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Throwaway for obvious reasons. I applied for a position as a software dev there a few years ago through a friend. I hated every single moment of it. It was li

Throwaway for obvious reasons. I applied for a position as a software dev there a few years ago through a friend. I hated every single moment of it. It was like they exported the very worse from Silicon Valley's bullshit start-ups attitude. They just couldn't shut the fuck up about how they were really changing the world (yeah right), how awesome it was to work 60 hours a week for such a great Vision, how sick their (mandatory) team-holidays were, how everything and everyone was so siiiick here, mate. I did all the rounds up to the one with the VP of Engineering who asked me to code FizzBuzz on a whiteboard (no kidding) and then spent the rest of the hour bragging about how last week he had turned down an "amazing engineer" (his words) because he wasn't "cool enough" to be one of them. You know, he was a bit of a loser, mate. It really felt like a cult of ego-obsessed people with some narcissistic disorder; even worse, it felt like everyone was lying. That said I'm sure there are a lot of nice people who work there, this is just my experience so take it with a grain of salt. The product is also good, I used it a few times myself.

averagewall 10y ago
It sounds like a culture that's not objectively bad, just different from what you respect. People use slang words and bragging everywhere. They're just different words and different ways of expressing their brags. But to be honest, they do have a very noble goal and they have reason to be proud of it. Poor people all over the world are constantly pouring money into Western Union and banks for this seemingly trivial service.
- throwawaytwise 10y ago
  > they do have a very noble goal LOL they ain't no charity, their goal is to make $$$, period. Incidentally they do so in a way that is also good for their customers, but that's nothing more than a nice coincidence. We're all grown ups, I don't need to be sugar coated with all the "we're making the world a better place" nonsense. But no, these people want you to believe in their damn dream, as if working 5 days a week to make them rich wasn't enough already. That's true for many companies out there, not just TransferWise. Also, mocking former candidates because they aren't cool enough is objectively a shit culture in my book, eh.
  - bryanrasmussen 10y ago
    well I am as a rule also cynical regarding the motives of businesses, but one thing I have observed is that some people seem to create and pursue businesses that are good for their customers as the central purpose of that business, and some do so as a nice coincidence if it happens. These guys can be the second, but might also be the first.
KevinBongart 10y ago
Their marketing material in NYC was incredibly douchey, like "stick it to the big banks". I was using Xoom (https://www.xoom.com https://www.xoom.com) at the time, which had a brand image of a trustworthy and cut-the-bullshit kind of financial company. TransferWise's subway ads focused on a people's revolution: http://l3.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/Rjm3dY.BU5FmdQmId3yj1w--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTM3NztweG9mZj01MDtweW9mZj0wO3E9NzU7dz02NzA-/http://l.yimg.com/os/publish-images/finance/2015-04-13/0eedcc90-e21a-11e4-b86a-6f785c08229b_Screen-Shot-2015-04-13-at-4-16-42-PM.png http://l3.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/Rjm3dY.BU5FmdQmId3yj1w--/Y... or http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03525/TransferWise_bus_s_3525567a.jpg http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03525/TransferWi... are two examples. Another thing that threw me off is how needlessly technologically-heavy their website was at the time: Javascript front-end app with big animations and the unavoidable browser-incompatibility bugs it created back then (you refresh the page and it redirects to the root page for instance). Anyway, I tried it once and had slightly better rates than Xoom, enough to convince me to go through their bullshit to save some money on large transfers, but I almost kept using Xoom because of how much I didn't like Transferwise's image. All that to say: I'm not surprised by your interview experience, it perfectly matches what I assumed from their team.
- petra 10y ago
  Is it really their fault, or is i just how marketing works in this day an age ? Heck, they even got you, and you hated their marketing!
  - Trundle 10y ago
    I'm the least 'get excited about the company vision' person there is and if I was starting a service that competed against banks I'd be very tempted to play that up in marketing, both to prospective clients and employees. There are an awful lot of people that really loath banks.
  - KevinBongart 10y ago
    Their marketing got my attention, and their rates were so much better than the competition that it outweighed the terrible brand image. They could have gone straight to the point: "Better international transfer rates than your bank" and I'd have been very happy with it. The service is good!
