.
|
| Edit: It's on his blog that he was hired for Stripe Atlas
| https://www.kalzumeus.com/2016/09/09/im-joining-stripe-
| to-wo...
| busterarm wrote:
| That's a different type of recruiting ;)
|
| I'm well aware of who he is and what he's famous for
| though.
| wbronitsky wrote:
| I don't see how that would be possible. If you say you
| like working someplace, we know that you work there. You
| couldn't possibly be hiding who is paying you. I don't
| think that is a fair accusation.
|
| I think it would be much better said that we should take
| with a grain of salt anyone's assessment of their current
| job.
| slumpt_ wrote:
| Fair. Wrong word choice. The point just being that there
| could be a lot of company... encouragement... to be vocal
| about what you think of working at the org.
|
| And of course, to the point you raise, we must always
| take that with a grain of salt. Nobody is going to come
| to the table with complete honesty about the problems at
| a company with their name right next to it.
|
| Within reason, at least.
| [deleted]
| biztos wrote:
| Wouldn't it make sense to give referrals some kind of VIP
| treatment, just to keep a pipeline of referrals open from
| any employees who are happy with their jobs?
|
| I can't understand why a company wouldn't do that, even if
| they were overwhelmed with the challenge of hiring in
| general. The win is potentially exponential, if you get
| good people who come to work with people they already know
| how to work with.
| nsenifty wrote:
| I went through the whole loop, "cleared" the interviews (as
| per the recruiter) and was told to stand by for the offer. 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).
|
| This was for a pretty senior position.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| Stories like this make absolutely no sense to me, and yet I
| hear them all the time about Stripe.
|
| Why not just tell the candidate that they aren't getting an
| offer? Why make up elaborate stories about headcount? Why
| say you're going to follow up? It's clearly not a bandwidth
| issue since they took the time to respond anyway.
|
| Even something like "We've filled all positions. Your
| application was strong, but not strong enough. It's
| unlikely we'll reach back out."
|
| That's 1000x better than getting ghosted after being told
| they WOULD reach back out. Complete bullshit on their part
| and a total lack of integrity. There's really no excuse for
| it.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| 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.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| How is it polite to mislead candidates? Surely it can be
| uncomfortable to hear that you aren't up to par for a job
| or didn't interview well - but if that is the truth it is
| better to hear that truth than to hear some platitude
| about headcount. If I believed the "headcount" story I
| might invest time waiting to see if headcount opened up,
| or hold out hope that I'd potentially get an offer. On
| the other hand, if I heard that I had gaps X, Y, and Z
| I'd probably start working on X, Y, and Z - or at least
| think through how I could demonstrate my aptitude in
| those areas better or mitigate my weakness there and so
| on.
|
| It's like if your doctor tried to be polite to you by not
| mentioning some serious disease because he was afraid it
| would make you feel bad. It might indeed make the
| candidate feel bad to hear about their (perceived)
| deficiencies - but if they do hear about it then they can
| do something about it!
| ryanSrich wrote:
| If a recruiter or hiring manage wants to sugar coat a
| rejection then go for it. It's a coward move, but not a
| straight up lie.
|
| Telling the candidate that you'll reach back out, and
| then not doing that, is complete bullshit.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| 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 impolite, is
| unacceptable. You can say "oh that's just the way it is"
| and there's some truth to that, but that doesn't mean it
| isn't pure fucking bullshit and deserving of
| condemnation.
| [deleted]
| xerxesaa wrote:
| Literally the exact same experience at the Seattle office.
| Horrible candidate experience.
| ng12 wrote:
| Doesn't surprise me. I did an on-site a while back and
| several of the interviewers seemed like they'd rather be
| anywhere else rather than in the interview room. It's a good
| thing the product has scaled well because it seems like the
| culture hasn't.
| polote wrote:
| Well I don't know for Stripe but subconsciously recruiters will
| always consider people who apply to be needy compared to people
| who are 'hunted' via Linkedin.
|
| When you do that kind of blog posts, you try to improve the
| image of the company externally so that more people want to
| work there. It could help with more people applying but also
| increase the acceptance rate of the offers.
