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Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

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Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#121

Post by patio11 »

hobofan wrote: post #115

I've seen a sign on the street level in Berlin of a Stripe office and heard that 10-20 people are working there with half of them in engineering. I realize that this probably doesn't count as a hub, but how does it fit in with what's explained in the blog post? Has Stripe more non-hub locations?

Stripe has offices in San Francisco, Chicago, New York City, Seattle, Amsterdam, Bangalore, Berlin, Dublin, London, Paris, Melbourne, Singapore, and Tokyo. Engineering hubs have organizational infrastructure that the rest of our offices may not, like dedicated reporting lines for engineers at the hub, engineering teams which exist at the hub and don't exist elsewhere, and similar.

We have engineers who work out of our non-hub offices as well, but there generally isn't intensive, permanent core engineering work being done out of them like there is in the hub offices.

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#122

Post by sithlord »

yitchelle wrote: post #89
SkyPuncher wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you by chance just noticing all of the empty space that was previously filled with non-productive time in an office? I've worked remotely for about 5 years now. Without the water cooler talk, chit chat, and misc distractions, I can easily fit a 8+ hour day into less than 6 hours when I work from home.

> fit a 8+ hour day into less than 6 hours. I suppose that could be one measure of productivity. Another view would be an increase in the number of backlog items closed in the 8hour.

It will be a great accomplishment when we can get the idea that a 'full-day' is 8 hours.

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#123

Post by kweinber »

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?

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#125

Post by BurningFrog »

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"...

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#126

Post by ghaff »

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?

There are really two different things in that quote.

Being out of the loop on decisions is a combination of a company with a mix of remotes and company locations who would benefit from better documentation/communications practices. In practice, it's also something remote workers often just need to be more proactive about.

The latter is really about separating work as social activity from work as work. You arguably lose something in the process but, if you're remote in a different location, you're not going to be at work happy hours, other gatherings, or software league. What you can do is join other local groups of your choosing.

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#127

Post by jamestimmins »

patio11 wrote: post #121
hobofan wrote: post #115

I've seen a sign on the street level in Berlin of a Stripe office and heard that 10-20 people are working there with half of them in engineering. I realize that this probably doesn't count as a hub, but how does it fit in with what's explained in the blog post? Has Stripe more non-hub locations?

Stripe has offices in San Francisco, Chicago, New York City, Seattle, Amsterdam, Bangalore, Berlin, Dublin, London, Paris, Melbourne, Singapore, and Tokyo. Engineering hubs have organizational infrastructure that the rest of our offices may not, like dedicated reporting lines for engineers at the hub, engineering teams which exist at the hub and don't exist elsewhere, and similar. We have engineers who work out of ou…

I've always been curious why Stripe doesn't have LA offices. It seems (superficially, at least) to be ideal: same timezone as HQ, multiple top-tier colleges, a desirable climate, and a large engineering pool to source from.

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#128

Post by incanus77 »

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?

There are two parts to this: work and your local community.

For work, you're not going to do it alone. Someone on the HR side (or just general management, if the company is still quite small) is going to have to be a willing sounding board for remote employee concerns.

On the social side, this might be supporting a policy (as Mapbox did, maybe still does) of flying remotes to the holiday and other big parties, as well as, if able, just having them in every month or two to work alongside the non-remotes and make those connections. When I first started, I'd fly from Portland to DC for a week every 6-8 weeks. It helped that I lived in DC prior for five years (before Mapbox), so it felt like a natural connection.

On the technical and process side, we had a policy of things not existing (or not existing properly) unless they were in written form. This included decisions, context, back-and-forth reasoning, announcements, etc. We used GitHub for non-code "tickets" this way, almost like an internal blog and topic-focused discussion forum. This broke down in later years, but even to the scale of dozens of people was a great way to make sure that being 3,000 miles away and three hours "behind" wasn't as isolating.

For the local community part, go to meetups. Organize a weekly/biweekly social gathering with likeminded friends or peers. Work in coffee shops or other places out of the house. I found that I went stir crazy when I first started remote, because I wouldn't leave the house and needed some human contact. Placing all of that expectation on your employer and not on yourself is unreasonable. It takes effort.

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