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Building a Developer Cult

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Re: Building a Developer Cult

#21

Post by fallous »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #18
zt wrote: post #5

Look, I know that the idea of being customer focused might seem trite, but I wanted to focus on one thing: it's the little things. "What actually differentiates stripe from the rest of the bunch though? It’s the little things.Stripe obsesses over creating a seamless CX. Small annoyances in applications compound. A user might not churn immediately because you have a bunch of unoptimized functionality or crappy UX, but…

If you work in an organization where this isn't the norm-- do you try and change it, or is it best to move on? Sometimes, it feels difficult knowing I made one corner of the product great when there's glaring issues elsewhere, and my team doesn't have the bandwidth (or jurisdiction) to fix all of it.

If this is a result of poor execution then I'd stay and change it. If instead it's a result of a cultural or company vision that does not embrace focusing on the customer, their problem (not just your opinion of it), and working constantly towards solving the problem then you should bail.

I spent a lot of years in several companies thinking I could correct a bad vision or culture, and unless you're the CEO you can't. Poor execution of a good vision/culture is always correctable, although you should consider what is the root cause of that poor execution... often it's personnel.

Re: Building a Developer Cult

#22

Post by arp242 »

I recently built a Stripe integration, and can't say I'm especially impressed.

Unless I completely missed some aspects, it mostly just seems like an interface to their database. While this is great for some advanced workflows, the vast majority of use cases are all very similar: "create subscription and customer", "change subscription", etc. Common workflows require quite some coding, and there's no support for transactions! IMO a good API design should be more thoughtful than providing an interface to your database.

I don't think the documentation is especially well written, although it's not bad either. What's worse is that the stripe API docs hijacks my CTRL+F key so using my browser search is a massive PITA. This is such a fucking annoying fucking thing that I'll break my "don't say fuck on discussion forums"-rule for this. I fucking hate it. I tried disabling JS but that results in every navigation doing a full page refresh which easily takes over 5 seconds.

Also, browsing the docs isn't super slow or anything, but it's also not quite fast enough to feel "natural".

The checkout docs actually are pretty meh. Much of it is written in "tutorial" form and unclear on details.

As for the site design ... it often takes >5 seconds to load anything after clicking and it easily uses more than 100M of memory per tab. I recently wanted to load a bunch of customers so I opened them in about 10 different and my entire laptop just ground to a halt. I've actually been procrastinating on some Stripe stuff I need to do for the last week because I dislike using the UI so much.

Is it all absolutely terrible? No; it's passable, I guess. But do I share any of the enthusiasm in this article? Not even close.

Re: Building a Developer Cult

#23

Post by steviekong »

preommr wrote: post #11

I love stripe and they really do have some excellent designs, but that one screenshot is pretty awful. The contrast between the text and the rainbow image is so poor that it looks like a mistake rather than an intentional design choice.

It's a bit weird but the point was that it was striking rather than a dull flat design with a lot of dark colors

Re: Building a Developer Cult

#24

Post by unityByFreedom »

A "cult" is an entity with blind followers who would go over the edge like lemmings.

Stripe is not that. They just built a good API, have made it more functional and easier to use over time, and have great developer support (go on IRC any time to chat with them). They accept criticism and fix problems. Cults don't do that.

Re: Building a Developer Cult

#25

Post by stu2b50 »

arp242 wrote: post #22

I recently built a Stripe integration, and can't say I'm especially impressed. Unless I completely missed some aspects, it mostly just seems like an interface to their database. While this is great for some advanced workflows, the vast majority of use cases are all very similar: "create subscription and customer", "change subscription", etc. Common workflows require quite some coding, and there's no support for trans…

I think you're seeing what the benefit is, though: it feels like you're just using an API to some company's DB.

Payment processing is one area is that just a complete nonstarter to homebrew on your own. It's fucking awful. There's no choice. Bank's still require you to transfer them files via ftp to make transactions.

And god forbid the legal, and technical mess when you want to accept foreign currency, or even multiple CC providers.

