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To be clear, the point of the Sunday test isn't so much "we want people to come in on Sundays". While many people (myself included) will come in on weekends, ma
by gdb 14y ago
To be clear, the point of the Sunday test isn't so much "we want people to come in on Sundays". While many people (myself included) will come in on weekends, many people stick to a more standard 5-day schedule. The point is really just, is this the kind of person who makes you want to work with them? Do they make you more excited to work at Stripe? Would you go out of your way to be around them? If not, we shouldn't hire them.
- arkitaip 14y agoHow would you know that it DOESN'T WORK? Have you ever had a case where you had to deny someone employment because they didn't pass the test?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- gdb 14y agoYes, we have -- I talk about this a bit in the video (skip to 14:48). We care about building an environment where we all want to work. To some extent, we're making a bet that building a happy culture will ultimately lead to a higher-quality team and make Stripe more successful. It's a design decision, and while it's hard to tell what things would look like with a different design, we know we're far happier than we ever were working elsewhere.
- doctorpangloss 14y agoFollowup story: Stripe hires entire Delta Gamma sorority, invited to work only on Sundays
- rdouble 14y agoWhat do you tell the people who don't pass the Sunday test? It would be demoralizing to learn that you were technically good enough, but you're not hired because the team didn't think it would be cool to hang out with you.
- gdb 14y agoIt depends on the candidate. Ultimately the Sunday test is just a formalized test for "cultural fit", which most people understand as a reason for rejection. I think not passing our Sunday test really just means this person did not gel with our team, rather than necessarily having larger implications.
- freework 14y agoI've gotten the "you're not a cultural fit" email dozens of times. I think its a function of the economy. If employers are turning away perfectly competent engineers because of something as silly as a "Sunday test", you know there is a huge surplus to talented Engineers in the talent pool.
- T-hawk 14y agoThere's a huge gap between "perfectly competent" at coding some crud screens and the sort of driven visionary that will build something on the scale of Stripe or Dropbox or Airbnb or id Tech or whatever. There's a mild surplus of the former and a drastic shortage of the latter. You don't worry about cultural fit for a true spectacular outlier talent, the culture will develop around him instead. You do for a perfectly competent average engineer because he can always be replaced with another.
- freework 14y agoMost companies don't want a "driven visionary", because they see themselves (the founders) as filling that role. Most companies just want someone obedient and willing to do someone else's grunt work.
- encoderer 14y agoYou think? Evidence (and my own personal experience) suggests that it is a supremely tight market for good engineering talent. I think calling likability and cultural-fit "silly" puts you in a minority opinion amongst hiring managers. And I'm curious how many interviews you must have been on to have gotten "dozens" of "cultural fit" denials? Are you just out of school?
- nthj 14y agoSure, that makes sense, and I agree that "likability" is a fantastic metric to include in a hiring decision. And maybe the atmosphere and connotation is a bit different if you ask me the Sunday Test in person during an interview. All that to say, as a developer who has been burned one too many times by the "oh yes we have lives outside of work" story (not so much), the question itself put me off a little, and I'm wondering if there is a way to measure this likability factor without a scenario that may immediately ping the sixth sense of a developer with certain past experiences. Just wanted to throw that out there.
- dmbass 14y agoJust to be clear, the interviewer asks himself the "Sunday test" about the candidate. They don't ask you if you would go work with them on Sunday.
- lifeisstillgood 14y agoHow about the follow-me-test If this person left Stripe to setup on their own, would you ask to join them? And would they have you?
- nthj 14y agoThere are a lot of people I really enjoy working with that I wouldn't want to partner up with. Kinda like there are a lot of girls I'd go dancing with but that doesn't mean I've proposed to all of them.
- lifeisstillgood 14y agoThat's not the point. You are not at work to "enjoy working with" a person (at least as far as Stripes' hiring policy goes) - you are at work to be inspired, create a gelled team, push each other further. To use your analogy, there may be many women(!) you would enjoy dancing with, but you should focus on the ones you could reach the finals of Strictly Come Dancing with.
- JohnsonB 14y agoCould you expand on what specific qualities a high quality engineer would have to have that would you make you turn them down? Is it something obvious like they are rude/disrespectful, or something more intuitive and that you can't narrow down like just your overall feel of if you would like to be friends with them?