stronglikedan 10y ago
> VP of Engineering who asked me to code FizzBuzz on a whiteboard (no kidding) I agree that a VP in a late stage interview should not be asking this of the candidate, but I will say that I recently had to hire a new team member, and FizzBuzz helped me to immediately weed out the candidates during the initial interview. I'm talking like 50% of the candidates, and one guy even asked if he could take it home and send me the code. Another acted like I was asking him to produce something for the company for free, before even reading the three lines of requirements, and then tried to back peddle when he did read them - of course, I was already holding the interview room door open for him by that time. All told, a FizzBuzz test in the initial round saved hours of my (and their) time.
- rattray 10y ago
  Out of curiosity, what sort of (non-personality) mistakes did you see?
  - jpollock 10y ago
    I've seen: 1) Incorrect ordering of output "Buzz Fizz" 2) Printing only Fizz or Buzz for 15. 3) Starting at a number different to 1 (say 0) 4) Off by one error at the end (going to 99, instead of 100) 5) Forgetting to print out the number when neither Fizz nor Buzz is output (first output is Fizz for 3) 6) Always printing out the number. (3 Fizz) and that's the people who can code at all. Then you get people who can't code, and can't even produce a for loop. Oh and extra points for arguing about the solution being correct, particularly after prompting that there is a bug "Is it correctly dealing with 15?" is a pretty huge hint that there's a bug.
    - rattray 10y ago
      Wow! Thanks, that's illustrative.
    - sireat 10y ago
      Fantastic list of mistakes! It made realize that I've made all of these mistakes on tasks similar in complexity of Fizzbuzz. I write a lot of scripts in different languages some of them quite domain specific. Why do I make mistakes? Most of time the mistakes stem from the fact that I do not have to get it right the first time and I may have misread the specifications. As Hemingway said: "The first draft of anything is always shit" So take 1000 applicants who can code but are in a stressful situation and I would not be shocked that there would be 50 mistakes on something so seemingly trivial.
orthoganol 10y ago
Ah that definitely explains the vibe I got from their "naked march" where they got what looks like a sea of frat boys and sorority girls (I assumed largely their employees/ friends, in reality) to strip down to their underwear and scream and shout and walk around for a "viral" stunt. I know I'm just piling on here, but the vibe certainly had some doucheyness and it made me think their founders were the party bro types trying to get rich. [http://www.techworld.com/news/startups/transferwise-leads-naked-march-on-wall-street-3599853/](http://www.techworld.com/news/startups/transferwise-leads-naked-march-on-wall-street-3599853/) http://www.techworld.com/news/startups/transferwise-leads-na...
- throwawaytwise 10y ago
  > I assumed largely their employees Nah, they just paid a bunch of random guys to pretend to be hysterically excited about low-fees bank transfers. [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZufqOLl6ajE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZufqOLl6ajE
- da02 10y ago
  I remember Nerve.com doing the same thing back in the mid-90s. (Correction: 2000 Maybe you see some more similarities: https://vimeo.com/2413616 https://vimeo.com/2413616 ) Were you impressed by anything at TranferWise? Their security and stability? Maybe their confidence comes from top-notch engineering skills?
mrb 10y ago
It is funny how I will instinctively trust more an anonymous post on HN over an article published on a "reputable" site like Bloomberg...
- nothrabannosir 10y ago
  Among others this is probably confirmation bias at work. I'm feeling exactly the same right now.
- throwawaytwise 10y ago
  To be fair the original article is good though, it presents different sides of the story and reports criticisms too. There's even an interesting history fact on how old the tradition of swapping currency actually is! My intention wasn't to discredit their product or the article, but to offer a (hopefully interesting) "insider view" on a certain kind of culture.
  - 6stringmerc 10y ago
    In theory I think this is the appropriate give and take between established Journalism (eg: Bloomberg) and what Social Media (eg: Hacker News) can enhance a story and context. It was really clear with the Ferrari in an apartment story I linked where a family member actually could vouch for the published article. I see such instances as examples of what good can come of a balance.
danpalmer 10y ago
I worked in the same coworking space as them when it was ~2-5 people, and chatted with the founders a bunch at lunch. They were honestly nice people who seemed to genuinely care about doing something well. Not trying to down-play your experience, thank you for sharing, just providing my own experience.
late2part 10y ago
Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?