|
| When you have a lot of people applying then you just cherry
| pick the best ones
| znull wrote:
| 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.
| dangrover wrote:
| This happened to a friend too, got totally ghosted by Stripe.
|
| This is generally how our industry works, though, which is that
| it's not worth it to go through loop for a job unless you were
| referred by someone on the inside.
| saagarjha wrote:
| At almost every large, successful company there is a huge
| disconnect between what hiring is screening for and what
| corporate blog posts might suggest, to the point of engineers
| themselves being unaware of how the experience is for most
| applicants (after all, they are self-selected...) Usually this
| boils down to "you don't seem to have enough experience" or
| "you don't know anyone on the team who can vouch for you to get
| through the initial resume screen". A real shame, since it
| leaves a number of qualified applicants in a poor position, but
| presumably Stripe has enough people applying that they can
| afford passing up people.
| superfrank wrote:
| I do mainly frontend work and am just shy of 10 years
| experience. My resume is solid and I can at least get my foot
| in the door at well known companies including FAANG. I'm not
| saying I'm going to get the job, but I feel like I can at least
| get a response.
|
| I was job hunting earlier this year due to my last company (a
| fintech start up) shutting down and Stripe was the only company
| that just handed me an immediate "No" without even a recruiter
| call. I know one other engineer who is more mid level and she
| said she had applied and never even got a response.
|
| I harbor no ill will toward them, but I'm really curious what
| their hiring criteria is and why it seems so different that
| most of the other major companies out there.
| OliverGilan wrote:
| I applied for a new grad position two months ago, did the
| coding challenge and passed all test cases with clean code and
| time to spare and haven't heard a peep from them since. It's a
| shame considering how I only hear good things about the company
| and the recruiting process but almost all the big companies
| I've applied to have at least had the decency to let me know
| they aren't moving forward
| fossuser wrote:
| I think it's like most companies, really hard to get
| attention unless:
|
| - You have a referral
|
| - You went to MIT, Stanford, Caltech, CMU, Cal
|
| - You're coming from FAANG or similar
|
| The frontdoor is a waste of time.
|
| Even with the above odds are against you, but at least you
| have someone to ask about progress/move things along for you.
| Ashanmaril wrote:
| I don't know about "most companies." Maybe most really big
| tech companies, places that are constantly getting crazy
| amounts of applications. And if you're living in a heavily
| populated city.
|
| I live in a place with a fairly small population, and I got
| offers at 3/3 programming jobs I've applied for since my
| first in 2017.
| fossuser wrote:
| Yeah - you're right.
|
| I should have said 'most bay area software companies' and
| even that could probably be qualified by 'competitive' or
| 'famous'.
| sushshshsh wrote:
| what an amazing industry we work in! denying top talent every
| day because people aren't motivated enough to check emails,
| make phone calls, click buttons to schedule things.
| ignoramous wrote:
| Stripe likely has pick of the cream for open positions. It
| has been public knowledge for a while that they're a rocket
| ship, and that attracts top talent by definition (in
| addition to sharks and wolves [0] I'd presume).
|
| [0] https://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/06/great-story-
| from-s...
| varjag wrote:
| Overwhelmed or not, ghosting after coding
| challenge/technical interview is unacceptable.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| Correct. Never responding after an application? Par for
| the course. But asking someone to complete a coding
| challenge or even an _interview_ and _then_ ghosting is
| downright unprofessional and should be unacceptable.
| [deleted]
| pc wrote:
| 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.
| ditonal wrote:
| Stripe was founded over ten years ago, is worth tens of
| billions of dollars, thousands of employees, and has tons of
| software expertise. And the excuse for bad candidate
| experience is a lack of resources.
| ss3000 wrote:
| 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.
| pc wrote:
| 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 prioritization decision
| -- we could keep hiring recruiters until _everyone_ could
| be individually assessed -- but doing so would require a
| recruiting team of comparable magnitude to the rest of
| the Stripe organization and so the current state is an
| unfortunate compromise given the current constraints and
| given the decision to have an open application form
| (which is, I think, on net better for everyone).
