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My Time Working at Stripe

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Re: My Time Working at Stripe

#21

Post by shubhamjain »

Every company I have worked at I have hit this point of mental health collapse, just like OP. At this point, I can try everything—"Treating it just as a job", "finding happiness elsewhere", "just get shit done"—but nothing works. For a long while, I only found myself to blame. I felt idiotic for not having the energy to work like everyone else does.

Past one and a half years, have been years of self-discovery. I have been hacking on projects full-time (hopefully, I will make sustainable money soon). And it's been so fun, and relieving, and joyful to direct your creative energy to projects, with no authority to answer to. It's not without difficult times though. Sometimes, I feel blocked to the point of abandoning months of hard work, but I am slowly learning how to avoid those situations.

Honestly, everything I was advised was a lie (or at least, didn't work for me). I like being able to shape things, and use my creative energy to do useful things. Politics, and bureaucratic processes, drain my energy to an extent that I simply can't function. And no matter how hard I try, I can't ignore it with the mindset of "it's just a job." I can't find happiness in "being promoted" or whatever rating I am given.

I just want to ship good software. When I am driven, I will forget about everything and just dive in to solve the problem. Sadly though, it's not an easy ask in a modern-day corporate environment.

So, I would say what you're experiencing is normal in many ways. Don't kill yourself over it. If you have a list of fun projects, attempt them. For many of us, creative energy is precious, and needs to be directed well to keep ourselves sane.

Re: My Time Working at Stripe

#22

Post by lucianbr »

arcticbull wrote: post #6

Big tech is very much a function of your team and manager. Any job is a function first of your manager, second of your team, third of your ability and fourth of your project. I always select teams in that way, within a company and outside, and this has been incredibly helpful. Stripe is a great place to work in some ways but judging from the writeup they had a ton of context switching preventing their productivity an…

> On the plus side big tech knows interviews are often a function of luck

How does this not mean "we hire at random"? It's especially egregious after explaining all the reasons you can't give a candidate extra time, because you're so precise and consistent. Which is it? Consistency and luck are opposites.

Re: My Time Working at Stripe

#23

Post by nicbou »

cobertos wrote: post #16
olivermuty wrote: post #9

What you are experiencing is the symptom of working in a large company where no matter how well you perform, you can not significantly move the needle yourself. Coupled with the fact that, as you yourself pointed out, there is a literal endless amount of work to do, forever. This is also due to the nature of the company being so big. All companies always has work to do, and no one is ever «done», but in a giga-enterp…

> motivated more by my work being MEANINGFUL Do you have any guiding star for what work gives you meaning? I thought getting closer to the users/customers would help me. After all, software is for humans. But I found the social aspects of that, handling bugs, setting expectations for features, was tiresome and not meaningful. The only happiness I did find was when I saw my client/users flourish without me with the so…

I would say that anything that is opposed to Marx’s concept of alienation would fit the bill. Work should feel impactful and your decisions should lead to some tangible output.

It helps to be close to your users, or to build software that has a clear purpose. It’s good to work on a small team where your input has a clear influence on the quality pf the product.

Re: My Time Working at Stripe

#24

Post by sharkweek »

foota wrote: post #14
keiferski wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this is why I sometimes miss the jobs I had in my early 20s, working at bakeries/ice cream shops/etc. Obviously the pay wasn’t great and the working conditions subpar, but there is a genuine psychological benefit to making a simple thing, giving it to people, then finishing work at the end of the day and being done , without an ongoing to-do list, sprints, daily meetings, and all the other requirements of contem…

I couldn't find it after searching, but I remember reading about a company where they just relaxed and got done what they got done. To me, this would be the ideal workplace.

With any form of investor expecting a return I dunno how possible this is, but I’ve worked for one family owned business (non-tech industry but had a small tech team) and it was super relaxed like you mention.

No investors, no board of directors, just a woman and her son who owned the business. They wanted to grow it but were very reasonable about it.

That being said the salary was probably 20-30% below market. At the time I wanted to make more money so I chased that for a while instead.

Re: My Time Working at Stripe

#25

Post by downWidOutaFite »

lucianbr wrote: post #22
arcticbull wrote: post #6

Big tech is very much a function of your team and manager. Any job is a function first of your manager, second of your team, third of your ability and fourth of your project. I always select teams in that way, within a company and outside, and this has been incredibly helpful. Stripe is a great place to work in some ways but judging from the writeup they had a ton of context switching preventing their productivity an…

> On the plus side big tech knows interviews are often a function of luck How does this not mean "we hire at random"? It's especially egregious after explaining all the reasons you can't give a candidate extra time, because you're so precise and consistent. Which is it? Consistency and luck are opposites.

It's not quite random, the goal is to bias the errors towards false negatives (bad rejection) than false positives because bad hires are so expensive to recover from.