averagewall 10y ago

It sounds like a culture that's not objectively bad, just different from what you respect. People use slang words and bragging everywhere. They're just different words and different ways of expressing their brags. But to be honest, they do have a very noble goal and they have reason to be proud of it. Poor people all over the world are constantly pouring money into Western Union and banks for this seemingly trivial service.

throwawaytwise 10y ago
> they do have a very noble goal LOL they ain't no charity, their goal is to make $$$, period. Incidentally they do so in a way that is also good for their customers, but that's nothing more than a nice coincidence. We're all grown ups, I don't need to be sugar coated with all the "we're making the world a better place" nonsense. But no, these people want you to believe in their damn dream, as if working 5 days a week to make them rich wasn't enough already. That's true for many companies out there, not just TransferWise. Also, mocking former candidates because they aren't cool enough is objectively a shit culture in my book, eh.
- bryanrasmussen 10y ago
  well I am as a rule also cynical regarding the motives of businesses, but one thing I have observed is that some people seem to create and pursue businesses that are good for their customers as the central purpose of that business, and some do so as a nice coincidence if it happens. These guys can be the second, but might also be the first.

KevinBongart 10y ago

Their marketing material in NYC was incredibly douchey, like "stick it to the big banks". I was using Xoom (https://www.xoom.com https://www.xoom.com) at the time, which had a brand image of a trustworthy and cut-the-bullshit kind of financial company. TransferWise's subway ads focused on a people's revolution: http://l3.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/Rjm3dY.BU5FmdQmId3yj1w--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTM3NztweG9mZj01MDtweW9mZj0wO3E9NzU7dz02NzA-/http://l.yimg.com/os/publish-images/finance/2015-04-13/0eedcc90-e21a-11e4-b86a-6f785c08229b_Screen-Shot-2015-04-13-at-4-16-42-PM.png http://l3.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/Rjm3dY.BU5FmdQmId3yj1w--/Y... or http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03525/TransferWise_bus_s_3525567a.jpg http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03525/TransferWi... are two examples. Another thing that threw me off is how needlessly technologically-heavy their website was at the time: Javascript front-end app with big animations and the unavoidable browser-incompatibility bugs it created back then (you refresh the page and it redirects to the root page for instance). Anyway, I tried it once and had slightly better rates than Xoom, enough to convince me to go through their bullshit to save some money on large transfers, but I almost kept using Xoom because of how much I didn't like Transferwise's image. All that to say: I'm not surprised by your interview experience, it perfectly matches what I assumed from their team.

petra 10y ago
Is it really their fault, or is i just how marketing works in this day an age ? Heck, they even got you, and you hated their marketing!
- Trundle 10y ago
  I'm the least 'get excited about the company vision' person there is and if I was starting a service that competed against banks I'd be very tempted to play that up in marketing, both to prospective clients and employees. There are an awful lot of people that really loath banks.
- KevinBongart 10y ago
  Their marketing got my attention, and their rates were so much better than the competition that it outweighed the terrible brand image. They could have gone straight to the point: "Better international transfer rates than your bank" and I'd have been very happy with it. The service is good!