|
| (2) Cases where people at Stripe mishandled the process.
| I know for a fact that _some_ of the anecdotes shared in
| the thread are from many years ago, and I know that our
| process has improved since then (we have empirical data
| to this effect), but we 're also acutely aware that we
| continue to make mistakes -- recruiting is a high-stakes
| and complex process with a lot of fallible moving parts.
| For whatever it's worth, we issue CSAT surveys to _every_
| candidate who interviews (about 6,000 onsite interviews
| in 2019), and track the results both at the aggregate
| Stripe level and at the individual recruiter level. And I
| get why some people here sound so annoyed -- what might
| be "another entry in a database" to a recruiter or
| hiring manager is "the future of my career" to someone on
| the other side. While it's always hard to know what to
| make of a set of anecdotes, and while our referral rate
| among Stripe employees is very high today, I'm
| nonetheless bothered by the number of cases shared here,
| and we're going to be digging in. (Specific anecdotes
| with more concrete dates or data are welcome at
| patrick@stripe.com.)
| thewarrior wrote:
| Well the answer is that they get lots of applications from
| really good developers who also have top colleges on their
| resumes and top companies they've worked at. So they
| interview them first and can't get to the rest. This is
| obvious but can't be said publicly.
|
| This is also why people fight so hard to get prestigious
| companies and universities on their resume.
| [deleted]
| polote wrote:
| What do you want him to say publicly ? Do you want him to
| say that he doesn't care about developers he doesn't hire ?
| Even if that's what every business owner thinks, you can't
| tell it because you will sounds like an arrogant person.
|
| They don't have (and you should not expect them) to give a
| feedback to anyone who apply (as it is the case of the
| parent comment)
| gavinray wrote:
| I don't have a horse in this race, but I always get
| surprised when people critique responses from high-
| profile members of organizations.
|
| Have you ever seen a businessperson make a public
| statement on behalf of a company that espoused or
| accepted negative/neutral sentiment?
|
| I dunno why people even bother responding or reacting
| internally to these statements. There's not a human being
| behind them -- there's a corporate entity who has to
| answer to stakeholders with a spotlight being shined on
| them.
|
| It's purely politics and statesmanship, the human being
| is long gone, or only shows up in private settings after
| everyone's had several drinks.
|
| Except Elon Musk. That's a man you can, probably, take at
| his word.
| ska wrote:
| > Even if that's what every business owner thinks, you
| can't tell it because you will sounds like an arrogant
| person.
|
| It's not, in fact, what every business owner thinks.
| rochester46 wrote:
| This is such an insulting excuse.
|
| Ironically, this is almost the exact same attitude I got in
| my poor experience interviewing with Stripe. Interviewers
| were constantly late to our calls and mixed up who would be
| interviewing me more than once. Despite that, I still was
| told I was going to receive an offer... only to be ghosted
| for weeks. Once the recruiter finally reached back out, they
| said the position had been cancelled but they would find me
| another position. Spoiler: I never heard back from them, and
| they ignored all of my further communications.
|
| Throughout all of this, I was apologized to several times
| (credit is due there, I guess) and each time the excuse was
| "ha ha sorry things are such a mess, that's just how things
| are when you work at a start up!" First of all, "haha we're a
| startup" is not a valid excuse for being late to meetings and
| ignoring communication.
|
| Second: you're a company worth tens of billions of dollars,
| have thousands of employees in offices around the globe, and
| were founded a decade ago. You are not a startup. You are not
| a "small team". Stop using it as an excuse.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > each time the excuse was "ha ha sorry things are such a
| mess, that's just how things are when you work at a start
| up!" First of all, "haha we're a startup" is not a valid
| excuse for being late to meetings and ignoring
| communication.
|
| Pretending to act like a startup has become a cover for
| being sloppy at big companies. People want to pick and
| choose what it means to work like a startup, and usually
| they choose the aspects that give them flimsy excuses for
| bad behavior.
|
| In reality, my experience with actual small startups has
| been that people are better at arriving to meetings on time
| and following through with commitments because small teams
| mean everyone knows each other. If you don't show up to the
| meeting, we can see you across the small office and hold
| you accountable.
