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What Working at Stripe Has Been Like

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Re: What Working at Stripe Has Been Like

#161

Post by Angostura »

hnaccy wrote: post #86
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…

Sounds annoying, never liked tooting my own horn.

Don;t think of it as tooting your own horn, think of it as a useful description of something that has been developed, that co-workers could helpfully know about.

Re: What Working at Stripe Has Been Like

#162

Post by Angostura »

jodrellblank wrote: post #128
jklinger410 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. Trying to really educate around this at my workplace. I call it "throwing your hands up." I…

I call it "throwing your hands up." If you run into a problem, or notice that something isn't working, what-have-you, if you throw your hands up instead of working to fix it, or find the person who should fix it, you are on my shit list. My problem with this is that everything is always not working, or barely working, and nobody wants to hear about it. You're going to say " of course I mean important things ", but wh…

> and nobody wants to hear about it

Then the rest of the organisation, including leadership hasn't embraced the approach. You can't do it unless the culture really baked in, or else you will break yourself.

Re: What Working at Stripe Has Been Like

#163

Post by andrewingram »

ascar wrote: post #134
andrewingram wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly that such a recruitment filter would exclude a lot of people with depression or anxiety-related mental illness. To clarify, I hate talking about my accomplishments, it makes me feel deeply anxious and uncomfortable, and will say as much if asked. But I’ll also do it if that’s what’s required of me.

And there are many companies that value humbleness. I love sharing my accomplishments. I know what's socially expected from me, but not sharing feels really bad to me. It feels as all the work I've done and that cool accomplishment don't matter at all. Therefore I mostly share with friends, though most of them lack the necessary tech-knowledge to really understand it. I also love hearing about others accomplishments…

To clarify, I’m not criticising the idea of sharing accomplishments. I’m referring to having to like doing it being a criteria for recruitment.

I was proposing a possible reason as to why the comment I was replying to was receiving downvotes.

Re: What Working at Stripe Has Been Like

#164

Post by ascar »

hnra wrote: post #154
hawkice wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, discussing your work with your coworkers is a pretty reasonable workplace responsibility. What's illegal about asking if someone was comfortable doing it?

Not discussing, talking about. Not work, accomplishments. Not comfortable, liking it. I guess those would be the differences. "Do you like talking about your accomplishments with the rest of your team?" "Are you comfortable discussing your work with the rest of your team?"

But why shouldn't companies be able to hire only employees that like and fit into how the company is run, i.e. culture fit.

Every company is different and attracts different kinds of employees for various reasons.

Anti-discrimination is important, but it shouldn't go too far.

Re: What Working at Stripe Has Been Like

#165

Post by arkh »

blizkreeg wrote: post #143

Patrick, I love Stripe's offering, but I have to pull teeth within my startup to justify why we use Stripe to non-technical people. In fact, when I put on my Product person's hat, I can see everything they tell me clearly. Stripe just does not look or function like a credit card processor. It is nearly impossible for non-engineer folk to grasp - to the point of it not being a viable platform. The almost hermit-like r…

> It's too catered to the devs.

Who love getting an error back when shipping code because some things are possible on Stripe test server but blocked in production.

Re: What Working at Stripe Has Been Like

#166

Post by wink »

cyberferret wrote: post #101
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…

If Stripe's HR department is reading this thread, I think they can pinpoint one crucial interview question that will determine culture fit in their organisation for future hiring - and that is "do you like talking about your accomplishments with the rest of your team?". Seems to be a very polarising thing to be asked to do, judging by the replies on this particular comment. EDIT: Curious about the downvotes? This is…

I think that's not as easy at it sounds (or I am misreading you).

Let's assume you're wary of talking about accomplishments - what reasons could be there?

Bad memories of trying to convey what awesome things your team did and were generally received really badly? Preferring to sit down and ship and not boast about it at all? Sure, never accomplishing anything might also be the case, but in my experience a lot of really good people weren't keen at all to talk about cool stuff they did in any official or formal form - only over beers between a few developers or not at all. I don't think this is necessarily tied to being an introvert.

I didn't downvote you but I think it's a bad idea. Also because the opposite is true. No matter how much they personally contributed, the loudest people will tell you everything their team did.

Re: What Working at Stripe Has Been Like

#167

Post by yitchelle »

pololee wrote: post #148

I was in a small company working on payments team as fullstack engineer. Given the big volume, stripe would be too expensive for us. So we built our own credit card processing service. We integrated with FirstData directly. While I was working on payments, I kept following news about stripe. I love their design and appreciate the deep care they put in their product, even the documentation. I like Patrick and John's i…

Did they give a plausible reason for their rejection? I am just interested if the trend for job rejection reasons is moving towards a more transparent model. In the past and present, it is extremely difficult/frustrating to get the real answers for being rejected.

Re: What Working at Stripe Has Been Like

#168

Post by andrewingram »

ascar wrote: post #164
hnra wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not discussing, talking about. Not work, accomplishments. Not comfortable, liking it. I guess those would be the differences. "Do you like talking about your accomplishments with the rest of your team?" "Are you comfortable discussing your work with the rest of your team?"

But why shouldn't companies be able to hire only employees that like and fit into how the company is run, i.e. culture fit. Every company is different and attracts different kinds of employees for various reasons. Anti-discrimination is important, but it shouldn't go too far.

The key is to make your culture filter not cause people who actually would be a good fit to self-filter. Mental illness is insidious because it can make people who actually would enjoy something if given the right push instead think/assume that they don't want to do it. It affects a large enough percentage of the population that it's something companies need to be thinking about.

One of my friends worked for a company where one of the official values was "100%", and to me this was problematic because different people would understand it to mean different things. Some would assume that it just means that everyone works hard, that it's not a cushy job. Whilst others would interpret it to mean that everyone works crazy hours and is expected to give their life to the business at the expense of other commitments. My friend couldn't recognise that different people would interpret the value differently, so believed it was a perfectly reasonable way to get the wrong kinds of candidates to self-filter.

Re: What Working at Stripe Has Been Like

#169

Post by plausibilities »

afarrell wrote: post #83
plausibilities wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Note that isn’t the only cause of Suppression. In fact, suppression is the default as it requires mere inaction. So another way that suppression can happen is, “oh that seems like it could be a problem. But is it? Who would I ask? Would asking about that be a distraction? {switches back to original task}” Yet another way is, “this error email seems like this is a problem. But I’m new and nobody else is responding to…

Sure, what you are describing I would consider "passive suppression".

I should have been more specific and mentioned "active suppression" to imply a focus on behaviors inclusive of things like pre-emptive sabotage.

Re: What Working at Stripe Has Been Like

#170

Post by pvinis »

cyberferret wrote: post #101
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…

If Stripe's HR department is reading this thread, I think they can pinpoint one crucial interview question that will determine culture fit in their organisation for future hiring - and that is "do you like talking about your accomplishments with the rest of your team?". Seems to be a very polarising thing to be asked to do, judging by the replies on this particular comment. EDIT: Curious about the downvotes? This is…

Why wouldn't you want to share your accomplishments with your team? If you are proud of what you did, you would want to share it! Then the team will be proud too! And you get feedback! And you give motivation to the rest to do like you did! I see no bad side. :)
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