<story><title>Accepted and ghosted: interviewing for a leadership position at Stripe</title><text>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&amp;#x27;t go into details about the questions because there&amp;#x27;s nothing special about them, but I wanted to share some details of my experience for people thinking of interviewing there.&lt;p&gt;1) About 35-40% of the interviewers started their questioning by saying &amp;quot;I will only need 20 minutes for this&amp;quot;, while emphasizing it is an important leadership position that they are hiring for. So 20 minutes is all needed to identify &amp;quot;important, critical leaders&amp;quot;? What a strange thing to say - also a GREAT way to make candidates feel important and wanted!&lt;p&gt;2) There is significant shuffling of interviewers and schedules. One almost has to be on-call to be able to react quickly.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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 &amp;quot;I only need 20 minutes for this&amp;quot; calls. The other one was quite amusing, and is described below.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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 &amp;quot;I need to ask you two questions and need 20 minutes for this&amp;quot;. Then proceeds to ask two random questions about platforms and process enforcement, then hangs up the call after I answer. Tells me he&amp;#x27;d be calling in a week to discuss the position.&lt;p&gt;7) I get asked for references.&lt;p&gt;8) After passing the loop, have the recruiter discuss some details of the offer, have the hiring manager tell me they&amp;#x27;d be calling me after a week, I get ghosted for about 3.5 weeks. References are contacted and feedback is confirmed positive.&lt;p&gt;9) I ping the recruiter to see when the offer is coming - it&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;10) I call up a senior leader in the office I applied to, an acquaintance of mine. His answer: &amp;quot;don&amp;#x27;t come. It&amp;#x27;s a mess and a revolving door of people&amp;quot;. I was shocked with the response.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;Guess I&amp;#x27;m not joining, then.&lt;p&gt;I am ok with passing loops, being rejected, I&amp;#x27;ve seen it all. But being ghosted after acceptance is a first. What a bizarre place this is.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>temp3728</author><text>+1. Also a founder of an $XB fintech. Exact same story. Patrick + John dangled an acquisition to get a look inside, and ended up re-trading on the terms. Then proceeded to target 2 of our team members to recruit. Fast forward a few years, and now they have deployed a team to directly copy one of our products.&lt;p&gt;Amongst their L2 team, Patrick and Will are described as the &amp;quot;killers&amp;quot;. I guess maybe a bit of duplicity is required to build a company of that size...</text></item><item><author>temp7536</author><text>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.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;You don&amp;#x27;t hear anything about this online, they&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;ll notice that every single Stripe post automatically has pc as the first comment, regardless of anything else. Everything negative gets buried.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;re having major retention issues - so I&amp;#x27;m not super surprised that stuff like this is starting to leak out.&lt;p&gt;I run a $XB fintech, and am afraid to use my name given the backlash.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wbharding</author><text>As much as the parent comment strained credibility, this double-down (posted exactly 10 minutes after the original) breaks it. Seriously, how many $XB fintech founders are out there, waiting to tell their salacious tales about one of the most transparent and accountable individuals on HN?&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s OK, come out $XB fintech founders, it&amp;#x27;s safe for your temp accounts here...at least until the moderators get here and start checking the IP addresses.</text></comment>
<story><title>Accepted and ghosted: interviewing for a leadership position at Stripe</title><text>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&amp;#x27;t go into details about the questions because there&amp;#x27;s nothing special about them, but I wanted to share some details of my experience for people thinking of interviewing there.&lt;p&gt;1) About 35-40% of the interviewers started their questioning by saying &amp;quot;I will only need 20 minutes for this&amp;quot;, while emphasizing it is an important leadership position that they are hiring for. So 20 minutes is all needed to identify &amp;quot;important, critical leaders&amp;quot;? What a strange thing to say - also a GREAT way to make candidates feel important and wanted!&lt;p&gt;2) There is significant shuffling of interviewers and schedules. One almost has to be on-call to be able to react quickly.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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 &amp;quot;I only need 20 minutes for this&amp;quot; calls. The other one was quite amusing, and is described below.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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 &amp;quot;I need to ask you two questions and need 20 minutes for this&amp;quot;. Then proceeds to ask two random questions about platforms and process enforcement, then hangs up the call after I answer. Tells me he&amp;#x27;d be calling in a week to discuss the position.&lt;p&gt;7) I get asked for references.&lt;p&gt;8) After passing the loop, have the recruiter discuss some details of the offer, have the hiring manager tell me they&amp;#x27;d be calling me after a week, I get ghosted for about 3.5 weeks. References are contacted and feedback is confirmed positive.&lt;p&gt;9) I ping the recruiter to see when the offer is coming - it&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;10) I call up a senior leader in the office I applied to, an acquaintance of mine. His answer: &amp;quot;don&amp;#x27;t come. It&amp;#x27;s a mess and a revolving door of people&amp;quot;. I was shocked with the response.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;Guess I&amp;#x27;m not joining, then.&lt;p&gt;I am ok with passing loops, being rejected, I&amp;#x27;ve seen it all. But being ghosted after acceptance is a first. What a bizarre place this is.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>temp3728</author><text>+1. Also a founder of an $XB fintech. Exact same story. Patrick + John dangled an acquisition to get a look inside, and ended up re-trading on the terms. Then proceeded to target 2 of our team members to recruit. Fast forward a few years, and now they have deployed a team to directly copy one of our products.&lt;p&gt;Amongst their L2 team, Patrick and Will are described as the &amp;quot;killers&amp;quot;. I guess maybe a bit of duplicity is required to build a company of that size...</text></item><item><author>temp7536</author><text>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.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;You don&amp;#x27;t hear anything about this online, they&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;ll notice that every single Stripe post automatically has pc as the first comment, regardless of anything else. Everything negative gets buried.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;re having major retention issues - so I&amp;#x27;m not super surprised that stuff like this is starting to leak out.&lt;p&gt;I run a $XB fintech, and am afraid to use my name given the backlash.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bluepirate</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s sad. Sorry that happened to you. I hope you guys are still moving forward and building.</text></comment>