Comment by barmstrong

Did Patrick message you to ask you to post this?

The point is not that they have direct control over YC or HN, it's that they have massive indirect control over the organization and have done a wizard's job of making themselves untouchable in the media.

Some context: I'm a former (early) YC founder, and during my batch the YC team recommended that we spend time with the HN team. The HN team gave us edits on our posts, recommended the best times of day to submit, emailed us when stories about our companies hit the front page, and explained how the ranking algorithms worked (and thus we learned how to game them). And we are not the most valuable YC company ever -- so it's possible more was done for Stripe.

It's not direct influence, but rather indirect impact. So again I ask -- Did Patrick request that you write this post?

This is the first time I’ve seen a post with anything negative about Patrick and having a Coinbase founder come out of the woodwork to make a post like this defending all of this with nothing more than conjecture sends a completely different message than you think.

I’ve personally conducted business with Patrick, and integrity isn’t a term I’d associate with him. Most polite term I can think of would be “shrewd”.

Props for attaching your name to your comment, something I wish the throwaway OP also did, though in the spirit of believing the victim, I can understand why they didn't.

That said, with threads like this, there's also value in letting people come forward with their experiences (positive or otherwise) to see if there's any sort of pattern; any such patterns can then inform future interactions with the people or companies involved.

My own personal experience over the last year as a manager of managers that may be relevant to both pc and barmstrong: seeing a surprising number of security resumes on the market from current Stripe talent suggests there may be a bit of impending brain drain (for reasons I can't put a finger on as I'm not inside). I've seen less of this with Coinbase talent.

Sure, but you run Coinbase. It wouldn't surprise me if people with less soft power than you had negative interactions.

Not to fuel the fire here, but from the startups perspective I'm not sure there's much functional difference between a company attempting to acquire a startup and then deciding to go it alone, and using the acquisition process for research on their future products other than intent.

No matter what if you do the DD process on an acquisition you'll certainly apply those learnings to your future efforts.

There's even a PG blogpost about it. http://www.paulgraham.com/corpdev.html

Side Note: I'm always amazed to find people that run large companies posting on hackernews. Doubly amazed that two companies I'm interviewing for are mentioned in the same post (about interviews no less.) :D

Small world.

I know so many people who have been screwed over by Coinbase, it's complete lack of customer support, and dark business practices (it's borderline criminal at this point). The fact that you're associated directly with Coinbase does not benefit your reputation nor does it add any weight to what you're saying - it in fact does the opposite.

This is biased because they are your acquaintance. Because they act a certain way in your circle doesn’t mean they aren’t being a bad actor in others.

Your post makes it clear you’re very out of touch with the reality of interviewing. I’ve had this same stuff pulled on me at Google, Amazon, and multiple other companies. Being offered a position and then getting surprise interview and then ghosted. It’s draining and demoralizing, and a major waste of my time.

> Patrick has proactively told me when wanting to build competitive products, even when he didn't have to (very positive sum thinking).

I used to get very frustrated at a previous job (realestate.com.au) that they would treat their main competitor in such a venomous way.

If the features looked similar then they 'copied' if they launched a feature first then denigrate it until you can launch the same feature. There are only so many ways you can do a real estate (car, job) ad portal. Especially if you're following best practice UI/UX guidelines.

I get being competitive, but you can be competitive and still be civil. Making the other company to be an arch-villain is such small-minded zero-sum thinking.

Sadly there were also many things where they could have worked on collaboratively to make everyone's lives better (e.g. Rental standards and processes), but this is impossible when you frame the competitor in such a negative way.

> most rational explanation for OPs issue is that references were checked and came back luke warm/negative, so more were done which delayed it etc (they may not tell you this was the reason to protect sources btw), this is one of many potential reasons, i'm guessing, but benign explanations are more likely

> also, "discussing details of an offer" is not the same as receiving an offer

All reasonable things to happen, for sure. Would other HMs in the same building show interest after bad references? Debatable.

