I'd say most people who would be in a position to work at stripe (eg. ~5% of the programming population in the bay) are probably already in enough demand such that they aren't compelled to work for drastically reduced or nonexistent wages.
I'm talking about the internships offered by many tech companies to college students, which are always paid (often very competitively). I'm a student, and have benefited from these myself, but I'd imagine that from an employer's perspective hosting interns is a relatively low-risk way to get to know some potential full-time candidates pretty well.