
How Stripe built one of Silicon Valley’s best engineering teams - bberson
http://firstround.com/article/How-Stripe-built-one-of-Silicon-Valleys-best-engineering-teams
======
nthj
> Stripe turns down candidates with outstanding engineering talent if they
> don’t fit with the team’s culture. Each candidate must pass the “Sunday
> test:” if this person were alone in the office on a Sunday would that make
> you more likely to come in and want to work with them?

Stripe's Sunday test and my Sunday test are slightly different: "Would you
come into the office to hack on a Sunday even if the servers weren't on fire?"

If the answer is yes, you know you've got a burnout risk.

~~~
gdb
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
How 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?

~~~
gdb
Yes, 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.

------
tptacek
_Referrals - Referrals tend to be a really fantastic way to bring people in
and should be the first place you go. If you leverage each of your first ten
hires’ networks, chances are you’ll meet some excellent candidates. When done
right, internal and external referrals can scale your company pretty
efficiently. Sit down and get your engineers to physically list out the best
and smartest people they’ve ever worked with and then go after them with crazy
intensity. As an added bonus, referral candidates might be easier to close
because a friend’s recommendation goes a long way._

Does anyone here (besides Stripe) do this? Systematically meet with team
members to get lists of recruiting targets? What does "go after them with
crazy intensity" mean?

This is Stripe's most successful recruiting channel so I'd definitely like to
understand it better!

~~~
clicks
The company I worked for in the past, its founder was good friends with a CS
college professor. And I'm told the founder asked the prof. if there were any
particular students who were "relentlessly good", and then the founder would
go full-force to get them.

I got to work with one of the guys who was hired this way... ohh boy was he
something. The most important lesson I got out of that was there are students
in B-tier schools that easily are more capable than A-tier schools any day of
the week -- I suspect the reason the founder of the company took this approach
was that you'd get workers who're extremely capable, but would accept a lower
salary than MIT grads are expected to (because, yes, at some point I asked the
guy how much he was making and I remember my jaw just dropped on the floor at
how little the amount he said was).

~~~
prezjordan
As a B-tier school student looking for a silicon valley internship, this is
extremely comforting to hear.

~~~
te_chris
That you'll make less money than people with the same skill set?

~~~
prezjordan
No, that our resumes aren't always thrown out.

~~~
miloshadzic
I've never hired anyone nor been employed at a Silicon Valley company but this
isn't banking so don't worry too much about people throwing out your resume
because of where you went to school.

~~~
mratzloff
Yeah, a CS degree isn't judged the same way an MBA is.

------
kami8845
Who even says who the best engineering team is? I'm pretty confident they
aren't in a startup.

~~~
harlanlewis
Oh, don't be so obtuse. They're an aspirational company in the space First
Round Capital cares about.

~~~
gdb
Stripe is not a First Round company. FWIW, I make no claims that we have the
best team (I don't think teams are totally ordered, in any case), but I am
very happy with the team we've built so far.

~~~
cperciva
> I make no claims that we have the best team (I don't think teams are totally
> ordered, in any case)

Partially ordered sets can have greatest elements -- you don't need total
ordering (although you do need to have at least one element which is
comparable to every other element, of course).

~~~
gdb
Fair enough, though I'm not sure such a team exists in any case :).

------
dxbydt
Maybe we should have an HN poll for "best engineering team", rather than each
startup claiming to be one. I for one would vote for typesafe. Or precog.
Pound for pound, there's more value per developer in those two companies than
anywhere else.

~~~
rdouble
Pound for pound? Their programmers are productive and svelte?

~~~
dxbydt
>Their programmers are productive and svelte?

<http://precog.com/about/team>

some of them are definitely svelte :) but then, when you incorporate in
boulder,co, the fitness capital of usa, svelte is a given. So also
switzerland, where typesafe originates from.

------
joedev
Despite the consensus that college has little value to hackers, Stripe team
members come largely from Stanford, Harvard, MIT and other major universities.
Is this and the fact that Stripe's products are highly regarded just a
coincidence? Would it be the same team and products without the team members'
Ivy league credentials?

I think the answer is no and no. The benefits of college education are widely
underestimated.

~~~
boucher
To be fair, many of those Harvard and MIT people are dropouts. I think there's
some signal in having graduated with a degree, especially from a well regarded
university, but it isn't really something we specifically look for and it
definitely isn't a requirement.

~~~
joedev
If it has no bearing, wonder why it's even mentioned in employees' bios. Just
out of convention?