|
| It's the big companies where accountability starts to
| disintegrate. People know they can get away with dropping
| balls all over the place as long as they get their OKRs
| finished for quarterly review. Things start to slip through
| the cracks because that person you're dealing with is just
| another e-mail address, not your close coworker who sits on
| the other side of the room.
| sigstoat wrote:
| what sort of ideas are required besides sending an email to
| your IT folks and telling them to set up a JIRA project for
| tracking job applications? you could, in an afternoon, ensure
| that no applications are ever mysteriously forgotten about.
| polote wrote:
| All that is already included in any ATS (applicant tracking
| system) on the market
| defen wrote:
| Crazy suggestion: figure out a way to dogfood your hiring
| process. Have an engineer with a few years experience at
| Stripe try to get through the application process and see
| what kind of feedback they bring back. Kind of like secret
| shoppers but for hiring.
| [deleted]
| timerol wrote:
| Does anyone know enough about Stripe's product lines to comment
| on what the following paragraph means?
|
| "My view on Stripe's business prior to joining was "Stripe is
| basically a B2B SaaS company with extremely reliable capture of
| upside when users succeed." I believe that substantially
| underappreciates the actual business. Large portions of Stripe's
| business add another loop on top of the B2B SaaS loop, where
| Stripe is effectively indexing on its ability to grow the count
| and success of customers who are themselves structurally
| equivalent to B2B SaaS companies."
|
| The "reliable capture of upside when users succeed" seems to be
| referring to the fees charged by Stripe. More revenue for the
| user means more revenue for Stripe as well. I don't know what the
| "effectively indexing" sentence refers to. Is there a network
| effect at play here, where being on Stripe encourages a user's
| customers and suppliers to also be on Stripe? Or is there a
| product offering that somehow creates that effect?
|
| And then there's another loop mentioned later, which is
| presumably a product in development, and not something anyone
| involved with can comment on. (But I would love to hear about it
| if you could.)
| agustif wrote:
| https://stripe.com/es/marketplaces Is the most NFX'
|
| Sigma is sold separately but built with everyones data too
| alextheparrot wrote:
| If you follow Patrick on Twitter you get used to this - even to
| the point where I didn't realize this was from his blog but
| intuited it was a quote from him just by the style of writing.
|
| I believe what he's getting at here is close to the following:
| Stripe isn't just providing payment (Reliable capture on
| success, aka Stripe gets money on revenue generation), but is
| also trying to provide tools to make the B2B model easier to
| deploy, based on their experience with these business models.
| Stripe Atlas or Sigma are probably a good example of those
| types of services - they're trying to use their payments play
| to also push for selling you Business Intelligence or Legal.
|
| Indexing is just taking knowledge and deploying it to make
| something faster, like a database index (I know I want to join
| on this column, so I index it).
| timerol wrote:
| I am familiar with and very much enjoy patio11's writing
| style. I enjoyed his "An update on a pre-registered
| result..." to the extent that I was actually laughing out
| loud while reading it, which was very much not the intent of
| the writing.
|
| I now see two potential explanations. The first is Atlas,
| where Stripe enables the ecosystem of B2B SaaS companies to
| expand rapidly. The other, mentioned in a sibling to your
| comment, is marketplaces (Connect), where Stripe collects
| revenue from a number of operating payment networks. In both
| cases, Stripe is a B2B SaaS which serves other SaaS
| companies, which allows growth in a way that being a B2B SaaS
| that serves traditional business doesn't.
| rhizome wrote:
| I think it's the kind of mix of inside-baseball and jargon that
| makes it pretty much impossible to decode for those not
| involved in creating annual reports and executive summaries.
| pc86 wrote:
| Which is not at all surprising if you're familiar with
| Patrick's other writing.
| Chris_Newton wrote:
| An interesting read as usual from Patrick.
|
| I picked up on a few points others here have mentioned already,
| but the most striking thing for me, particularly from the first
| half of the piece, is the _huge_ emphasis on growth, recruitment
| and looking to do new things in the internal culture at Stripe.
