u/NecessaryLab8445

Hey everyone,

I’m hoping someone here might be able to help me out with a referral at Stripe.

There’s an open role that I genuinely believe is a strong fit for my background and experience, and I’d really like to put my application forward. I’ve already tried reaching out to quite a few people on LinkedIn, but unfortunately haven’t been able to find someone who can refer me.

If you currently work at Stripe, or know someone who does and might be willing to help with a referral, I’d be incredibly grateful. I’m happy to share the job details, my resume, and anything else that might be useful over DM.

I completely understand that referrals are a personal ask, so no pressure whatsoever even pointing me towards the right person or channel would be hugely appreciated.

Thanks in advance to anyone who takes the time to help!

I recently interviewed with Salesforce for a role I was genuinely excited about. The opportunity looked compelling, and given my current scope and experience, I felt I had a strong and relevant background for what they were looking for.

Unfortunately, the interview itself was a rather different experience.

There were two interviewers. One was particularly authoritative, dismissive and unnecessarily condescending. The conversation repeatedly veered from assessing my experience into questioning, dismissing and, at times, seemingly attempting to undermine it.

I don’t have a problem with challenging interview questions. In fact, I welcome them. If you’re interviewing for a senior role, you should expect your thinking, judgment and depth of experience to be tested.

But there is a difference between challenging a candidate and trying to diminish them.

The second interviewer appeared almost completely disengaged for large parts of the conversation, which made the overall experience even stranger. One interviewer seemed intent on proving that my experience wasn’t as substantial as I believed it was, while the other seemed barely invested in assessing it.

The irony wasn’t lost on me.

In my current role, I operate at a scope that, in several respects, is considerably broader than what this position appeared to require. I lead complex programs, manage significant stakeholder ecosystems, operate strategically as well as operationally, and deal with challenges that extend well beyond the relatively narrow pieces of experience being tested during this interview.

Of course, that doesn’t automatically make me the right candidate. Experience isn’t a substitute for fit, and I have absolutely no issue with being rejected.

What I do find questionable is the quality of the assessment.

If you’re going to interview someone with 15+ years of experience, including substantial experience operating at scale, the expectation should be that you’re trying to understand the depth and context of that experience — not simply looking for opportunities to tell the candidate why what they’ve done doesn’t count.

At some point, an interview stops being a rigorous assessment and starts becoming a reflection of the person conducting it.

And perhaps that’s what happened here.

I walked into the conversation genuinely interested in the opportunity and walked out thinking less about whether I wanted the role and more about whether the people conducting the assessment had actually understood the level at which I currently operate.

Maybe I wasn’t the right fit. That’s entirely possible.
Maybe the interviewers had a very specific profile in mind that I didn’t match. Also fair.

But if the objective was to assess whether I could operate at the level required for the role, I left unconvinced that my experience had actually been assessed, only that it had been questioned rather aggressively.

That’s a very different thing.

I’m curious to hear from people who have interviewed with Salesforce, particularly at the senior level. Was this an isolated experience, or is this representative of the interview culture there?