8 ms·

Reputation is a fragile thing. I've got no horse in this, it's not my industry and I'm just a spectator. But two days ago I thought of Stripe as a top notch com

Reputation is a fragile thing. I've got no horse in this, it's not my industry and I'm just a spectator. But two days ago I thought of Stripe as a top notch company, with top notch leadership. Since I'm well aware that PR is a thing, that reputation also tends to be brittle, but while nobody had said anything bad about Stripe, I thought they were tops. This is not so much about Stripe as about the PR world we've created: we know that everything we're told is polished to make it look as nice as possible, so when the facade cracks, we should adjust heavily. So now I'm going to have to shift my priors, and it may well be unfair to the firm. For one, I don't know if the allegations are true. I also don't know whether this is a one-off, or whether this happens all the time and this is the tip of the iceberg. I do know that whatever I hear is going to be deeply invested one way or the other. Specifically about the rescinded offers, the only acceptable reason to do that is when the person has gotten the offer in bad faith, eg they lied about their CV or claimed to have done something they provably hadn't. Other than that, someone who's gotten an offer may well have started moving house, taking their kids out of school, gotten their spouse to quit their job, and all sorts of hard-to-reverse decisions. It's an utterly crappy thing to have happen, and any company that does it should be outed for it.

beardedman 5y ago
Agreed. As someone who has been involved in hiring, this sounds awful.
mc32 5y ago
One of the founders said on this forum that the anecdote which described a poor hiring experience was to them an aberration. Now that other anecdotes are coming out of the woodwork, it seems maybe it may not be an exception but a broken internal process which needs fixing. That said, we don’t know the full picture and whether the incidence is within range or outside the range for their industry. That’s not yo say there shouldn’t be improvement. The industry and the company may very well benefit from a change in practices.
- kelnos 5y ago
  I treat founder anecdotes as likely untrue (though usually not maliciously). Once a company gets as large as Stripe has, leadership really has no idea what's going on with the details of running the business.
  - jonny_eh 5y ago
    And yet they're still responsible. Their management style trickles down and becomes the organization's culture.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  I didn’t comment on the original thread but I too had a bad experience with Stripe. They wasted my time for 3 weeks and finally ghosting me. I hope Stripe takes a deep look into how their employees reach out to people and trace down every hiring related emails. Patrick - I would start a task force for this internally and hold people accountable for being assholes. No matter how your people are busy, I rank my own time higher and wasting it pisses me off to no end.
- noleetcode 5y ago
  Anecdotal on my part, but I interviewed with them earlier this year. I was told by the recruiter (an internal recruiter, to be clear, not a third-party), in no uncertain terms, that their interview process did not involve "leetcode-style problems" and would, instead, be a "real world problem" close to what an engineer might be expected to solve normally. I was told (and this was reflected in the interview prep materials they provided) that bringing my own IDE and screen-sharing was the norm, although they would be prepared with a collaborative online editor as backup. It would be a collaborative session where the interviewer would work through the problem with me (obviously with myself in the driver's seat). I was reasonably excited. Finally, a tech firm that didn't cargo-cult leetcode hazing. And then came the interview. I leave it to the reader to guess at the nature of the problem (hint: it starts with 'l'). The interviewer also seemed entirely unprepared and surprised that I was prepared with my own IDE. They were also unwilling to collaborate, and unwilling to accept how I approached solving the problem (I like to write experimental pseudo-code out first as I think through things, especially when in an environment where drawing things out isn't easy. I let them know that was what I was doing and explained my thought process as I wrote it, and yet they kept interrupting and explaining that I could clean that code up... code that was not meant to be "final" or "complete"...) It was just a terrible experience from beginning to end. From the recruiter presenting an interview plan that was clearly not in line with reality, to the interviewer being unprepared for what their own interview prep materials described (BYOIDE!), to the interviewer's unprofessional and very unhelpful demeanor (if day-to-day engineering at Stripe involves being berated at every step as you prototype a solution to solve a leetcode problem before preparing to write the actual solution...well, maybe they should fix that)
ericmay 5y ago
> I've got no horse in this, it's not my industry and I'm just a spectator. But two days ago I thought of Stripe as a top notch company, with top notch leadership. No dog in the fight either here, but that's exactly what those who posted these stories recently are trying to do. You saw some bit of news and then totally changed your perception. That's how this thing works. Those tiny bits of negative news just stick in your mind. What were your priors? Stripe pays well, has a great product, leadership is great, hires top-tier developers, is a great place to work, etc. (making stuff up here idk what your priors were) but all of that is erased because you saw a random article about two people having offers rescinded and you don't even know if it's true? What if all of the above priors were true and it was also true that two people had offers rescinded? Do they not have top-notch leadership because two people had offers rescinded? Is that enough to sway your opinion? Best course of action here IMO is to wait and see more evidence. If you had a weak opinion either way why have one. If you had a strong opinion is this strong evidence to change all of your priors? Plenty of companies rescind offers, they just aren't making it to the front page (Google, AirBnB, etc.).
- achow 5y ago
  > .. you saw a random article.. you don't even know if it's true? That way nothing is true until it happens to you.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  Rescinding accepted offers ever is a pretty big impact on my priors. Uber did it during the recession and that has still impact my priors around working there. I keep careful track of companies that do this and I will never stop interviewing if I get an offer from a company that does. That is bad because it means I'm more likely to renege on their offers last minute.
- munificent 5y ago
  > Those tiny bits of negative news just stick in your mind. There's an interesting psychological process here that I don't think I've seen described before. You would expect that the higher the reputation something has, the more resilient that regard is. As if good reputation means the thing has a large number of "reputation points" and can thus afford to lose some while still retaining a large quantity of remaining rep points. But the perceived effect is the opposite. The higher the reputation the more fragile it is to bad news. When a middling reputation thing gets some bad news, we consider it not particularly newsworthy and its reputation is unchanged. But when a highly regarded thing gets tainted, the pristine edifice comes tumbling down. I can understand why our brains would work that way: we are incentivized through our evolutionary history to be highly attuned to detect deceipt—actors that are not what they appear to be. So bad news about a good person is read as vital information that causes us to re-evaluate everything we knew about them in that light. But it's not clear to me that that model logically scales to an entire organization. Organizations are not monolithic entities and when an otherwise great org makes a misstep, that doesn't necessarily mean it's rotten to the core.
Pasorrijer 5y ago
Also legally, if a company makes an offer and you make a financial change on the basis of that offer, the company is legally liable for all costs incurred. Now, getting that money is another story...
- daniel-thompson 5y ago
  > Also legally, if a company makes an offer and you make a financial change on the basis of that offer, the company is legally liable for all costs incurred. Can you elaborate on this?
  - tschwimmer 5y ago
    I don’t agree with the intensity of the GP’s claim but the relevant concept is promissory estoppel.
  - _moof 5y ago
    Depends on the jurisdiction. In New Jersey, for example, "even when a job is terminable at will, a promissory estoppel claim can arise from rescission or revocation of a job offer 'where there is denial of a good faith opportunity to perform after a prospective employee has resigned from an existing position in reliance upon a firm job offer.'" But in New York, courts "have rejected such a claim as a matter of law, declining to make a distinction between the time period before and after at-will employment begins." https://www.natlawreview.com/article/can-employer-legally-withdraw-job-offer-after-it-s-been-made https://www.natlawreview.com/article/can-employer-legally-wi...
KerryJones 5y ago
"It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently." - Warren Buffett
spoonjim 5y ago
Well there’s nothing that stops you from being fired or laid off on your first day. If you see that coming, more humane to rescind the offer.
- Cheezemansam 5y ago
  Yea, but that is not something that should be a common experience. There is no good reason to fire someone day 1 outside of like, bad faith issues like lying about your background or basic capability to do a job (Senior Linux Admin who doesn't know what a command line is etc.).
  - spoonjim 5y ago
    Yes, that would be the only reason to fire, and the only reason to lay off would be a massive change in financial outlook. For example if your biggest customer just switched to a competitor and now you have to do a big layoff or risk bankruptcy.