Re: Building a Developer Cult

#26

Post by ss3000 »

fny wrote: post #20
zt wrote: post #5

Look, I know that the idea of being customer focused might seem trite, but I wanted to focus on one thing: it's the little things. "What actually differentiates stripe from the rest of the bunch though? It’s the little things.Stripe obsesses over creating a seamless CX. Small annoyances in applications compound. A user might not churn immediately because you have a bunch of unoptimized functionality or crappy UX, but…

I'll warn against getting way too focused on this as an early company. Getting something up and running is often waaaaaay more valuable then achieving Stripe level UX from the outset, and then as time progresses you must make a conscious effort to improve. Remember, Stripe has been an app for about a decade. That's a decade's worth of learning what users care about and what details matter. And clearly that's a decade…

That's fair and valid, but shifting your culture from one that's laser-focused on shipping features that work to one that cares about shipping polished features that delights users definitely gets exponentially harder as your company scales in size.

The sweet-spot for making that transition is essentially as soon as you've found product-market fit, no later and no sooner, and missing that sweet spot even a little bit can make the transition very difficult and very costly. But the dilemma is, as most successful founders will likely tell you, we're only good at identifying product-market fit in hindsight, long after it happens (and it may never actually happen).

I've worked at plenty of companies that pay lip service to wanting to ship polished features that delight users while still overwhelmingly shipping features in a very utilitarian, timeline dominated fashion, long past the point where they've demonstrated product market fit.

As with anything in product/engineering/design, it's all about tradeoffs and striking the right balance, and where the right balance stands will always keep shifting under your feet as you make progress...

Re: Building a Developer Cult

#27

Post by unityByFreedom »

fny wrote: post #20
zt wrote: post #5

Look, I know that the idea of being customer focused might seem trite, but I wanted to focus on one thing: it's the little things. "What actually differentiates stripe from the rest of the bunch though? It’s the little things.Stripe obsesses over creating a seamless CX. Small annoyances in applications compound. A user might not churn immediately because you have a bunch of unoptimized functionality or crappy UX, but…

I'll warn against getting way too focused on this as an early company. Getting something up and running is often waaaaaay more valuable then achieving Stripe level UX from the outset, and then as time progresses you must make a conscious effort to improve. Remember, Stripe has been an app for about a decade. That's a decade's worth of learning what users care about and what details matter. And clearly that's a decade…

> A trap I see /a lot/ is that people focus on delighting their users before they even know what delights their users or what their users care about.

That's odd. The point of focusing on users is to discover what users want. If you're not doing then you're not really focused on users.

Re: Building a Developer Cult

#28

Post by smabie »

> Anyone, anywhere can rebel against the system with Stripe.

If you consider working with a system that the government has perfect transparency into and that is deeply integrated into every major financial institution in the world rebellious, I just don't even know what to say.

Re: Building a Developer Cult

#29

Post by jacobsenscott »

arp242 wrote: post #22

I recently built a Stripe integration, and can't say I'm especially impressed. Unless I completely missed some aspects, it mostly just seems like an interface to their database. While this is great for some advanced workflows, the vast majority of use cases are all very similar: "create subscription and customer", "change subscription", etc. Common workflows require quite some coding, and there's no support for trans…

I've been happy with strip. The only other payment processor I've used is PayPal, which is a nightmare.

What do you mean by "there's no support for transactions"?

Re: Building a Developer Cult

#30

Post by bsder »

arp242 wrote: post #22

I recently built a Stripe integration, and can't say I'm especially impressed. Unless I completely missed some aspects, it mostly just seems like an interface to their database. While this is great for some advanced workflows, the vast majority of use cases are all very similar: "create subscription and customer", "change subscription", etc. Common workflows require quite some coding, and there's no support for trans…

It helps that basically the only other option, PayPal, is a complete disaster.

So, even if Stripe is suboptimal, everybody is so much happier to be away from PayPal that they're ecstatic.

It's the equivalent of having a mediocre sandwich when you're starving.

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