|
| Of course, this is reasonable and understandable for a business
| in Stripe's position. However, the corollary seems to be a lack
| of focus on the core service that got many of our businesses
| using Stripe in the first place. In a nutshell, we use a payment
| processor like Stripe because we want to easily and reliably
| collect payments from our customers, so we can get on with what
| our business actually does.
|
| It would be interesting to know how much is going on at Stripe,
| presumably involving people other than patio11, in that area. I
| have a business that was an early adopter back when Stripe
| launched in the UK, but our perception is that the challenges we
| face with online payments today aren't necessarily the areas that
| recent developments at Stripe are addressing.
| martinrlzd wrote:
| Paul Graham just recommended this article on twitter:
| https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1314260316134531075
|
| > Incidentally, invoking such questions ritualistically is a
| fairly accurate description of the job of a YC partner. If you
| start asking questions like "what's preventing you from launching
| today?" the answer, to the founders' own surprise, quite often
| turns out to be nothing.
| TedShiller wrote:
| I don't doubt this is true. However, given that the author put
| his name on it, it's impossible that this blog post could be
| anything but glowingly positive (unless he wanted to complain on
| his way out).
| patio11 wrote:
| I asked for, and got, total editorial control of my voice in my
| spaces when I joined. Though in any universe where my
| experience at Stripe wasn't positive, I would be unlikely to
| have stayed for four years or to have written the post, right?
|
| I tried to be honest about my frustrations, too, but there's a
| possibility my salaryman indirectness made them not leap off
| the page.
| TedShiller wrote:
| Sure, but you can't say too many bad things about the
| company. Of course you would never write "I don't like
| working here", as long as your real name is on the post.
| ydlr wrote:
| I have never seen the word "hypergrowth" before this week, now I
| have seen it three or four times in just a few days.
|
| Is this the newest jargon from the California swindler class?
| patio11 wrote:
| It's sufficiently a term of art in Silicon Valley that HN had
| threads about it 13 years ago.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25042 Note comment from
| Drew Houston, who had just launched Dropbox here a month
| before.
|
| You can use HN search to pull up a few thousand other
| instances.
| arthurjj wrote:
| "pick your peer group wisely because you're giving them write
| access to both your conscious thoughts and your entire
| worldview." is something I have found to be difficult but
| required. Very nice friends of mine have simplistic views on
| issues I am interested in or lack the ambition I would like to
| have. We still close but we chat about personal problems, not
| work.
| sheikheddy wrote:
| The link to Twitter in the article (https://stripe.com/patio11)
| appears to be broken.
| patio11 wrote:
| Thanks, fixed.
| ihnorton wrote:
| 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-startup BigCo/healthcare with formalized
| procedural docs, (technical) writers, change management, etc.,
| and often they were minimal, boring, impersonal, frequently
| outdated -- and rarely read. I'm imagining (for better or worse)
| this is something a little more like a shared internal blog
| archive?
|
| [1] https://www.kalzumeus.com/2019/3/18/two-years-at-stripe/
| iooi wrote:
| This is one of the few blogs where I'll always read the entire
| article, consistently great writing and thought-provoking ideas.
|
| I agree with the other commenter regarding the Stripe application
| process. I've applied 2-3 times starting in 2015 and as recently
| as early 2020 and have never heard back, it's been the _only_
| company that never gets back to me!
|
| Everything worked out, since I've landed some great positions at
| promising startups in the meantime, but I would have loved to
| experience the growth from ~500 to ~3000 employees like Patrick
| has.
|
| Small improvement in this paragraph:
|
| > "If you sell to doctors you prefer futures in which more money
| goes to doctors. Those are much better futures for you than
| futures with less money going to...
|
| Since the article was just talking about call options, my first
| thought went to futures _contracts_ instead of possible
| timelines. I think using "timelines" instead of futures would
| make this a bit more readable.
| novok wrote:
| It's such a basic thing too for a recruiting process. As soon
| as you get a no, send an automated email at least!
| gscott wrote:
| It is likely they don't really have many open positions no
| matter how good the applicants are. Seems they have some
| outside of the USA specific positions open.