stronglikedan 10y ago

> VP of Engineering who asked me to code FizzBuzz on a whiteboard (no kidding) I agree that a VP in a late stage interview should not be asking this of the candidate, but I will say that I recently had to hire a new team member, and FizzBuzz helped me to immediately weed out the candidates during the initial interview. I'm talking like 50% of the candidates, and one guy even asked if he could take it home and send me the code. Another acted like I was asking him to produce something for the company for free, before even reading the three lines of requirements, and then tried to back peddle when he did read them - of course, I was already holding the interview room door open for him by that time. All told, a FizzBuzz test in the initial round saved hours of my (and their) time.

rattray 10y ago
Out of curiosity, what sort of (non-personality) mistakes did you see?
- jpollock 10y ago
  I've seen: 1) Incorrect ordering of output "Buzz Fizz" 2) Printing only Fizz or Buzz for 15. 3) Starting at a number different to 1 (say 0) 4) Off by one error at the end (going to 99, instead of 100) 5) Forgetting to print out the number when neither Fizz nor Buzz is output (first output is Fizz for 3) 6) Always printing out the number. (3 Fizz) and that's the people who can code at all. Then you get people who can't code, and can't even produce a for loop. Oh and extra points for arguing about the solution being correct, particularly after prompting that there is a bug "Is it correctly dealing with 15?" is a pretty huge hint that there's a bug.
  - rattray 10y ago
    Wow! Thanks, that's illustrative.
  - sireat 10y ago
    Fantastic list of mistakes! It made realize that I've made all of these mistakes on tasks similar in complexity of Fizzbuzz. I write a lot of scripts in different languages some of them quite domain specific. Why do I make mistakes? Most of time the mistakes stem from the fact that I do not have to get it right the first time and I may have misread the specifications. As Hemingway said: "The first draft of anything is always shit" So take 1000 applicants who can code but are in a stressful situation and I would not be shocked that there would be 50 mistakes on something so seemingly trivial.

orthoganol 10y ago

Ah that definitely explains the vibe I got from their "naked march" where they got what looks like a sea of frat boys and sorority girls (I assumed largely their employees/ friends, in reality) to strip down to their underwear and scream and shout and walk around for a "viral" stunt. I know I'm just piling on here, but the vibe certainly had some doucheyness and it made me think their founders were the party bro types trying to get rich. [http://www.techworld.com/news/startups/transferwise-leads-naked-march-on-wall-street-3599853/](http://www.techworld.com/news/startups/transferwise-leads-naked-march-on-wall-street-3599853/) http://www.techworld.com/news/startups/transferwise-leads-na...

throwawaytwise 10y ago
> I assumed largely their employees Nah, they just paid a bunch of random guys to pretend to be hysterically excited about low-fees bank transfers. [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZufqOLl6ajE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZufqOLl6ajE
da02 10y ago
I remember Nerve.com doing the same thing back in the mid-90s. (Correction: 2000 Maybe you see some more similarities: https://vimeo.com/2413616 https://vimeo.com/2413616 ) Were you impressed by anything at TranferWise? Their security and stability? Maybe their confidence comes from top-notch engineering skills?

mrb 10y ago

It is funny how I will instinctively trust more an anonymous post on HN over an article published on a "reputable" site like Bloomberg...

nothrabannosir 10y ago
Among others this is probably confirmation bias at work. I'm feeling exactly the same right now.
throwawaytwise 10y ago
To be fair the original article is good though, it presents different sides of the story and reports criticisms too. There's even an interesting history fact on how old the tradition of swapping currency actually is! My intention wasn't to discredit their product or the article, but to offer a (hopefully interesting) "insider view" on a certain kind of culture.
- 6stringmerc 10y ago
  In theory I think this is the appropriate give and take between established Journalism (eg: Bloomberg) and what Social Media (eg: Hacker News) can enhance a story and context. It was really clear with the Ferrari in an apartment story I linked where a family member actually could vouch for the published article. I see such instances as examples of what good can come of a balance.

danpalmer 10y ago

I worked in the same coworking space as them when it was ~2-5 people, and chatted with the founders a bunch at lunch. They were honestly nice people who seemed to genuinely care about doing something well. Not trying to down-play your experience, thank you for sharing, just providing my own experience.

late2part 10y ago

Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?