I accept all outcomes - all except ghosting.

Have you considered that he might just avoid sharking out on people he considers friends, or people with too large a platform?

Genuine question.

I don't think Coinbase and Stripe are in the same business but...

> As one small example, Patrick has proactively told me when wanting to build competitive products, even when he didn't have to (very positive sum thinking).

I'm not sure why this is positive or signals a high-integrity person. If he doesn't have to tell you, he probably shouldn't. He runs a private company and that's what he should care about.

Or maybe he did that, so that in the future you can kick back and write this comment?

> any time you have thousand of interviews going on, you are bound to get some bad candidate experiences... and we try to minimize it for sure, but you will not get it to zero (especially when growing quickly)

Spot on. Nor should anyone expend disproportionate energy in bringing down common causes of quality issues to zero. https://apenwarr.ca/log/20161226

> I just hate to see HN jumping into tear downs and wild conjecture like this.

You must be new here.

I agree with you but after being an employee of a dozen of companies and founded some, I started the Stripe's application processe and after a waterfall or red flags I decided myself to do not continue. I couldn't ignore my gut feeling clearly saying me that there is the place to have a good salary in a very miserable, unhealthy and unstable job.

PS: I don't know how they are managing to have such a good product.

Japan has a long tradition in coopetition. SV has adopted many Japanese traditions. Unfortunately some people seem to take competition too seriously, ruining the culture. It seems some are suggesting Patrick and John take competition too seriously. Whether the allegations are true or not, it can unfortunately be damaging.

Adam Smith, on his work on competition, took many ideas from the Muslim Caliphate. Where markets can only work on trust. That nobody will do business with someone they don't trust.

Trust is what underlies communities like this, even if people are competitors.

> There are plenty of more reasonable Occam's razor explanations (…). You always have to assume ignorance over malice first.

That’s Hanlon’s razor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor

I have never interviewed at Stripe, but I did interview at Coinbase in mid-2020 and it was among the best interviewing experiences I've had. The hiring manager for a TPM role (NM) was awesome, as was the entire loop. I didn't end up with an offer (I suspect that I flubbed one of the interviews) but left with a mostly positive experience (aside from what seemed like an implied offer from the recruiter, which I consider to just be miscommunication).

As opposed to K (another SF-based exchange), which took a month to set up the loop in the first place, had one-way video during interviews (candidates on, interviewers off), and took 3 weeks after the interview loop to send an offer which I declined for another company (65% of CB's pre-offer, not that it mattered based on the other stuff).

These experiences make a difference and really help sell the organization to a potential hire.

> You always have to assume ignorance over malice first

At a certain valuation (namely, well before yours or Patrick's), ignorance becomes malice. With the resources Stripe has, it is outrageous that there have been a non-zero number of cases where for example references haven't been checked before an offer letter was sent. That Patrick is ignorant about this, as you claim, is even more damning, as it suggests no one knows what is going on at Stripe.

So I guess thank you for your scathing review of Stripe's hiring process, and for giving us the notion that Coinbase is probably an equally toxic workspace?

Funny that you think your endorsement works in their favor. Coinbase is not entirely kosher in the crypto industry so there's that.

Strange that the downvote button was hidden on this post. I had to manually submit the GET request.

You know the best you could have done is say nothing. People like this, best way to prove them wrong is to show there's nothing. Even a "oh it's true but we ll try to change" helps more than doing exactly what the OP did with his catch-22: if you defend here, he's proven right.

Well now we know who is your master.

I'm too am also a founder of an $xB fintech, and I have to say I disagree with your assessment. The initial poster was right on all counts.

Newswire: Coinbase founder says Stripe founder is a good guy. People not convinced.

Patrick and John asked brian armstrong to run damage control for them lol.

Why would we ever listen to someone who runs a ponzi coin company?

You TWO could be the same person? Just a wild guess...