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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

That's a tough choice. In the end a functioning hr/payroll department beats a good experience.

I've worked in both. When the company with a good environment closes we were all let go. They mishandled my last paycheck so I'm still waiting. No way to get references. Had to contact government to get seperation papers. The bad environment place that stressed you out and then let your department go for something out of your control. The firing process felt good. They provided career support offered a reasonable settlement package. Easy to use as a reference as they provided a contact #

At most companies of this size, HR/payroll is separate from the recruiting department.

I'm definitely in agreement that a functioning HR/payroll department is a prerequisite for a good experience though. I had an employer that kept paying me after I left company, and they only stopped because I told them that this was the case. Obviously, afterwards, they sent me a letter saying they had "discovered" an overpayment, and I should send them back the money to exact cent, with no allowance for the cheque/mailing costs...

patio11 quite famously on here had a recruiting startup before going to Stripe. Recruiting is likely the only reason they hired him.

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...

That's a different type of recruiting ;)

I'm well aware of who he is and what he's famous for though.

It's like when you see a dozen Glassdoor reviews for an employer where the only recommendation to management is to "keep doing what you're doing" and that any complaints are "sour grapes" or from employees who can't handle "growing pains".

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 tell everyone how happy they are. Have you done this? Know anyone who would follow this chain of events?

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?

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.

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.

Astroturfing just means faking grass roots / community movement. Makes less sense here than in politics, but it would be possible if the marketing department was writing these blog posts on behalf of engineers.

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

The level of unprofessionalism is just ridiculous - all these 'great companies' with 'billions' can't fing 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'.

>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.

Maybe these HR people should have to go through some whiteboard algorithm gauntlet of their own.

Just to give another anecdote. I went all the way to the onsite and within a couple of days I was given a few notes from each separate interview and a fairly clear reason for not proceeding with the hire at the time. They also did this in a video call. This was in either late 2016 or 2017.

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.

I'd become an apple music or google music user for life after that

I know! It was particularly painful because I used spotify daily for about 5 years up until that point and was technically aware of the product.

However I realise it was just a bad person in a big company so I did not let it reflect badly on my use of the product.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It is unacceptable in theory, in practice it sounds like most of the ghosted in this thread would gladly work there, given the opportunity. Money and visibility (and beauty) make many sins forgiven.

I had terrible interview experiences (rudeness, ghosting, and making zero sense) with Lyft, Airbnb, Twitter, but if they make the right offer, I might say yes (although I have quite a strong memory).

Catch the next wave. The interesting problems may have moved on but the aura around those names continue.

They did not ghost him.

They came back to him to tell him his application was rejected. That was obviously the end of it.

I don't understand the anger here.

No - you are being far too generous towards Stripe here. If they say they cannot hire due to headcount, after saying they were going to make an offer, and they'll reach out again once they have headcount again - they are ghosting if they never follow up.

They lied, full stop, don't apologize for how "polite" it is (and it's not polite, it's disrespectful).

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!

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.

Literally the exact same experience at the Seattle office. Horrible candidate experience.

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.