| mastermojo wrote:
| The second-order effects that are described here around the
| "capture of upside" may be a little exaggerated. Credit cards and
| Stripe are common payment mechanisms for consumer, prosumer, and
| self-serve SAAS. I'm not denying there is a lot of money here,
| but I imagine the majority of B2B SaaS companies by revenue
| handle payment through annual contracts through checks and wire
| transfer.
|
| I don't have any data here, but I'm thinking EHR, ERP, office
| building rent ("a SaaS company plus some glass and concrete")
| etc. If the service provided is annually worth 100k USD, theres
| probably human-human interaction which facilitates the exchange
| of legal documents and money. Think Oracle, SAP, ADP, ServiceNow,
| Workday etc.
| [deleted]
| divbzero wrote:
| I really like long form idea packed essays like this.
|
| One of the many ideas that jumped out at me:
|
| > _A huge portion of the value creation of Silicon Valley is
| through directly intervening on the ambition of impressionable
| people._
|
| This seems especially applicable for software-only or software-
| heavy businesses that scale very efficiently. Increasing ambition
| by a little can result in large increase in impact on the other
| end.
|
| Another idea that caught my attention:
|
| > _Silicon Valley was a place. It has become a metonymy for a
| community of practice. You can find outposts of Silicon Valley in
| Tokyo cafes, in WeWorks in Bangalore, and on the coast of Cape
| Town._
|
| If we can inspire ambition all around the world that bodes well
| for our future.
| zuhayeer wrote:
| "You minimize (and regret) nuisances like incorporation, setting
| up payroll, and the gigantic productivity tarpit that is
| fundraising"
|
| Basically the exact work of Stripe Atlas
| biztos wrote:
| I find Atlas really interesting and may yet use it, but how
| does it reduce the need for fundraising?
| ppllpp wrote:
| The article really does make you want to apply. However, all
| remote jobs are Americas-only. Remote was supposed to be Stripe's
| next engineering hub even before the pandemic, so I'm curious if
| that will include Europe any time soon.
| benawad wrote:
| Does anyone know if Patrick has talked somewhere about why he
| decided to take a job at Stripe instead of continuing his
| consulting business or starting a new venture?
|
| Patrick didn't strike me as someone interested in working at a
| "regular" job.
| Zanni wrote:
| He talks about it here:
| https://www.kalzumeus.com/2016/09/09/im-joining-stripe-to-wo...
| heipei wrote:
| Yeah, not knowing about him at all when I watched a talk by him
| and then realised that he is somewhat of an icon for indie/solo
| founders, I was very surprised to find out he had starting
| working as an employee in the meantime. I know he's doing well,
| but since I had just started out solo myself it felt a little
| like he had thrown in the towel ;)
| absherwin wrote:
| "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 (Advise tiny, tiny businesses that they would be
| better served having more confidence in their value) that can
| turn into something illegal at scale (Advise price leaders that
| they can safely lead by less and so-on).
| daltonlp wrote:
| Those sound like perfectly legal words.
|
| A stripe customer is free to tell Stripe "Your fees are too
| high, and I'd prefer switching processors than raising prices".
|
| I could be wrong. Is there an example of an illegal cartel,
| trying to persuade customers from whom it makes transaction
| fees, to raise prices? Surely this isn't a new thing under the
| sun.
| absherwin wrote:
| Of course the customer can say that. And nowhere does Patrick
| suggest that taking his advice is a condition of continuing a
| relationship with Stripe. That's not the issue.
|
| The issue is that coordinating pricing is illegal in any
| form. In any industry, each company could make more money if
| they knew their competitors would raise prices. Even calling
| a competitor to tell them that you are raising prices is
| illegal if they raise prices.
|
| If there's even a single incident of two companies being
| advised to raise prices on products which compete with each
| other, it's about as close as it comes to an open and shut
| price fixing case. And this post makes it easier to prove
| because it suggests that companies know he's giving the same
| advice to their competitors. Whether that's said explicitly
| or not won't matter.
