Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote • Hacker News Board

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#21

Post by a9a » Thu, May 02, 2019, 2:09 PM UTC

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) whole team collaborative brainstorming (particularly when facing a "fire drill"-type time-constrained challenge): more challenging to solve from what I've seen, but might be solved by some combination of better tech and better work practices

I'm interested to hear how Stripe addresses these and which challenges they find.

One question at a higher level: what are the immigration law impacts here? Does Stripe need to get H1Bs for internationally located workers? I hope not: effective remote work is fantastic step toward bringing labor mobility more in line with capital mobility, with potentially positive effects on income, taxation, and social policies for people around the world.

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#22

Post by jlaurend » Thu, May 02, 2019, 2:12 PM UTC

Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #2

> While we did not initially plan to make hiring remotes a huge part of our engineering efforts, our remote employees have outperformed all expectations. I wonder what metrics were used. Would be interesting to know whether the main motivator was simply raw performance, or performance/cost.

Probably both, I'd imagine. Regarding cost, Stripe was pretty outspokenly against Prop C in SF last year (which passed, to their dismay). The result is an added tax on revenue which hits Stripe hard since they have a high volume, low margin business. Not to mention CA is already a very expensive place to run a company.

With rising costs in SF, they likely had to explore viable long-term solutions. They can start moving more jobs to their other offices, open new secondary offices, or expand their remote presence. With remote, they're able to keep SF as the HQ while lowering costs. It's also popular among devs, so it'll keep their brand image good amongst their target demo and among their current employee base.

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#23

Post by jon-wood » Thu, May 02, 2019, 2:12 PM UTC

mahesh_rm wrote: post #4

..Remote (North America Only)..

They clearly state in the article that this is because they aren't currently set up as well to accommodate remote people across disparate time zones, but are looking to resolve that.

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#24

Post by sandGorgon » Thu, May 02, 2019, 2:14 PM UTC

Im wondering what learnings has Stripe figured out that makes their remote workers as productive as their in-office employees.

Do they use things like OKR, slack,etc ? What works and what doesn't - is there a cognitive disconnect between remote teams and people who work in office .

Is there an expectation of minimum screen time expected from remote employees?

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#25

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 02, 2019, 2:18 PM UTC

C4stor wrote: post #20

mahesh_rm wrote: post #4

..Remote (North America Only)..

I'm having a hard time reconciling "They see how people purchase food differently in bodegas, konbini, and darshinis. They know why it is important to engineer robustness in the face of slow, unreliable internet connections. They have worked in and run businesses that don’t have access to global payments infrastructure." with this precision. What's the point of mentioning typical south american or asian shops names a…

[deleted]

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#26

Post by drb91 » Thu, May 02, 2019, 2:19 PM UTC

sandGorgon wrote: post #24

Im wondering what learnings has Stripe figured out that makes their remote workers as productive as their in-office employees. Do they use things like OKR, slack,etc ? What works and what doesn't - is there a cognitive disconnect between remote teams and people who work in office . Is there an expectation of minimum screen time expected from remote employees?

Why would you expect remote to be less efficient? Working in an open office is incredibly distracting—of course there’s productivity gains from going remote.

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#27

Post by domlebo70 » Thu, May 02, 2019, 2:20 PM UTC

drb91 wrote: post #26

sandGorgon wrote: post #24

Im wondering what learnings has Stripe figured out that makes their remote workers as productive as their in-office employees. Do they use things like OKR, slack,etc ? What works and what doesn't - is there a cognitive disconnect between remote teams and people who work in office . Is there an expectation of minimum screen time expected from remote employees?

Why would you expect remote to be less efficient? Working in an open office is incredibly distracting—of course there’s productivity gains from going remote.

I am full time remote for past 6mo. Never been less productive in my career. I'm looking to switch back to onsite as soon as I can.

Edit: I'm not saying remote is bad - just that in my experience I'm definitely less productive.

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#28

Post by pault » Thu, May 02, 2019, 2:21 PM UTC

jlaurend wrote: post #22

Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #2

> While we did not initially plan to make hiring remotes a huge part of our engineering efforts, our remote employees have outperformed all expectations. I wonder what metrics were used. Would be interesting to know whether the main motivator was simply raw performance, or performance/cost.

Probably both, I'd imagine. Regarding cost, Stripe was pretty outspokenly against Prop C in SF last year (which passed, to their dismay). The result is an added tax on revenue which hits Stripe hard since they have a high volume, low margin business. Not to mention CA is already a very expensive place to run a company. With rising costs in SF, they likely had to explore viable long-term solutions. They can start movi…

Are they not in Austin? I don't see it on the jobs page. Austin is the perfect combination of low COL and available talent in my opinion.

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#29

Post by zrail » Thu, May 02, 2019, 2:22 PM UTC

domlebo70 wrote: post #27

drb91 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you expect remote to be less efficient? Working in an open office is incredibly distracting—of course there’s productivity gains from going remote.

I am full time remote for past 6mo. Never been less productive in my career. I'm looking to switch back to onsite as soon as I can. Edit: I'm not saying remote is bad - just that in my experience I'm definitely less productive.

It’s not for everyone. I’ve been remote for the past 6 years and love it, but it definitely had a learning curve. Friends of mine have tried it and went back to the office.

One thing that has really helped me I’d having a non-work group of online friends who also all work remote. We can commiserate and trade tips.

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#30

Post by ConcernedCoder » Thu, May 02, 2019, 2:22 PM UTC

sandGorgon wrote: post #24

Im wondering what learnings has Stripe figured out that makes their remote workers as productive as their in-office employees. Do they use things like OKR, slack,etc ? What works and what doesn't - is there a cognitive disconnect between remote teams and people who work in office . Is there an expectation of minimum screen time expected from remote employees?

..."as productive"... lol