Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

stripe.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 277 posts

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#141

Post by imhoguy »

kevsim wrote: post #65
C4stor wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read that, but the timezone problem doesn't really explain why south america was slashed. Overall it seems a bit strange to explain "we officially have a remote hub" and "remote workers need to be supported by physical hubs".

"There is substantial organizational, legal, and financial infrastructure required to support each new jurisdiction we hire in, so we have to be measured in how quickly we expand." Each country you want to pay salary in comes with legal aspects. Therefore they have to be a bit tactical with where they try to hire people.

As remote guy I see potential for disruption in this area. So far umbrella subsidiaries or agencies and invoice-based contracting does the job, but stuff like IP rights and liability is quite complex. We would need some Stripe-like service for employment matters.

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#142

Post by patrickdavey »

kweinber wrote: post #123
incanus77 wrote: post #110

This is such a smart move. I was one of the first two simul-hire remotes at Mapbox (when the company was ~12 people) and, until I left in 2017, the longest-term remote there at seven years. I've been fully remote for thirteen years. At Mapbox, I unofficially took on the role of internal advocate for remote culture. It wasn't always easy to be remote, but as the company grew, Eric, the CEO, was fond of saying that "ev…

"Often it was lonely, isolating, I felt out of the loop on some decisions, I didn't get some in-jokes and nicknames, I missed the non-holiday parties and happy hours, etc." I am in this boat now. . . and find it really tough. Many others I know feel the same way but it is rarely talked about. How do you get over the social isolation of being remote?

I have been working remotely for the last 3 years. I'm a pretty social creature and after doing it for about 2 weeks I was already feeling pretty lonely!... For me, joining a co working space was excellent, can't recommend highly enough

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#143

Post by Androider »

HN remote workers, does your company pay for your use of a coworking space? Or even fully manage it?

I've noticed that companies I admire greatly like Basecamp, and also in yesterday's Who's Hiring thread, that they list a $200-$300 monthly stipend towards coworking space fees as an employee perk. That doesn't seem quite enough to fully cover a coworking space in NY or SF. I'm tasked with building a remote engineering workforce myself in our business, and was initially thinking that we as the company will be the ones setting up the contracts with WeWorks etc. But perhaps you as an employee would actually prefer to be in control of that?

Are there companies that are fully remote but don't contribute anything towards coworking? If you're in that situation, what do you think of it?

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#144

Post by ellius »

throwaway55554 wrote: post #83
ngngngng wrote: post #61

I've always wanted to switch to fully remote. I worked from home for a couple weeks after my son was born and my current company didn't like it. My productivity was down and they noticed so they informed me I wasn't allowed to work remotely anymore because of it. Obviously it had nothing to do with the fact that they gave me 3 days of parental leave after the birth, so I was trying to help a recovering wife take care…

There are pros and cons. I've been partial remote for 6 years and full remote for nearly 5. I can do whatever I need to do to get into the flow of work; music, no music, lights, no lights, etc. I don't have to conform to what happens at an office. I can start early or work late (my "office" is several time zones away). I can take a personal call w/out feeling guilty. What I cannot do is walk over to a colleague's des…

There are certain jobs that I think could really benefit from pairing, akin to pair programming. I used to do compliance work for a bank, and I think as a whole our reporting defect rate would have plummeted had we worked in pairs. Obviously for some jobs this is cost prohibitive and otherwise impractical, but an ideal working environment for me would be remote and part-time pairing. You get consistent human interaction, information flow across the team, and the benefits of remote work.

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#145

Post by embwbam »

kweinber wrote: post #123
incanus77 wrote: post #110

This is such a smart move. I was one of the first two simul-hire remotes at Mapbox (when the company was ~12 people) and, until I left in 2017, the longest-term remote there at seven years. I've been fully remote for thirteen years. At Mapbox, I unofficially took on the role of internal advocate for remote culture. It wasn't always easy to be remote, but as the company grew, Eric, the CEO, was fond of saying that "ev…

"Often it was lonely, isolating, I felt out of the loop on some decisions, I didn't get some in-jokes and nicknames, I missed the non-holiday parties and happy hours, etc." I am in this boat now. . . and find it really tough. Many others I know feel the same way but it is rarely talked about. How do you get over the social isolation of being remote?

