No true sense of culture. Most of the people they're hiring now are likely joining mainly because they want a big pay out in the first year. Yes Stripe pays very well but that's because they're losing really good people who actually care about other people and have a sense of empathy.
Their new comp structure and AVG (annual value grant) means that you will only get the most of out your comp in the first year BUT also means that it's going to be very competitive when it comes to performance. You have to basically dedicate your entire life to work in order to get a good performance rating. They try to sell this as "we pay for performance and reward good work." True, but that means you will have NO work life balance.
No work life balance means that teammates don't support each other at all and it's very competitive. There's a TON of processes and hoops to jump through and many layers of people to get through in order to get anything done. It was really tough to see how one could make any significant impact, unless you'd already been there for 3+ years.
Managers are overworked too so you really don't get much support from them either.
Be prepared to be very isolated and work a ton if you want to join Stripe... For me, no amount of money in the world was worth that.
Stripe is too much of a big machine now.