| busterarm wrote:
| Ultimately consumers foot the bill. It's why antitrust
| legislation gets pursued in the first place.
|
| It's the raising of prices in the absence of market forces
| that gives room for the payment processor to increase fees.
| Theoretically all payment processors benefit from advocating
| that their clients raise prices. If some companies raise
| their prices, no issue, but the coordinated effort to do it
| is where you "smell a rat".
|
| It's then up to the litigating party to try to find collusion
| between companies to do this. This is like how the anti-
| competitive hiring practices of Google/Apple/Facebook/etc
| were surfaced. They all had a set of practices that stood out
| as anomalous and during the subsequent investigation it was
| found that they colluded with each other to set the market
| (rate for hiring talent).
|
| It's probably not the case here...and also patio11 has little
| risk saying so while living in Japan where industries are
| highly vertically-integrated/monopolistic.
| busterarm wrote:
| Most important comment of the whole thread right here.
| dmazin wrote:
| 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 by
| patio11 and it was a great experience. It's amazing how much time
| he's able to dedicate to individual Stripe Atlas participants --
| thanks!
| patio11 wrote:
| You're welcome!
| titanomachy wrote:
| 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 aggressively invest in
| those things." That seems in direct opposition to conservatism,
| since it advocates a dramatic overhaul of ineffective
| institutions.
|
| Collison's definition of progress does seem narrowly focused on
| measurable economic metrics. Is that the source of your
| grievance? I think that developments like women's suffrage and
| racial desegration should be included in discussions of
| "progress studies", whether or not they led to improvements in
| measurable metrics. Collison neglects to include examples of
| this type in his article, but it's not clear to me that he
| considers them unworthy of study.
|
| [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/we-
| need-...
| exolymph wrote:
| > 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.
|
| If you had that amount of money (and that reputation), you'd
| probably try to improve the world _according to your vision of
| improvement_ too.
| ffggvv wrote:
| why would you work at a company that may never go public and even
| if it does, already has such an oversized valuation you'll likely
| not make much from it?
|
| it seems predatory and abusive to employees to stay private this
| long
| patio11 wrote:
| 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-adjacent, work at AppAmaGooBookSoft,
| or who are in markets where those firms' offers set market
| terms. I think this sets us up for a continuance of the class
| system, where people who talked about this subject around the
| dinner table or have a frat brother who was in Google in 2004
| know the score, and people who grew up in Chicago and didn't
| know what Google was in 2003 do not, even when they're
| evaluating career options which are heavily dependent on
| correctly valuing equity.
|
| I did not always think lucidly about equity, and overly trusted
| the representations of folks on Internet watering holes who
| said that equity was likely to be nearly worthless. I would
| like to think I've learned a bit over the years.
|
| I apologize for being indirect here; feel free to ask me about
| equity in some place where it will not be reasonably read as a
| comment on a firm I owe various duties to. (Offer broadly open
| to HNers.)
| ffggvv wrote:
| 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+.
| ivalm wrote:
| Not patio11 but you can still evaluate something like net
| preset value by doing discount to the eventual liquidity
| event. In reality this is complicated as you need to assign
| probabilities to (1) when liquidity event can occur (2)
| real value of your equity at the event (3) discount rate.
|
| While estimating probability distributions is probably
| beyond what one can do without detailed inside knowledge
| (and even then), it's useful to think of a number of
| stories, eg: target_co will ipo in 3 years at 2x last
| raised value, target_co will ipo in 5 year at last raise,
| target_co will be acquired at 0.1x last raise in 8 years
| (what is the overhang?); let's say all at equal
| probabilities. For discount rate you can think of
| alternative places where you could work (eg.
| alternative_public_co will grow at -10, +20, +30% yoy with
| equal probability) + time value of not being able to
| liquidate (let's say another 10%).
|
| This will give you some range of numbers to consider.
| ffggvv wrote:
| that makes sense. though it seems like many companies
| these days such as uber, palantir etc are actually worth
| _less_ after IPO than before.
| neilparikh wrote:
| OT question:
|
| > AppAmaGooBookSoft have individual products with more engineers
| than our company has people total.