beardedman 5y ago

Agreed. As someone who has been involved in hiring, this sounds awful.

mc32 5y ago

One of the founders said on this forum that the anecdote which described a poor hiring experience was to them an aberration. Now that other anecdotes are coming out of the woodwork, it seems maybe it may not be an exception but a broken internal process which needs fixing. That said, we don’t know the full picture and whether the incidence is within range or outside the range for their industry. That’s not yo say there shouldn’t be improvement. The industry and the company may very well benefit from a change in practices.

kelnos 5y ago
I treat founder anecdotes as likely untrue (though usually not maliciously). Once a company gets as large as Stripe has, leadership really has no idea what's going on with the details of running the business.
- jonny_eh 5y ago
  And yet they're still responsible. Their management style trickles down and becomes the organization's culture.
systemvoltage 5y ago
I didn’t comment on the original thread but I too had a bad experience with Stripe. They wasted my time for 3 weeks and finally ghosting me. I hope Stripe takes a deep look into how their employees reach out to people and trace down every hiring related emails. Patrick - I would start a task force for this internally and hold people accountable for being assholes. No matter how your people are busy, I rank my own time higher and wasting it pisses me off to no end.
noleetcode 5y ago
Anecdotal on my part, but I interviewed with them earlier this year. I was told by the recruiter (an internal recruiter, to be clear, not a third-party), in no uncertain terms, that their interview process did not involve "leetcode-style problems" and would, instead, be a "real world problem" close to what an engineer might be expected to solve normally. I was told (and this was reflected in the interview prep materials they provided) that bringing my own IDE and screen-sharing was the norm, although they would be prepared with a collaborative online editor as backup. It would be a collaborative session where the interviewer would work through the problem with me (obviously with myself in the driver's seat). I was reasonably excited. Finally, a tech firm that didn't cargo-cult leetcode hazing. And then came the interview. I leave it to the reader to guess at the nature of the problem (hint: it starts with 'l'). The interviewer also seemed entirely unprepared and surprised that I was prepared with my own IDE. They were also unwilling to collaborate, and unwilling to accept how I approached solving the problem (I like to write experimental pseudo-code out first as I think through things, especially when in an environment where drawing things out isn't easy. I let them know that was what I was doing and explained my thought process as I wrote it, and yet they kept interrupting and explaining that I could clean that code up... code that was not meant to be "final" or "complete"...) It was just a terrible experience from beginning to end. From the recruiter presenting an interview plan that was clearly not in line with reality, to the interviewer being unprepared for what their own interview prep materials described (BYOIDE!), to the interviewer's unprofessional and very unhelpful demeanor (if day-to-day engineering at Stripe involves being berated at every step as you prototype a solution to solve a leetcode problem before preparing to write the actual solution...well, maybe they should fix that)