Re: My Time Working at Stripe

#26

Post by pixelatedindex »

lucianbr wrote: post #22
arcticbull wrote: post #6

Big tech is very much a function of your team and manager. Any job is a function first of your manager, second of your team, third of your ability and fourth of your project. I always select teams in that way, within a company and outside, and this has been incredibly helpful. Stripe is a great place to work in some ways but judging from the writeup they had a ton of context switching preventing their productivity an…

> On the plus side big tech knows interviews are often a function of luck How does this not mean "we hire at random"? It's especially egregious after explaining all the reasons you can't give a candidate extra time, because you're so precise and consistent. Which is it? Consistency and luck are opposites.

I don’t know if it’s “we hire at random” more so “we hire based on intelligent guesses/calculated risk”. It’s not completely random because there’s a resume and a rigorous process.

Re: My Time Working at Stripe

#27

Post by anal_reactor »

cobertos wrote: post #16
olivermuty wrote: post #9

What you are experiencing is the symptom of working in a large company where no matter how well you perform, you can not significantly move the needle yourself. Coupled with the fact that, as you yourself pointed out, there is a literal endless amount of work to do, forever. This is also due to the nature of the company being so big. All companies always has work to do, and no one is ever «done», but in a giga-enterp…

> motivated more by my work being MEANINGFUL Do you have any guiding star for what work gives you meaning? I thought getting closer to the users/customers would help me. After all, software is for humans. But I found the social aspects of that, handling bugs, setting expectations for features, was tiresome and not meaningful. The only happiness I did find was when I saw my client/users flourish without me with the so…

Work satisfaction is a meme. Yes, there are people satisfied with their work, but realistically, this is not going to happen to you. Stop giving a fuck about your work, slack off as much as possible, and look for coworkers with whom you can build real human connection, instead of corporate NPCs.

Re: My Time Working at Stripe

#28

Post by pixelatedindex »

hu3 wrote: post #3

> Still more time passed and then came the depression. I found myself increasingly demotivated in all aspects of my life. I could hardly even muster the energy to play video games (my usual haunt). Some evenings I would literally sit and stare at a wall. My sleep went to shit. I'm sorry for that. I went through something similar and I managed to bounce back up but it took longer than I anticipated. Years, not months.…

> Be gentle with yourself and forgive yourself.

This is so hard for people like me who have high standards and are hard on themselves. I always wanted to buy a home - I graduated at the right time but I never got a job at big tech. When I did get my full time job it paid a good chunk below market, provided no equity and now post-pandemic whatever was at my fingertips is at least an arms length away.

I have not done poorly for myself but I continue to rent in my mid 30s whereas my buddies at FAANG are much farther ahead in life. I was/am not kind to my past self in the current phase - constant thoughts of should have done this, should have known that, etc.

With the current economy I feel like another chance might not come for another 5 years at the minimum, so I’m trying to learn my lesson and go to therapy, and accept it gracefully. I can’t even type “life isn’t a race and I shouldn’t compare myself” without putting it in quotes.

Point is, don’t be like me. Yes it’s good to be driven and ambitious, but unmoderated it can be destructive.

Re: My Time Working at Stripe

#30

Post by fnordpiglet »

These symptoms are a classic sign of burn out. One thing I notice in your writing is you’re very tied up in things having meaning and mattering in some specific way. This itself can lead to burnout because if everything must matter you must be emotionally invested in everything. But you can care without it mattering to you. You can do a good job without being totally invested in everything about it. You can love what you do without it having significance in every detail.

In a complex job with a fast pace, a fair amount of tech debt around every edge, a relentless pace of innovation happening, and - yes - growth, there’s too much to be invested in everything. It doesn’t have to matter that much. The parts you really care about, the craft and quality of your work, your relationships, mentoring and growing the people around you, seeing things get better one piece at a time, and a few things - they can matter. But everything can’t. And even those you have to at some very deep level realize don’t matter really.

Stripe doesn’t really exist in this world. It’s a shared fiction to help frame the interactions between you and a few people you actually interact with in a day. The real truth is the only thing that happens in your days is you type on a computer and talk to a few people. It actually doesn’t matter in any meaningful way what you typed or some higher purpose around humbling honesty or exothermic curiosity or PMEs or whatever stories we tell ourselves to create some sort of reality out of the fiction. The only important things you really do is how you shape the lives of the people you interact with, and how you shape your own life.

Burnout is hard. Adopt a daily meditation practice. Let your mind heal by letting go of meaning and practice enjoying the moment you’re in with whomever you’re with, but most especially yourself. The joy will come back faster the faster you let go of things needing to matter or have deeper meaning, especially when those things are a fiction like a company or a career or any of the other small and big lies we’ve been told and we reinforce to ourselves daily. I know I’ve been there man, and I know exactly - exactly - the sensations and experiences you describe. It gets better, but I think once you get there it never totally goes away and it’s easier to slip back.

FWIW I don’t think burnout is the same as depression. I’ve felt both and burnout is different. It’s that loss of ability to engage - which overlaps with depression - but usually doesn’t come with the thoughts of hopeless despair and desire for life to be over. It’s just more of a deadness and inability to initiate what you think you should want to do but can’t, and it pervasively impacts everything.

It gets better.

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