------
laureny
Every company thinks they have one of the best engineering teams. Especially
in the Silicon Valley.

~~~
encoderer
And, in Silicon Valley, vs the rest of the country, I'd say that most are
correct.

The average quality of engineering talent in the bay area is much higher than
the average quality elsewhere in my experience.

------
amorphid
This blog post is doesn't quantify why they have been able to recruit well
written by non-employee fan of Stripe. It is a puff piece that's fun to read,
sort of like the content you'd read in People Magazine. For example, the
author provides a chart the breaks down like this:

1) we hire mostlty through referrals, which includes intense stalking

2) we've had reasonable luck w/ people who approach us

3) most people we contact via LinkedIn don't get back to us

4) once we hired someone through a recruiter

Points one through four are unique to Stripe. If they were an unsexy company
in the boonies, point one would be "we hire mostly through recruiters". Point
for would be "we once literally found someone under a rock".

This article reminded of an analysis on Tyra Bank's tips for becoming a model
-- (mildy NSFW, bikinis) [http://www.cracked.com/funny-2185-americas-next-
to/funny-218...](http://www.cracked.com/funny-2185-americas-next-
to/funny-2185-americas-next-top-model)

------
goronbjorn
I really like their approach to referrals, in particular thinking of referrals
as being limited to 'the best and smartest people [employees have] ever worked
with'

A lot of companies completely miss the point of referrals. They say 'X% of our
hires last year were referrals, so let's force everyone to blindly scrape
their Linkedin networks and refer all of those people.' The highest quality
referrals come when employees _have actually worked with the people they're
referring_.

------
jgalt212
Not to sound flip, but does Stripe need to be building the best engineering
team in the Valley? From an outsider's perspective it does not seem like are
trying to solve that difficult a problem--marry Internet technology with
credit card payment technology. In effect, they are just building glue, not
anything new. However, let's assume they are building very good glue. That
still begs the question can one attract the best to build the best team when
the tasks at hand might not attract the most talented? The answer to that
question, I'd like to know. My own company works on what I think are
challenging engineering problems, but perhaps not as challenging or impactful
as what Google, Prismatic, Factual, or SexyStartUpX are working on (just to
name a few).

So my question is how do you attract talent and build great teams when you're
not the prettiest girl at the dance?

~~~
gdb
We have a unique set of technical challenges. We care about availability and
durability to extremes that most others don't have to, and as a result we
often end up having to build systems in novel ways. Fraud requires defending
against active, motivated attackers. Building product requires figuring out
the best possible way for it to work and then making it exist in the world.
All of these are problems which you can't solve by simply throwing more people
at them -- you need to hire the best people you can find.

------
minimax
"Stripe uses a collaborative hack project (typically prepared in advance to
make sure they’re well suited for someone’s interests and skill set)."

This sounds like an interesting wrinkle on the more typical whiteboard
programming puzzle.

------
ExpiredLink
> _one of Silicon Valley’s best engineering teams_

Any proof for this bold statement?

~~~
trustfundbaby
None needed ... it got your attention didn't it?

------
dylanvee
Whither internships? The best way to find out if you like working with someone
is to go ahead and work with them for a little bit.

~~~
ruswick
I'd say most people who would be in a position to work at stripe (eg. ~5% of
the programming population in the bay) are probably already in enough demand
such that they aren't compelled to work for drastically reduced or nonexistent
wages.

~~~
dylanvee
I'm talking about the internships offered by many tech companies to college
students, which are always paid (often very competitively). I'm a student, and
have benefited from these myself, but I'd imagine that from an employer's
perspective hosting interns is a relatively low-risk way to get to know some
potential full-time candidates pretty well.

------
codeonfire
Unsubstantiated claims are unsubstantial. Really? your own employees are the
best? And you say that all their friends are also really awesome too? And
people that you and your employees like are also ideal? You've got to be
shitting me!

------
epoxyhockey
You can't discount the fact that hiring people is often an emotional game
(i.e. finding the _right fit_ for my team). An employee referral is naturally
going to be accepted by more of the decision makers in a company than a
complete stranger who is starting from a position of lower trust.

Though, at the end of the day, if referrals work better for a company then
that is where the focus should be placed.

------
siliconc0w
'The Best' are expensive and are constantly being poached. You don't need 'The
Best' because you're not doing anything particularly innovative - you want
"the most effective' which is probably someone 'good' who, with the right
resources, can effectively implement the already known solutions to the
already known problems you're likely to face.

------
vecter

        Trust your instincts.
    
        It turns out that when you think that someone's not good, you're almost always right.
    

Pretty excellent advice. Ever since I've started my company, I've really
learned to trust my gut. It's almost always right, I just have to be aware
enough to listen to it.

------
nicksergeant
Stripe is working on an interesting business problem. Engineers like to work
on interesting business problems (and rarely do they get a chance to do so).
That's pretty much it.

~~~
jrockway
Being a middleman in the credit card network is an interesting problem?

~~~
kamaal
No but helping people exchange/pay money easily is a interesting problem to
solve.

------
brown9-2
gdb - at 6:25, are you saying that you just happen to appear in people's towns
when they are there, and schedule flights without telling them? Can't tell if
I'm understanding incorrectly or if the audio is muffled and mishearing.

~~~
gdb
Heh, indeed it is a bit muffled. What I'm talking about there is casually
telling someone you'll be in town, when really you're just going to meet up
with them.

~~~
brown9-2
Thanks - so you aren't surreptitiously flying to prospect's towns and
coincidentally running into them?

------
justplay
I'm an engineer why should I read.... Better it fit HR

