Hacker News Reader

Comment by cyberferret | Hacker News Reader

If Stripe's HR department is reading this thread, I think they can pinpoint one crucial interview question that will determine culture fit in their organisation for future hiring - and that is "do you like talking about your accomplishments with the rest of your team?".

Seems to be a very polarising thing to be asked to do, judging by the replies on this particular comment.

EDIT: Curious about the downvotes? This is a real thing. I am sure they don't want to hire people that would hate to write shipped emails and publish them to the list if they actively hated writing them. It is simply not good culture fit, and I am sure they would want to identify that early on in the recruitment process.

View on HN

That's certainly a reasonable concern given the information above. For what it's worth, though, I work at Stripe and I've never felt pressured to write a shipped email; I don't think others are either.

In fact, I think the only shipped emails I've written have been on behalf of colleagues since I was so excited about something they'd built/fixed (with their permission). Many (most?) Stripes aren't the type to brag about their work. But it is nice to share, and to let others know that X product is better now.

Possibly that such a recruitment filter would exclude a lot of people with depression or anxiety-related mental illness.

To clarify, I hate talking about my accomplishments, it makes me feel deeply anxious and uncomfortable, and will say as much if asked. But I’ll also do it if that’s what’s required of me.

And there are many companies that value humbleness.

I love sharing my accomplishments. I know what's socially expected from me, but not sharing feels really bad to me. It feels as all the work I've done and that cool accomplishment don't matter at all. Therefore I mostly share with friends, though most of them lack the necessary tech-knowledge to really understand it.

I also love hearing about others accomplishments in an easy to digest way. These shipped emails seem like great way to spread knowledge and a positive attitude of getting stuff done.

What I, and the comment you replied to want to say, everyone is different. Let me work at a company that encourages sharing accomplishments and go work for one that values humbleness. But at least please don't take it away from me, just because you don't like it, especially if it's optional.

To clarify, I’m not criticising the idea of sharing accomplishments. I’m referring to having to like doing it being a criteria for recruitment.

I was proposing a possible reason as to why the comment I was replying to was receiving downvotes.

I've been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. I don't have a tech job yet (I have a hard time applying to jobs, for... obvious reasons), but I keep a public log of accomplishments for my weekend projects, announce them when other people might be interested in new features, and so on.

Different people are different. It'll exclude a lot of people, but not all of them, and it certainly wouldn't be clear-cut discrimination.

.. so you're saying it would be an effective filter, for the suggested purpose?

It would be an effective way to commit illegal discrimination.

I mean, discussing your work with your coworkers is a pretty reasonable workplace responsibility. What's illegal about asking if someone was comfortable doing it?

I was wondering this, I thought the discrimination was about disability, particularly, and "depression and social anxiety" are casually considered illnesses rather than disabilities.

https://www.gov.uk/reasonable-adjustments-for-disabled-worke... says "Employers must make reasonable adjustments to make sure workers with disabilities, or physical or mental health conditions, aren’t substantially disadvantaged when doing their jobs."

and the examples given on the gov.uk site include a specific mention of an anxiety disorder "doing things another way, such as allowing someone with social anxiety disorder to have their own desk instead of hot-desking"

But I don't know where "reasonable adjustments" comes in with this. "I have social anxiety and don't want to present in front of a group, may I send an email instead" sounds reasonable to me. "I don't want to send an email, someone else will have to do this part of the job" doesn't sound reasonable. You don't reasonably hire one person to do a job, then hire another person to the parts the first person cannot do, right? But I'm no lawyer.

Considering it is an email in the case of Stripe, I think you're analysis is correct.

Not discussing, talking about. Not work, accomplishments. Not comfortable, liking it.

I guess those would be the differences.

"Do you like talking about your accomplishments with the rest of your team?"

"Are you comfortable discussing your work with the rest of your team?"

But why shouldn't companies be able to hire only employees that like and fit into how the company is run, i.e. culture fit.

Every company is different and attracts different kinds of employees for various reasons.

Anti-discrimination is important, but it shouldn't go too far.

The key is to make your culture filter not cause people who actually would be a good fit to self-filter. Mental illness is insidious because it can make people who actually would enjoy something if given the right push instead think/assume that they don't want to do it. It affects a large enough percentage of the population that it's something companies need to be thinking about.

One of my friends worked for a company where one of the official values was "100%", and to me this was problematic because different people would understand it to mean different things. Some would assume that it just means that everyone works hard, that it's not a cushy job. Whilst others would interpret it to mean that everyone works crazy hours and is expected to give their life to the business at the expense of other commitments. My friend couldn't recognise that different people would interpret the value differently, so believed it was a perfectly reasonable way to get the wrong kinds of candidates to self-filter.

I'm not sure there's any legal significance to those minute phrasing changes.

I think that's not as easy at it sounds (or I am misreading you).

Let's assume you're wary of talking about accomplishments - what reasons could be there?

Bad memories of trying to convey what awesome things your team did and were generally received really badly? Preferring to sit down and ship and not boast about it at all? Sure, never accomplishing anything might also be the case, but in my experience a lot of really good people weren't keen at all to talk about cool stuff they did in any official or formal form - only over beers between a few developers or not at all. I don't think this is necessarily tied to being an introvert.

I didn't downvote you but I think it's a bad idea. Also because the opposite is true. No matter how much they personally contributed, the loudest people will tell you everything their team did.

Why wouldn't you want to share your accomplishments with your team? If you are proud of what you did, you would want to share it! Then the team will be proud too! And you get feedback! And you give motivation to the rest to do like you did! I see no bad side. :)

Is this like those photos of apple store where the employees stand outside to high-five anybody who bought an item from the store?

I feel sad for those who are so insecure that they need constant approval from their peers.

Absolutely nothing like it. I'm not sure that you actually read the top post on this thread. We are talking about a company's particular way of ensuring that changes are documented and shared with the rest of the team. Their method is to encourage team members to share their ship details in an internal mailing list.

It's an internal procedure that helps build company knowledge and information sharing. It has a side requirement for acknowledgement for peers, but it is nothing like an optional purchase being high fived...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com