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Comment by nthj | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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, 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.

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?

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.

Followup story: Stripe hires entire Delta Gamma sorority, invited to work only on Sundays

What 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.

It 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.

I'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.

There'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.

Most 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.

You 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?

No, I've bult dozens of projects by myself. Remember the Hacker News Karma Tracker that was made the front page a few weeks back? That was me. I wrote that in 2 weeks. I've also built a web framework, and a dozen python libraries. Trust me what I say that the majority of companies out there don't give a shit about programmer competency. They'd, on average, rather hire a clueless "cool bro" over someone like myself who knows how to get stuff done and has a track record of getting things done.

Knowing that you're not just out of school, your earlier comment makes me want to ask "what's wrong then?" I have about a dozen years experience as a "professional" software engineer. My experience, on both sides of the table, is that good engineering talent really is hard to find, and that those who posses it don't usually have trouble finding a job. Here in the bay area that's been especially true: I've never had just one job offer at a time. I've been "looking" here twice in the last 5 years and both times I had a dozen recruiters calling me, a half dozen phone screens, a handful of interviews and at least 2 offers. And along the way as much of the culling was done by me as it was by the prospective companies.

Look, I know I'm just talking in anecdotes. And I'm parsing a lot because I don't want to offend you. But if you have "dozens" or even just a lot of people telling you they can't hire you because you're not a good fit, that should be a red flag to you. Sure, some of the problem is probably some of the companies. But you could probably see results by taking ownership of part of the problem for yourself. What I mean is, it's easy for an engineer to just try to wash his hands of things like "networking" and "cultural fits" but a better way is to just treat it like any other engineering problem and optimize for it.

You don't have to worry about offending me. I'm the biggest asshole the universe has ever seen. I assure you that I can take more than what I regularly dish out.

My problems are two fold. First, I'm located in Ohio. If I were in NYC or San Francisco, it would be a different story. Secondly, I am very confident in my abilities, and I have a lot of integrity. "B player boses" are scared of people like me.

My biggest problem is that I'm not really capable of working at a company as an employee. I need to be either a CTO level person, or as part of a team where there is no "boss". A lot of companies claim that they are a true "collaborative environment", but rarely do companies ever actually operate this way. My first engineering job was on a team where there was no boss. Everyone was equal in terms of influence over the direction of the technology. I was a perfect fit there. I contributed more than anyone else at that job.

I think it boils down to the face that I care more about software than I do about the company. I care more about the quality of the software than I do about my boss's feelings. I care more about the software than I do about my own well being. I guess I could start caring less. I could just spend all day small talking with co-workers and generally not giving a shit like everyone else...

I'm from Ohio, too. And I started my career there. And as you know, it's not easy. I hope you're in Columbus or Cincinnati. I grew up in Toledo: Not exactly a tech hub :)

You should relocate. I can tell you this without a shred of reservation. I first went to a payment processing startup in Boca. Lots of money in South Florida, wonderful weather, quite a few more startups than you'd guess. Then to the bay area for a wider range of work.

If you're good, you will get flown out for interviews and given an offer with relocation. You should seriously consider this.

As for your other concerns, when I was younger, I was less of a collaborator and more of a "screw this, i'll do it myself, you'll see, it'll be great." And I'm talented, and often it was great, so i got by. But I eventually realized that for me, being more humble, reaching out more, it just makes life easier. And if you want to be humbled, go to where the best and brightest in your industry are.

> You don't have to worry about offending me. I'm the biggest asshole the universe has ever seen. I assure you that I can take more than what I regularly dish out.

On the off chance you don't realize it, this probably affects your employability more than the rest of the factors you mentioned.

If someone is competent and underrated, it seems particularly heuristic to conclude that something must be wrong with them. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Someone who can't get hired can't get hired because they weren't hired by others before.

Sure, 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.

Just 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.

How 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?

There 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.

That'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.

Could 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?

(I work at Stripe.)

As Greg points out in a sibling comment, it's not that we expect people to work on Sunday. We don't.

The point is setting a higher threshold for likability than "would you be ok working with this person". Instead, it's would you go out of your way to be around them?

It's easy to let small things slide. "Oh, it's a big office; I guess I won't need to hang out with them that much." It's harder to fool yourself with this test.

A better test is described by Moss in the IT Crowd:

"Did she continue talking to you once you'd fixed her computer?"

Just rephrase this to "would you be around this person if you weren't paid to?"

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