This is an 'Ask HN' post detailing a highly negative and unprofessional interview experience at Stripe for a leadership position. The author highlights issues like rushed interviews, constant schedule changes, lack of technical depth, minimal interaction with the hiring manager, and ultimately being 'ghosted' after being congratulated on passing the loop. The post serves as a warning and discussion point for other job seekers.
A starter prompt for Claude Code, what you'll need, and how to reach them.
You are an expert full-stack developer. Create a minimal viable product for a platform where job candidates can anonymously share detailed, structured feedback about their interview experiences with specific companies, focusing initially on ghosting rates and interview process consistency. The core functionality should allow a user to submit a structured interview review (company name, role, interview stages, key issues like ghosting/rushing, overall sentiment). The platform should display aggregated, anonymized counts of submissions per company, highlighting common complaints. Use Next.js 16 App Router, React 19, Tailwind v4 for styling, and store data in Neon Postgres on Vercel. Ensure the UI is clean and mobile-responsive. The MVP only needs to support submission and a simple 'Company Profile' page showing aggregate data without individual comments. Include a clear 'Submit Experience' form and a 'Browse Companies' list. Implement basic user authentication via Clerk or similar to prevent spam, but ensure submissions remain anonymous.
Recently I interviewed with Stripe for an engineering MoM (Manager of Managers) for one of their teams. I interview regularly, so I am used to many types of processes, feedback mechanisms, and so on. I won't go into details about the questions because there's nothing special about them, but I wanted to share some details of my experience for people thinking of interviewing there. 1) About 35-40% of the interviewers started their questioning by saying "I will only need 20 minutes for this", while emphasizing it is an important leadership position that they are hiring for. So 20 minutes is all needed to identify "important, critical leaders"? What a strange thing to say - also a GREAT way to make candidates feel important and wanted! 2) There is significant shuffling of interviewers and schedules. One almost has to be on-call to be able to react quickly. 3) For an engineering manager position, I only interviewed with only technical person. To me it hints that Engineering MoM is not a very technical position. 4) Of all the people I spoke to, the hiring manager was the one I spoke the least with. The phone screen was one of the "I only need 20 minutes
Reply in the HN thread to danrocks' original post, or try to find a public email/social media contact for them.
“Your 'Accepted and Ghosted' post on HN resonated with many. I'm building a platform specifically to address these issues, providing transparency on interview processes like Stripe's. I've built a prototype that lets candidates share structured feedback anonymously, and I'd love your input on features that would have helped you.”
Open the original ↗