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    Accepted and ghosted: interviewing for a leadership position at Stripe

    1703 points danrocks | 23 comments | 30 Nov 21 00:30 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom

    Recently I interviewed with Stripe for an engineering MoM (Manager of Managers) for one of their teams. I interview regularly, so I am used to many types of processes, feedback mechanisms, and so on. I won't go into details about the questions because there's nothing special about them, but I wanted to share some details of my experience for people thinking of interviewing there.

    1) About 35-40% of the interviewers started their questioning by saying "I will only need 20 minutes for this", while emphasizing it is an important leadership position that they are hiring for. So 20 minutes is all needed to identify "important, critical leaders"? What a strange thing to say - also a GREAT way to make candidates feel important and wanted!

    2) There is significant shuffling of interviewers and schedules. One almost has to be on-call to be able to react quickly.

    3) For an engineering manager position, I only interviewed with only technical person. To me it hints that Engineering MoM is not a very technical position.

    4) Of all the people I spoke to, the hiring manager was the one I spoke the least with. The phone screen was one of the "I only need 20 minutes for this" calls. The other one was quite amusing, and is described below.

    5) After the loop was done, the recruiter called me to congratulate me on passing, and started discussing details of the offer, including sending me a document described the equity program. Recruiter mentioned that the hiring manager would be calling me to discuss the position next.

    6) SURPRISE INTERVIEW! I get a call from the hiring manager, he congratulates me on passing the loop, then as I prepare to ask questions about the role, he again says "I need to ask you two questions and need 20 minutes for this". Then proceeds to ask two random questions about platforms and process enforcement, then hangs up the call after I answer. Tells me he'd be calling in a week to discuss the position.

    7) I get asked for references.

    8) After passing the loop, have the recruiter discuss some details of the offer, have the hiring manager tell me they'd be calling me after a week, I get ghosted for about 3.5 weeks. References are contacted and feedback is confirmed positive.

    9) I ping the recruiter to see when the offer is coming - it's not coming. They chose another candidate. I am fine with it, even after being offered verbally, but the ghosting part after wasting so much of my time seems almost intentional.

    10) I call up a senior leader in the office I applied to, an acquaintance of mine. His answer: "don't come. It's a mess and a revolving door of people". I was shocked with the response.

    11) I get called by the recruiter saying that another director saw my feedback and is very interested in talking to me and do an interview loop.

    Guess I'm not joining, then.

    I am ok with passing loops, being rejected, I've seen it all. But being ghosted after acceptance is a first. What a bizarre place this is.

    Show context
    temp7536 ◴[30 Nov 21 02:45 UTC] No.29388310[source]▶
    For those who have worked around and at Stripe for the past decade, this is not a surprise. Stripe, and especially the founders, have a quite a poor reputation for screwing over people in and around their orbit.

    Almost every fintech startup has the story of Patrick reaching out about an acquisition, mining them for information playing along and then ghosting - same thing for candidates. They leadership team, specifically Patrick and Will Gaybrick are extremely smart but have screwed over a ton of people - be very careful about trusting.

    You don't hear anything about this online, they're incredibly effective at squashing hit pieces and have a huge amount of reporters and power brokers under their control. On HN and silicon valley Stripe and Patrick are a PR machine. Patrick has almost direct control over YC and HN, you'll notice that every single Stripe post automatically has pc as the first comment, regardless of anything else. Everything negative gets buried.

    With Patrick now living in Woodside, Will on permanent vacation in Malibu and John permanently in Ireland the company is definitely a bit in chaos mode internally. Their entire people team has turned over and they're having major retention issues - so I'm not super surprised that stuff like this is starting to leak out.

    I run a $XB fintech, and am afraid to use my name given the backlash.

    replies(22): >>29388384 #>>29388419 #>>29388425 #>>29388625 #>>29388690 #>>29388744 #>>29388854 #>>29388863 #>>29388977 #>>29389083 #>>29389191 #>>29389254 #>>29389350 #>>29389354 #>>29389501 #>>29389713 #>>29389791 #>>29390203 #>>29390870 #>>29391382 #>>29393469 #>>29414225 #
    1. nowayjoseaway ◴[30 Nov 21 04:10 UTC] No.29388854[source]▶
    Don't forget the female engineer they fired for calling Elon "a little shit" on twitter. I don't know if it would be worse if it turned out to be because Elon complained or because he is their hero.
    replies(5): >>29389398 #>>29389820 #>>29389978 #>>29392138 #>>29394305 #
    2. nowherebeen ◴[30 Nov 21 05:57 UTC] No.29389398[source]▶
    Almost everyone at YC worships Elon, you can see it on Sam Altman’s face when he interviewed him on YouTube.
    replies(2): >>29389685 #>>29389959 #
    3. shrimpx ◴[30 Nov 21 07:00 UTC] No.29389685[source]▶
    Sam Altman might actually believe that Elon is superior to him.
    4. nielsole ◴[30 Nov 21 07:28 UTC] No.29389820[source]▶
    Probably what parent is referring to: https://nitter.net/isosteph/status/1171236137932771328 https://nitter.net/isosteph/status/1459566899151396867
    replies(1): >>29406981 #
    5. Keyframe ◴[30 Nov 21 08:01 UTC] No.29389959[source]▶
    That's disgusting really, but looks like it's true.
    6. wly_cdgr ◴[30 Nov 21 08:04 UTC] No.29389978[source]▶
    Elon is no angel, but I gotta say it would shock me if he was such a huge loser that he would complain about something like this
    replies(3): >>29390260 #>>29393880 #>>29397216 #
    7. hef19898 ◴[30 Nov 21 08:56 UTC] No.29390260[source]▶
    Well, he called a rescue diver a pedophile because said diver didn't like Elon's sub and had specifuc idea where Elon should put said submarine.
    replies(2): >>29390387 #>>29390539 #
    8. jamil7 ◴[30 Nov 21 09:20 UTC] No.29390387{3}[source]▶
    And more recently dismissed Bernie Sanders with "i legit thought you were dead".
    replies(2): >>29390685 #>>29394393 #
    9. tchalla ◴[30 Nov 21 09:54 UTC] No.29390539{3}[source]▶
    I am not going to stand up to Elon Musk or what he said. But, the response generated by Elon Musk was after the British rescue diver said this

    > “He can stick his submarine where it hurts,” he told CNN. “It had absolutely no chance of working. He had no conception of what the cave passage was like.

