Stripe Product Manager Interview Process

This is where it all starts. It's a 30-minute chat with a recruiter, and it's your chance to make a great first impression. The key objectives here are to understand your motivations for pursuing the PM role at Stripe and to gauge your ability to effectively communicate. 

They want to know why you're excited about joining Stripe as a PM. Also, you'll discuss your past experiences, which helps them understand your background. 

You should be well-prepared to discuss your qualifications, professional background, and past experiences, as this conversation will also help the recruiter determine whether you'd be a good culture fit for Stripe.

In this round facing a Stripe PM, you'll have two 45-minute interviews, and both focus on your product sense. In the first one, they'll give you a scenario to handle. This is where your ability to think critically and strategically about a given situation is assessed. 

The second interview is more open-ended. You get to choose an app you'd like to improve and discuss it. It's a mix of a product critique and product strategy question. Stripe's interviewers are known for asking thought-provoking questions that dive deep into your product knowledge and strategic thinking. Make sure you're ready to show your problem-solving skills and innovative ideas.

This is where the real heart of the interview process unfolds. The onsite interview is an all-encompassing test of your skills, adaptability, and your ability to connect with the Stripe team.

You'll be in for four consecutive interviews, each covering a variety of aspects. Here's what you can anticipate:

• Technical and Execution Questions: Be prepared to answer technical questions related to your role as a PM. Expect to demonstrate your ability to execute on product development tasks on questions like "How would you get authentication to work across domains?" Or "Explain the concept of "protocol" to a 4-year-old child"
  
• Product Estimation and Analytical Questions: Here, you'll face analytical questions that assess your problem-solving and data analysis skills. In addition to that, you'll typically be presented with a scenario and asked to estimate various aspects of a product or feature. This means questions like "How much money is spent on gas in the US every year?" Or "How many millennials own homes in the US?". The objective is to assess your ability to think critically, make informed assumptions, and work through a problem methodically.
  
• Product Sense and Design Sense: This is where you'll need to show your product intuition and design acumen, so this means touching upon product strategy, user experience, and design principles. You can expect questions like "If you were the CEO of Stripe, what new product would you come up with to increase revenue?" Or "Design a washer and dryer"
  
• Behavioral Questions: Here, the interviewers will delve into your past experiences and behavior to gauge how well you fit into Stripe's culture and the PM role.
  
• Product Concept Presentation: Finally, one of the standout aspects of the onsite interview is when you'll be asked to give a presentation on a product concept. Don't worry, you'll have some time to prepare, but see this as your chance to shine by presenting a well-thought-out product idea.
  

Here's something noteworthy: expect some degree of unpredictability. Interviewers at Stripe typically go "off-script" and ask questions that don't neatly fit into these categories. This keeps you on your toes and assesses your adaptability and ability to handle unexpected situations. This typically comes up with follow-up questions or specific scenario based questions like "Imagine you’re a PM at a startup that works with big data from the NHL — what’s the first product you would ship?" Or "If you were a VC, would you be more bullish on AR or VR?" These are questions previous candidates have reportedly been asked.

Now, coming to the last leg of the onsite interview is generally a more relaxed lunch chat with a current Stripe PM. This is less about evaluation and more about building a connection. It's also an opportunity for you to ask any burning questions you might have about life as a Stripe PM and get insights directly from someone in the role.

Here are some common questions you can expect:

- Describe recursion in a way that even your grandmother would understand.

- Propose improvements to the New York City transit system.

- Investigate the 30% drop in Stripe's POS system usage overnight and the data you would examine.

- Outline the key metrics that Stripe should monitor daily.

- Define the characteristics of a well-crafted API.

- Explain the reasons behind leaving your current company.

- Assume the role of a CPO in an airline consortium with a $1 million budget to improve the perception of air travel and describe your strategy.

- Detail your approach to prioritizing product features.

- Design a method to remove every other node from a linked list.

- Talk about a product you frequently use.

- Identify your favorite website and suggest enhancements.

- Develop a program for randomly shuffling an array of numbers.

- Explain the sudden 10% increase in daily transaction data in Egypt for Stripe.

- Describe the analysis you would use to determine if Stripe should raise its prices.

- Walk through the process of building a new product for a popular consumer market, such as kitchen gadgets.

- Reflect on any past mistakes while leading a significant project, the actions taken to rectify them, and lessons learned.

- Create an application for the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).

- Share your ideas for enhancing Stripe.

- Provide an optimization plan for a scenario involving airports.

- Craft a function that counts the digits in a number.

- Devise a dictionary lookup system for Scrabble.

- Share your favorite product, what makes it your favorite, and ways you'd enhance it.

- Discuss a product you adore and outline ways to make it even better.

- Explain the metrics used to measure the successful launch of a product.

- Address a 5% decrease in Stripe's website traffic and how you would report it to the executive team.

- Discuss a product you are proud of delivering.

- Highlight your preferred feature of Stripe.