I’ve worked remotely for most of the last 10 years. Don’t buy into the idea that work is your community or social life. That isolation can drive you to go places where people hang out after work (I met most of my friends at the climbing gym), get involved in clubs, etc. work sociality is a weak proxy for real community anyway.

Also, I always work from coffee shops, because I like having humans around.

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#146

Post by ahstilde »

xadhominemx wrote: post #130

Why does Stripe need 5 engineering hubs? I don't understand what Stripe engineers work on all day.

You can explore Stripe's website to get an understanding for their product size and scope: https://stripe.com/ .

Also, I promise you don't understand how much work goes on behind the scenes at payments companies around fraud detection and prevention. Fraud costs account for ~3% of revenues at large financial firms.

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#147

Post by Androider »

BurningFrog wrote: post #125
a9a wrote: post #21

I hope other companies follow Stripe's lead here. Anecdotally, I've never been as happy and productive as I've been the past few years as a remote worker. It seems to me too few companies are taking advantage of the opportunity here. The few challenges I've encountered seem solvable: (1) effective team culture building: can be solved with travel budget & prioritization of good team cultural norms by team leads (2) wh…

> The few challenges I've encountered seem solvable I see a lot of people saying this. I never see anyone saying "We have solved these problems"...

There are plenty of very successful 100% remote companies, including GitLab, Zapier, Automattic (Wordpress) etc. I think it's fair to say they've solved it well enough.

Traditional office space also comes with its own fair share of challenges and problems.

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#148

Post by _jss »

alexhutcheson wrote: post #107

Does anyone have experience working remotely in a engineering manager (not IC) role? Did it work for you? What had to change?

I’ve been at Stripe for 4 years, joined as an IC then shortly transitioned to an EM. Previously was an EM, and remote for 12 years total.

Noticeable differences:

- While I’m remote people tend to default to throwing time on my calendar, which means a conversation sometimes doesn’t happen. We use Slack, so I am highly responsive on Slack to ensure I’m still talking with folks I need to and would rather ping someone unnecessarily and ask about something than miss out on information. Ding words and DMs to offset the barrier to adding calendared time to talk.

- Capturing all “collisions” (we have awesome stairs to encourage this) is a lot different. As a remote, when I’m in the office it’s a bit special and people come up to me. When working in an office, I get less “Hey, what have you been up to?” conversations.

- Timezones are definitely harder in the office. In an office people generally have fixed blocks of time, since commuting has a cost. Being remote (from home) there is no commute cost, so I can split my day up if I need to without working overly long days. I worked with engineers in Europe, so having this flexibility to hop on a call at 6am and then take a break to hang out with my kids before school is super cool.

What doesn’t change? I believe the most effective management practices aim for predictability, and having inclusive behaviors. Also it doesn’t change how you show up to the job. When I’m in meetings, I need to look fully engaged and present, whether remote or in the office. I think this can be harder in a home office, being surrounded by your things vs. an empty conference room.

Happy to talk more about my experiences here or remote in general!

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#149

Post by criveros »

kweinber wrote: post #123
incanus77 wrote: post #110

This is such a smart move. I was one of the first two simul-hire remotes at Mapbox (when the company was ~12 people) and, until I left in 2017, the longest-term remote there at seven years. I've been fully remote for thirteen years. At Mapbox, I unofficially took on the role of internal advocate for remote culture. It wasn't always easy to be remote, but as the company grew, Eric, the CEO, was fond of saying that "ev…

"Often it was lonely, isolating, I felt out of the loop on some decisions, I didn't get some in-jokes and nicknames, I missed the non-holiday parties and happy hours, etc." I am in this boat now. . . and find it really tough. Many others I know feel the same way but it is rarely talked about. How do you get over the social isolation of being remote?

Stay at hostels, go to coworking spaces.

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#150

Post by Androider »

ngngngng wrote: post #61

I've always wanted to switch to fully remote. I worked from home for a couple weeks after my son was born and my current company didn't like it. My productivity was down and they noticed so they informed me I wasn't allowed to work remotely anymore because of it. Obviously it had nothing to do with the fact that they gave me 3 days of parental leave after the birth, so I was trying to help a recovering wife take care…

3 days of parental leave is a travesty. Fuck them, seriously.

Find a company that values you more, and that allows remote (or remote-first). Plenty of companies in the latest Who's Hiring that have fully-remote work-from-anywhere $100K+ positions. Just Do It.

Post reply on HN