    Somehow, this part gets left out from this discussion.

    replies(4): >>29390624 #>>29390631 #>>29390928 #>>29402124 #
    10. vore ◴[30 Nov 21 10:10 UTC] No.29390624{4}[source]▶
    And that makes calling him a pedophile somehow acceptable?
    replies(2): >>29392144 #>>29394850 #
    11. detaro ◴[30 Nov 21 10:11 UTC] No.29390631{4}[source]▶
    ... except the comment you reply to references that.
    12. hef19898 ◴[30 Nov 21 10:22 UTC] No.29390685{4}[source]▶
    Oh, I totally forgot that one!
    13. emptyfile ◴[30 Nov 21 11:09 UTC] No.29390928{4}[source]▶
    Yes, and? He is 100% correct. I lost the last shred of respect for Elon after his Thailand photo op.

    Disgusting person.

    14. chrisjc ◴[30 Nov 21 14:00 UTC] No.29392138[source]▶
    I'm beginning to think that we should extend Godwin's Law to include Elon. Just about every online conversation nowadays eventually deteriorates into a discussion about how terrible Elon is.

    Btw, I'm exaggerating, but still.

    15. dd36 ◴[30 Nov 21 14:01 UTC] No.29392144{5}[source]▶
    More acceptable than the absence of such a statement. It makes Elon’s pedo comment look like immature reactionary school yard banter. Somebody said something mean to me so I’m going to say something mean back.
    replies(1): >>29393942 #
    16. nowayjoseaway ◴[30 Nov 21 16:29 UTC] No.29393880[source]▶
    Huh? He does this type of thing all the time, it's a defining part of his personality. You only need to follow his Twitter so see how consistently and strongly he counters anything that makes him look bad. For the really nasty stuff he does behind the scenes you need to dig a little deeper.

    A few examples off the top of my head:

      - Called the employer of a lawyer in Wyoming to get him fired for criticizing him on Twitter.
  - Tried to get the student who was exposing how the self-driving demos were faked expelled, then tried to sue him on false charges.
  - Asked a reporter to investigate the cave diver on a baseless accusation of pedophilia because he made him look bad. When that didn't work, used his private security to try to plant the same stories in the UK.
    Never mind the stuff he does to his own employees, especially whistleblowers.

    In fact it would be contrary to his personality if he didn't send an e-mail to the founders with a message like "Does this person work at Stripe?" with the tweet attached, making it clear what he wants done without explicitly saying it so he can pretend to have plausible deniability.

    17. pseudalopex ◴[30 Nov 21 16:33 UTC] No.29393942{6}[source]▶
    Immature is a kind of unacceptable.

    Musk made specific accusations after the victim of his libel threatened to sue.[1] It wasn't school yard banter.

    [1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/elon-musk-thai-...

    18. rkk3 ◴[30 Nov 21 16:58 UTC] No.29394305[source]▶
    Firing doesn't seem like a proportional response... But representing herself as a Stripe employee after flaming on the internet isn't a good look for their business.
    19. wly_cdgr ◴[30 Nov 21 17:03 UTC] No.29394393{4}[source]▶
    I like and respect Bernie but that's just an internet burn, it's whatever
    20. tchalla ◴[30 Nov 21 17:34 UTC] No.29394850{5}[source]▶
    I specifically wrote in my comment "I am not going to stand up to Elon Musk or what he said." How did you come to the conclusion that I found it acceptable?
    21. isx726552 ◴[30 Nov 21 20:42 UTC] No.29397216[source]▶
    Here’s an example of Elon going back to a multi-year old Twitter thread to reply, after blocking the person who started it so they can’t reply back:

    https://twitter.com/existentialcoms/status/14646864235969454...

    That’s the world’s richest person demonstrating willingness to go to some lengths just to get the last word in against some random webcomic author. Yes, I can totally believe they’d be petty enough to complain about online snark to someone’s employer. Doesn’t mean it necessarily happened, but it wouldn’t be that far out of character if it did.

    22. calsy ◴[01 Dec 21 09:16 UTC] No.29402124{4}[source]▶
    Unlike Musk, they were asked to help by officials in charge because they were the best at what they do. What they had just achieved was an unbelievable feat rescuing those boys.

    The place was already a media circus but Elon decided to involve himself anyway and complicate the situation because he read about it in the news?

    So when the actual heroes of the story are asked questions about the annoying tech billionaire who wanted to try out one of his 'new toys' in such a high pressure situation, they didn't mince words. It was a stupid idea, and he said as much.

    Apparently this hero (and I mean HERO, not some cliche) was supposed to be more diplomatic to the sensitive self serving tech billionaire who injected himself into the story, did nothing but promote his own image and then slandered the actual people who performed the rescue.

    23. fossuser ◴[01 Dec 21 18:03 UTC] No.29406981[source]▶
    I blocked that account a long time ago, if their IRL persona is anything like their twitter I doubt this was the only reason they were fired.