←back to thread

Accepted and ghosted: interviewing for a leadership position at Stripe

1703 points danrocks | 3 comments | 30 Nov 21 00:30 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source

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
pc ◴[30 Nov 21 02:27 UTC] No.29388148[source]▶
I'm sorry; that's bad. Can you email me with details so that we can investigate what happened? (patrick@stripe.com; others welcome to do so too.)

More than 10,000 people have interviewed at Stripe so far this year, so "several sigma bad" still happens to an unfortunate number of people. That said, we want those who interact with Stripe to come away having been treated professionally and respectfully, and our recruiting team cares about fixing our process failures. On behalf of Stripe, I apologize.

replies(9): >>29388290 #>>29388370 #>>29388459 #>>29388723 #>>29388864 #>>29389302 #>>29389310 #>>29389807 #>>29392020 #
lmilcin ◴[30 Nov 21 02:43 UTC] No.29388290[source]▶
Only some of this could be explained by "several sigma" of bad luck. The rest is either the candidate misunderstanding/distorting the process or a structural hiring problem.

I interview a lot of candidates. I just can't imagine to make a hiring decision for a dev, let alone a manager that manages other managers, based on 20 minute discussion.

replies(4): >>29388352 #>>29388368 #>>29388662 #>>29391311 #
1. tzs ◴[30 Nov 21 12:18 UTC] No.29391311[source]▶
> I interview a lot of candidates. I just can't imagine to make a hiring decision for a dev, let alone a manager that manages other managers, based on 20 minute discussion.

But what if others in their 20 minute discussions with the candidate ask the questions you would have asked if you had spent longer interviewing them?

If the hiring decision is based on the feedback from all the interviewers I could see having many of those interviews be short interviews where the interviewer just concentrates on finding out one important input for the group decision working, provided that there are enough interviews to cover all the important things and if there has been some planning on the part of the company to coordinate who covers what in the 20 minute interviews.

I have no idea if Stripe does the necessary coordination to make that work, but the fact that several of the interviewers started out mentioning they would only need 20 minutes suggests that it was some sort of organized thing.

replies(1): >>29393357 #
2. lmilcin ◴[30 Nov 21 15:44 UTC] No.29393357[source]▶
You are hiring somebody who will be managing managers meaning they will probably have responsibility for at least dozens if not hundreds or even thousands of people.

As a manager/leader of that organisation they will have an important role that can mean difference between those hundreds of people bringing huge value or huge loss to the company.

So your responsibility is to figure out how much time to spend with the candidate. You can choose anywhere between "just hire first person to apply" and "spend a year grooming an employee to see if they can do the job".

And you want to tell me that 20 minutes is the right answer here? That out of entire continuum of possible choices you say that the optimal return (performance of manager) on investment (cost of conducting interviews) lands at approximately 20 minutes -- less time than you take to have a lunch?

I get that he had couple of these sessions but still... it sounds like giving the job to a first person that looks the part.

replies(1): >>29393554 #
3. tzs ◴[30 Nov 21 16:01 UTC] No.29393554[source]▶
What I'm suggesting is that maybe what matters is the total set of questions asked by all the interviewers. Does it really matter if one person asks questions for 2 hours as opposed to 6 people asking questions for 20 minutes each if the same questions are asked?

The former gives more flexibility to alter the questioning on the fly, such as to delve more deeply into some area than had been planned. The latter gets more people to spend time with the candidate.

A mix of this could be the best of both worlds. Have several short interviews mixed with some long ones. If one of the short ones turns up something that seems worth going in depth on that can be handled in one of the long interviews.