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What Working at Stripe Has Been Like

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Re: What Working at Stripe Has Been Like

#51

Post by icebraining »

chapium wrote: post #37
afarrell wrote: post #11

> One of the things I enjoy most about Stripe’s work culture is the notion that “nothing is Not My Job.” I’m very eager to know: If you want to be successful in such a culture, what mental habits/skills can you develop which let you know with confidence where to direct your attention? How did patio11 develop these? ——— EDIT: How do you know that what you are working on is not a distraction?

If everything is your job, how can you be measured by what is your job fairly?

Having worked for a tiny company, where this is pretty much inevitable, I'd say you define what your job is at the moment by what you commit yourself to do.

Re: What Working at Stripe Has Been Like

#52

Post by epa »

ikeboy wrote: post #21
js2 wrote: post #16

> (An example which is just a boggling fact about the world: what’s your finger-to-a-wind guesstimate about what percentage of credit card payments fail with error code I Don’t Know Sometimes Things Fail In Credit Card Land? Hint: it’s higher than you think. Those failed payments cost conversions at the margin. When Stripe fights that number down by a basis point, that creates value across our entire portfolio, forev…

I'd guess half a percent? Can't imagine it being much higher?

Bank declines are 10-20% of total card volume, depending on industry.

Re: What Working at Stripe Has Been Like

#53

Post by aboutruby »

gringoDan wrote: post #27

Reading this post made me think that while many companies advertise an entrepreneurial environment and the ability to do impactful work, the true test of this culture is 1) the ability to hire former founders and 2) those former founders loving their work. Plenty of blue-chip startups have future founders working for them...yet it seems to me that having past founders is much more rare. An incredibly strong company e…

AngelList actually does this, they mostly recruit previous founders.

Re: What Working at Stripe Has Been Like

#54

Post by arandr0x »

JoblessWonder wrote: post #42
toomuchtodo wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not patio11 but if he would be so kind as to allow me to hazard a guess I’d say intellectual curiosity and tenacity. Don’t stop asking why and keep digging. You’ll want to mix in emotional intelligence so when you communicate with stakeholders, you do so in a way that they feel a desire to assist you in your endeavor, perhaps finding ways to align everyone’s incentives for success. I could be entirely wrong though.

I think you are spot on. I think a specific amount of hubris to go along with the intellectual curiosity and tenacity is important. It is the amount of confidence to say, "Hey, I can take this on. I'm not familiar with it directly but I understand enough of the context to help." You do have to be careful to not have too much confidence because then you will alienate your peers/management and be viewed as a know-it-al…

This is exactly true. Any tips how to identify companies that welcome this during interviews? (Or companies that don't.)

I wouldn't have considered myself as having "hubris" but I have a kind of semi-wild enthusiasm for being able to do things that people have reacted badly to before for exactly the reason you said. I'm not sure how to signal to companies "my deal is I want to do things; I will more or less literally jump off my seat to assist anyone and no job is beneath me and I will stay up and work 16 hours straight if I screw something up; but I'm not really good at hearing no".

Re: What Working at Stripe Has Been Like

#55

Post by toomuchtodo »

arandr0x wrote: post #54
JoblessWonder wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are spot on. I think a specific amount of hubris to go along with the intellectual curiosity and tenacity is important. It is the amount of confidence to say, "Hey, I can take this on. I'm not familiar with it directly but I understand enough of the context to help." You do have to be careful to not have too much confidence because then you will alienate your peers/management and be viewed as a know-it-al…

This is exactly true. Any tips how to identify companies that welcome this during interviews? (Or companies that don't.) I wouldn't have considered myself as having "hubris" but I have a kind of semi-wild enthusiasm for being able to do things that people have reacted badly to before for exactly the reason you said. I'm not sure how to signal to companies "my deal is I want to do things; I will more or less literally…

> I'm not sure how to signal to companies "my deal is I want to do things; I will more or less literally jump off my seat to assist anyone and no job is beneath me and I will stay up and work 16 hours straight if I screw something up; but I'm not really good at hearing no".

