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What Working at Stripe Has Been Like

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Re: What Working at Stripe Has Been Like

#71

Post by itronitron »

plausibilities wrote: post #64
rarecoil wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 peop…

>you embrace it, escalate or forward it to the correct people This here is key. There are plenty of seemingly-intelligent individuals out there who refuse to acknowledge gaps in their knowledge. They instead favor suppression and/or deflection over escalation because their own fragile egos could not handle the fact. Full ownership mentality tends to weed these people out.

I don't know about weeding them out, usually the only people that can afford to have fragile egos have power in the organization.

Re: What Working at Stripe Has Been Like

#72

Post by ultrasaurus »

foldr wrote: post #65
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…

Is this optional? I would personally have no interest in writing such emails - it's just more work.

I can't speak to Stripe, but I expect that this is something that Engineers CAN do, but Product Managers MUST do. Letting the rest of the org know what's going on is a big part of the challenge in scaling a company.

Re: What Working at Stripe Has Been Like

#73

Post by foldr »

ultrasaurus wrote: post #72
foldr wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this optional? I would personally have no interest in writing such emails - it's just more work.

I can't speak to Stripe, but I expect that this is something that Engineers CAN do, but Product Managers MUST do. Letting the rest of the org know what's going on is a big part of the challenge in scaling a company.

It doesn't seem like these emails are merely notifications of what's going on (which obviously no-one could object to).

Re: What Working at Stripe Has Been Like

#74

Post by spudlyo »

foldr wrote: post #65
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…

Is this optional? I would personally have no interest in writing such emails - it's just more work.

It was optional, but it was definitely encouraged. A manager a level above my manager would rub his hands together and say things like "really looking forward to reading that shipped email!" whenever I told him about what I was working on.

They also made it fun. One manager conspiratorially told me were two schools of thought around what made a great shipped email; copious footnotes or funny gifs, and jokingly told me to make sure I had one or the other or even better both.

Stripes love their "footnotes" though, which are essentially links to things. Even though everyone had full HTML email, they were almost always formatted in the style of Hacker News[0] comment links. The people at the top can definitely set the communications tone for the rest of the company.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com

Re: What Working at Stripe Has Been Like

#75

Post by ztratar »

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…

As a former founder who now works at Stripe...

I am glad to see we are now explicitly mentioning the aspects of Stripe culture that make it founder friendly.

- Huge transparency - Management optimizes for autonomy & distributed decision-making - Upwards review processes > downwards decision-making - Level obfuscation - Shipping culture - People who are of the quality you'd normally only find by hiring them yourself (and frequently better)

My 3rd week at Stripe (around 7 months ago) Patrick just sat down next to me at lunch, knew my name, and started talking about what my team was working on in great detail. Asked me many direct, important questions and really listened.

As a former CEO of a VC-backed company, I knew he was 100% on his game -- and around you at work you can see that pretty much everyone trusts the execs to be insanely competent, because they are. My only wish is that they don't take as many solo plane rides, haha. :)

Re: What Working at Stripe Has Been Like

#76

Post by foldr »

spudlyo wrote: post #74
foldr wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this optional? I would personally have no interest in writing such emails - it's just more work.

It was optional, but it was definitely encouraged. A manager a level above my manager would rub his hands together and say things like "really looking forward to reading that shipped email!" whenever I told him about what I was working on. They also made it fun. One manager conspiratorially told me were two schools of thought around what made a great shipped email; copious footnotes or funny gifs, and jokingly told m…

> A manager a level above my manager would rub his hands together and say things like "really looking forward to reading that shipped email!" whenever I told him about what I was working on.

That doesn't sound optional at all.

From my point of view, making things fun isn't fun. Watching a comedy routine is fun. Writing one isn't.

Re: What Working at Stripe Has Been Like

#77

Post by LandR »

foldr wrote: post #65
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…

Is this optional? I would personally have no interest in writing such emails - it's just more work.

Yeah, same here. Would have no Interest in writing those emails and setup a filter to send them to bin on receipt too.

I worked for a company that did cards, like thank you cards, or well done cards that you could give a colleague and these would get handed out each month to the recipients. It made me cringe. Can't believe people are so needy.

Re: What Working at Stripe Has Been Like

#78

Post by pbhjpbhj »

lstamour wrote: post #30
travisjungroth wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon doesn't have a river in their logo.

Well actually... https://www.freelogodesign.org/blog/2018/09/10/the-amazon-lo...

That article doesn't mention the "smile" is an arrow that goes "from A to Z".

I've only just noticed it, I can't imagine it's not intentional though. Mind you I don't spend long looking at logos unless I'm working on them.

Re: What Working at Stripe Has Been Like

#79

Post by amenod »

foldr wrote: post #76
spudlyo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was optional, but it was definitely encouraged. A manager a level above my manager would rub his hands together and say things like "really looking forward to reading that shipped email!" whenever I told him about what I was working on. They also made it fun. One manager conspiratorially told me were two schools of thought around what made a great shipped email; copious footnotes or funny gifs, and jokingly told m…

> A manager a level above my manager would rub his hands together and say things like "really looking forward to reading that shipped email!" whenever I told him about what I was working on. That doesn't sound optional at all. From my point of view, making things fun isn't fun. Watching a comedy routine is fun. Writing one isn't.

I agree with you - that said, it all depends on the situation. Good manager will present the same thing as almost mandatory to someone who is more extroverted, and as completely optional and not a big deal to someone who is not. Both of them will feel appreciated and will feel comfortable in the company, which is actually the whole idea. Some people need this kind of exposure, some don't. We just need to appreciate the fact that we are not all the same, and that we all need to have our own way to deal with the socializing rituals.

Re: What Working at Stripe Has Been Like

#80

Post by spudlyo »

foldr wrote: post #73
ultrasaurus wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak to Stripe, but I expect that this is something that Engineers CAN do, but Product Managers MUST do. Letting the rest of the org know what's going on is a big part of the challenge in scaling a company.

It doesn't seem like these emails are merely notifications of what's going on (which obviously no-one could object to).

There were much drier "snippets" style communication for just talking about what's going on. I'd say that folks who abhor shameless self promotion typically didn't write much and instead worked with with the annoying extraverts on their team and mostly focused on making sure that the technical details were accurate. These things were often team efforts.
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