I quit my job at Stripe | Hacker News Reader

I quit my job at Stripe

felipecsl.com

29 pointsfelipe_csl18 comments

I find these posts interesting because quitting a company and immediately writing a post critiquing them, even if it's a soft critique like this post, is something that I would never do. I understand why people write these posts. They're certainly useful for me and many others. But unless the company did something profoundly immoral, I would not publicly criticize it on a large tech forum. Maybe I don't have enough chutzpah but I don't really see any good coming of it.

Curious what risks you see in it? Burning bridges? Becoming the guy who publicly critiques his employers?

FWIW, his thoughts are clearly spelled out as his own experience.

>Becoming the guy who publicly critiques his employers?

Exactly.

At least for me this is a red flag, due to the fact that those things in the article is part of the game.

> this is a red flag

A red flag for what? Being a human with opinions? Not having enough “loyalty” to ones “superiors” in the workplace?

There’s nothing wrong with sharing an opinion or critique. Felipe is a fantastic engineer and I wouldn’t hesitate to try recruit him if he wasn’t looking away from the salary life.

> Being a human with opinions?

Is that a value now ? You can be a shitty human with shitty opinions.

At least thats what HN consider on some political subjects.

It's a red flag because 1.5 years is really not a long time to attempt to break into a new market.

It highlights that the author wasn't a good fit as engineer #2. However, instead of introspection, the author just blamed it all on bad org, bad manager etc.

Conclusion, I wouldnt hire op as engineer #2 at early stage startups.

See, your response is a red flag for me. It tells me you'll treat your employees like shit and talk down to them if they express their feelings like OP did.

I wouldn't accept a job offer from anyone who has a problem with someone writing a blog post about their experiences working for another company, good or bad.

People are too quick to act as if companies have this protection and that as employees we have to bow to them and cannot say anything negative, but in a heart beat companies will drop employees like yesterdays news.

This is a two way street and we has employees have just as much rights to express our disinterest and experiences with companies we worked with too.

+1 here.

I think professionals needs to understand the game that they are into. Reorgs, bad managers and other aspects are included in the salary. If you can deal with that, ok; if not leave but this do not give the right to bash publicly someone.

I think it’s fair to write a post criticising systemic, terrible things like racism, abuse, toxic work culture.

But this just reads like a shit deal in a tech company. To his point, others could have different experiences.

So why write it at all?

Submit the glassdoor review and move on.

OP I know you’ll probably read this - so don’t be too hard on yourself in regards to my reply. You’re starting a new adventure and I’m excited for you.

Fair enough, you have a good point! My goal was to address this to someone who's considering starting a new job there maybe or who is curious about how things are internally but doesn't have visibility into it. Lots of people said they found it useful but I can certainly see why this can rub people the wrong way, and that's fine. If this helps at least one person, then I think it was worth it :)

This is just public therapy. He should be talking to his therapist about this (which he can probably no longer afford due to losing his health insurance).

Hey, writing can be very therapeutic indeed!

This is such a hollow article. Am I missing something?

Maybe you don't feel too self-important.

It does feel that way. I missed the section on self reflection. Now the article sounds like he’s blaming the world/employer for his dissatisfaction.

People can critique this writeup, but this is a useful data point for others interested in what happens as companies scale. These aren’t new pain points and they aren’t indicative of looming failure at Stripe — they’re just areas where we could probably do a better job, and might even provide business opportunities for startups that can help HR departments identify and address them.

I really appreciate that you shared the experience. It's great to learn about it and be aware of it, so I can avoid a similar problem in the future.

Best of luck with your next adventure!

Thank you for being my interviewer as well. I definitely bombed one interview session... I'm pretty sure you gave me good score. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been hired... :)

Good on him for taking a break. It'd be nice if that was an option for everyone. Sadly in the US it can be quite expensive with a family to support, even in tech.

As to old work following him on to a new team I can see how being a SME is difficult to escape within the company. One would hope being the expert would provide more leverage to dictate the terms and boundaries of ones working conditions, though that's not always the case

Not a lot of detail in the article about exactly why things went down. If I had to guess the plan was too ambitious and didn't include enough talent native to the market before they committed. Which could explain why they leaned so heavily into the author.

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