"I have a proven track record of executing relentlessly, rapidly delivering value, and moving between internal roles effortlessly. What challenges are you facing I could contribute to in a meaningful way?"

Be more comfortable hearing "No". Trust takes time to build.

Re: What Working at Stripe Has Been Like

#56

Post by ikeboy »

epa wrote: post #52
ikeboy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd guess half a percent? Can't imagine it being much higher?

Bank declines are 10-20% of total card volume, depending on industry.

Most of those are going to be straightforward insufficient funds or fraud though, I'd assume?

Re: What Working at Stripe Has Been Like

#57

Post by otherdave »

CharlesW wrote: post #33
spudlyo wrote: post #32

I left Stripe a little over 6 months ago to join an exciting startup with a number of my friends. What I miss most about working there is the culture of shipping. There are a number of 'shipped' email lists at Stripe where people can tout their accomplishments large and small. These lists are widely read and commented on, and folks put in a fair amount of effort making their "shipped" emails informative and entertain…

> These lists are widely read and commented on, and folks put in a fair amount of effort making their "shipped" emails informative and entertaining. Neat! I understand that you can't share them, but do you happen to know of any public examples?

I'd love to see some (even contrived) examples of these. Sounds like it could fit into the culture at my current job.

Re: What Working at Stripe Has Been Like

#58

Post by rarecoil »

chapium wrote: post #37
afarrell wrote: post #11

> One of the things I enjoy most about Stripe’s work culture is the notion that “nothing is Not My Job.” I’m very eager to know: If you want to be successful in such a culture, what mental habits/skills can you develop which let you know with confidence where to direct your attention? How did patio11 develop these? ——— EDIT: How do you know that what you are working on is not a distraction?

If everything is your job, how can you be measured by what is your job fairly?

I don't think that's the point of the statement.

Facebook culture makes a similar statement: "Nothing at Facebook is someone else's problem." I don't take it to mean that you are supposed to be the Atlas of the organization, but rather that when you see problems and issues that might arise, you don't ignore them because it's "not my job" or "not my problem" - you embrace it, escalate or forward it to the correct people, and then go back to what else you have to do.

This type of thinking stops issues from being buried when they're noticed by someone, even if it's something outside of what they are judged on in their responsibilities (and performance reviews). A good hypothetical example of this is a crash condition you may trigger as an engineer. You might not quite know what is going on but you have a reproducible testcase of a crash condition in someone else's stack, and saying it's not your job means the bug doesn't get fixed or reported. Had you submitted that crash condition and made it temporarily your problem, you could have indirectly helped patch a deserialization bug that could've led to code execution on that tier with a more malicious testcase (i.e. exploit).

In smaller companies, I think everything technical kind of ends up being your job, so your job becomes what you make of it at that moment. Do what needs to be done to ship the thing.

Re: What Working at Stripe Has Been Like

#60

Post by rarecoil »

JoblessWonder wrote: post #42
toomuchtodo wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not patio11 but if he would be so kind as to allow me to hazard a guess I’d say intellectual curiosity and tenacity. Don’t stop asking why and keep digging. You’ll want to mix in emotional intelligence so when you communicate with stakeholders, you do so in a way that they feel a desire to assist you in your endeavor, perhaps finding ways to align everyone’s incentives for success. I could be entirely wrong though.

I think you are spot on. I think a specific amount of hubris to go along with the intellectual curiosity and tenacity is important. It is the amount of confidence to say, "Hey, I can take this on. I'm not familiar with it directly but I understand enough of the context to help." You do have to be careful to not have too much confidence because then you will alienate your peers/management and be viewed as a know-it-al…

I don't think it's hubris that you need. Hubris often inflates and becomes the problem that you have in the next statement of being a "know it all".

Instead, I think the core of it is perpetuating "beginner's mind" - that is, you approach every problem with the enthusiasm of a beginner, not with conviction that something can or cannot be done. It's not necessarily pride or self-confidence as much as it is a belief that the thing can be done by someone, and it's just the knowledge you don't have that keeps you from accomplishing it.

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