|
| Which products would have more than 3000 engineers?
| patio11 wrote:
| Amazon has publicly said is has 10k+ on Alexa/Echo, and you're
| welcome to get other examples from chatting with folks.
| lowiqengineer wrote:
| Why the hell does Stripe keep doing things outside of their
| payments wheelhouse? It makes no sense, especially with regard to
| publishing a magazine (???). Is this the whole "Hoover up talent
| and pay them absurd amounts" applied to an extreme?
| ping_pong wrote:
| 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.
| room500 wrote:
| To be fair, this can apply to a lot of young companies.
|
| Fundamentally, the job to work in a startup is different from
| the job to work at a large company. The people that grew a
| company when it was small _might_ not be the best people to
| grow a company when it becomes bigger.
|
| I saw this at a previous company where the OGs were convinced
| they were untouchable because they created the entire technical
| solution with a handful of engineers. To their credit, it was
| an amazing accomplishment. Unfortunately, as the company grew,
| their solution ran into scalability and reliability concerns
| that couldn't be easily fixed. In every architecture meeting,
| there was always the disagreements between team "ten years ago,
| this product would have already been shipped with half the
| engineers" and team "but that product wouldn't work with the
| scale we need - it is an exponentially harder problem now"
| biztos wrote:
| 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?
| ve55 wrote:
| What a wonderful advertisement for working at Stripe. The impact
| of long-form well-written essays like this is huge, and fits
| perfectly with the theme of the essay itself about helping others
| succeed at scale.
|
| I like the personal notes included a ton, e.g. mentioning that he
| has struggled with depression personally, which I wouldn't have
| guessed, even if naively so. Being open and helpful with those
| topics helps a lot of people out in a serious way. Also love
| quotes like "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".
|
| Just reading this post makes it tempting for me to apply at
| Stripe (They apparently have 530 roles open, wow!
| https://stripe.com/jobs/search), especially given all the other
| positive comments I've seen about the company.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > What a wonderful advertisement for working at Stripe.
|
| Exactly, which is why some of this should be taken with a grain
| of salt.
|
| By all accounts, Stripe really is a good place to work and
| their success speaks for itself. Yet, it's important to
| remember that this article is at least one part advertisement.
| I'm not suggesting anyone dismiss the contents, but keep the
| context in mind. The article goes to great lengths to speak
| about the positives of working at Stripe, but the section about
| terrible work/life balance is written vaguely enough for the
| reader to dismiss it as a personal quirk, for example.
| cm2012 wrote:
| The author, Patio11, is such a trusted and long term member
| of the HN community that it counts for a lot more than usual
| for an advert.
| polote wrote:
| it just reinforces even more the fact that it is somewhat
| an ad ...
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| I think most of us here are well aware of that.
|
| However, it's important to keep in mind that patio11's
| popularity among developer communities is one of the
| reasons they hired him in the first place. He's paid to be
| a spokesperson for the company, among other things. He
| doesn't even try to hide that fact in the article:
|
| > When I was hired, there was a fiction for my business
| cards but the job rounded to "Do anything required to make
| Stripe Atlas successful." ... For about a year I was
| formally in the Marketing department
| fernandotakai wrote:
| i gotta say, it was such a strong article that i thought about
| applying (specially after i saw that they have openings in
| LATAM).
| jlhonora wrote:
| Drop me an email if you'd like to know more about Stripe @
| LATAM! jlh at stripe dot com . Spanish / Portuguese friendly,
| too.
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| > 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.
| ahmedalsudani wrote:
| Yup, same here. It takes a ton of discipline to keep a 24-hour
| cycle.
| ignoramous wrote:
| What a good blog post this is.
|
| > _A portion of my job is helping folks communicate that we 're
| serious, reliable infrastructure for the largest participants in
| the global economy while also keenly appreciating that the user
| might be on a small team trying to sell bingo cards or
| politically-themed breakfast cereal._
|
| AWS and Cloudflare are two other examples of XaaS companies that
| benefit from this mode of operation. They're both workable for a
| one-person team as much as they're for global enterprises.
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