Most of the onsite sessions that I went through were enjoyable and fun. I was provided with technical problems that fairly evaluated my skills. However, my experience with the third onsite interview session with an interviewer was a shocking experience.

She gave me an algorithm question on the whiteboard. I started by working through a few examples and explaining my thoughts on the whiteboard. She looked at my pseudocode and decided that it was wrong. However, she wasn’t able to create an example that proved the solution was wrong. We then decided to write the code on the computer and run the examples.

While I was coding and explaining my thoughts, she sat next to me but turned her back towards me and looked outside of the window. After realizing that she wasn’t paying any attention to what I was saying, I paused and asked if she still wanted me to continue to explain my thoughts. She responded, “Whatever you want to do.” I decided to continue coding and explaining my thoughts at the same time. While I was finishing writing the rest of the code, she occasionally turned back to the table and responded to messages on Slack. Otherwise, she continued to look outside the window.

After I finished writing my code, I ran tests to present that it produced the expected results. However, she said that the “right” way to solve the problem was to use a different data structure. To protect interview confidentiality, I won’t reveal the details of the algorithm or our discussion for this part.

I don’t think my performance was fairly evaluated in this interview because, instead of listening and looking at my code, she was looking outside of the window during the entire time I was typing on my computer and explaining my thoughts. In addition, when I explained my solution on the whiteboard, she cut me off frequently before I finished my sentences. I could feel her frustration during our interview session, and I felt that she was rushing through the session to finish. This experience was unpleasant and shocking.

There are certainly more than one way to solve an algorithm challenge, and my solution was definitely different from hers. Regardless of the difference in the solutions, I was expecting the interviewer to be open-minded to new solutions and be patient to listen to my solution and be respectful of the candidate. My experience in that session reflected none of that. Therefore, I was disappointed at how my performance was evaluated at Stripe and felt that my time was wasted.

I have a full-time job and five other decent offers from large and small companies. I took two days off to travel to San Francisco to interview with Stripe. This experience was extremely disappointing. For future improvements, I suggest that Stripe should only assign engineers who are willing to interview candidates to participate in the interviews; otherwise, both the interviewer and candidates will have very unpleasant experiences.

Cannot tell based on confidentiality.