ericmay 5y ago

> I've got no horse in this, it's not my industry and I'm just a spectator. But two days ago I thought of Stripe as a top notch company, with top notch leadership. No dog in the fight either here, but that's exactly what those who posted these stories recently are trying to do. You saw some bit of news and then totally changed your perception. That's how this thing works. Those tiny bits of negative news just stick in your mind. What were your priors? Stripe pays well, has a great product, leadership is great, hires top-tier developers, is a great place to work, etc. (making stuff up here idk what your priors were) but all of that is erased because you saw a random article about two people having offers rescinded and you don't even know if it's true? What if all of the above priors were true and it was also true that two people had offers rescinded? Do they not have top-notch leadership because two people had offers rescinded? Is that enough to sway your opinion? Best course of action here IMO is to wait and see more evidence. If you had a weak opinion either way why have one. If you had a strong opinion is this strong evidence to change all of your priors? Plenty of companies rescind offers, they just aren't making it to the front page (Google, AirBnB, etc.).

achow 5y ago
> .. you saw a random article.. you don't even know if it's true? That way nothing is true until it happens to you.
whimsicalism 5y ago
Rescinding accepted offers ever is a pretty big impact on my priors. Uber did it during the recession and that has still impact my priors around working there. I keep careful track of companies that do this and I will never stop interviewing if I get an offer from a company that does. That is bad because it means I'm more likely to renege on their offers last minute.
munificent 5y ago
> Those tiny bits of negative news just stick in your mind. There's an interesting psychological process here that I don't think I've seen described before. You would expect that the higher the reputation something has, the more resilient that regard is. As if good reputation means the thing has a large number of "reputation points" and can thus afford to lose some while still retaining a large quantity of remaining rep points. But the perceived effect is the opposite. The higher the reputation the more fragile it is to bad news. When a middling reputation thing gets some bad news, we consider it not particularly newsworthy and its reputation is unchanged. But when a highly regarded thing gets tainted, the pristine edifice comes tumbling down. I can understand why our brains would work that way: we are incentivized through our evolutionary history to be highly attuned to detect deceipt—actors that are not what they appear to be. So bad news about a good person is read as vital information that causes us to re-evaluate everything we knew about them in that light. But it's not clear to me that that model logically scales to an entire organization. Organizations are not monolithic entities and when an otherwise great org makes a misstep, that doesn't necessarily mean it's rotten to the core.

Pasorrijer 5y ago

Also legally, if a company makes an offer and you make a financial change on the basis of that offer, the company is legally liable for all costs incurred. Now, getting that money is another story...

daniel-thompson 5y ago
> Also legally, if a company makes an offer and you make a financial change on the basis of that offer, the company is legally liable for all costs incurred. Can you elaborate on this?
- tschwimmer 5y ago
  I don’t agree with the intensity of the GP’s claim but the relevant concept is promissory estoppel.
- _moof 5y ago
  Depends on the jurisdiction. In New Jersey, for example, "even when a job is terminable at will, a promissory estoppel claim can arise from rescission or revocation of a job offer 'where there is denial of a good faith opportunity to perform after a prospective employee has resigned from an existing position in reliance upon a firm job offer.'" But in New York, courts "have rejected such a claim as a matter of law, declining to make a distinction between the time period before and after at-will employment begins." https://www.natlawreview.com/article/can-employer-legally-withdraw-job-offer-after-it-s-been-made https://www.natlawreview.com/article/can-employer-legally-wi...

KerryJones 5y ago

"It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently." - Warren Buffett

spoonjim 5y ago

Well there’s nothing that stops you from being fired or laid off on your first day. If you see that coming, more humane to rescind the offer.

Cheezemansam 5y ago
Yea, but that is not something that should be a common experience. There is no good reason to fire someone day 1 outside of like, bad faith issues like lying about your background or basic capability to do a job (Senior Linux Admin who doesn't know what a command line is etc.).
- spoonjim 5y ago
  Yes, that would be the only reason to fire, and the only reason to lay off would be a massive change in financial outlook. For example if your biggest customer just switched to a competitor and now you have to do a big layoff or risk bankruptcy.