I could see this. Patrick has a really strong brand among engineers. So if he’s willing to lend his personal credibility to Stripe, that’s a strong signal that it’s a good place to work.
In summary, culture is downstream of hiring decisions. If a company is doubling headcount each year, then after two years 75% of the population will be new. If the newcomers' culture is different from what old-timers prefer, then attrition increases, which further skews the demographics.
This effect is strengthened when the hiring pipeline is focused on alumni from specific companies. For example, if you hire three layers of management from Amazon, and they replace tenured engineering leadership with newly hired ICs from Amazon, your team's culture will become that of Amazon.
Some blog posts I've found to be relevant to current circumstances:
* https://danluu.com/people-matter/
* https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-ear...
The idea that Patrick works there and thinks it's a great place to work at is "lending Patrick's personal brand to stripe". If you have a lot of trust in his judgment (and thus his brand), you're more likely to think that "hey stripe is probably a great place to work" and then apply there, because if it Wasn't then why would he still be working there? Or why would he be endorsing it? It also puts his personal brand/reputation at risk; if Stripe Isn't a good place to work, that hurts his brand
If you know about some of his pre-stripe past, this is a very funny comment on multiple levels.
Super throwback:
launch post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9173939
shutdown post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12415786