My Time Working at Stripe

"Being on-call 24/7 helps me feel like I'm a part of something, fulfilling a deep want for belonging that being kicked off the Girl Scout troop created in me."

"I've always lacked a father figure. When you told me to spend less time browsing HackerNews and more time on Jira, I felt like I was part of a real family."

I think this is a ham fisted attempt at trying to solve one of the most isolating and painful issues of modern day work environments: the complete lack of any friendship or camaraderie whatsoever.

I was not born in the 1980’s but just reading stories of how people worked then, makes me feel that there was a level of trust and friendship somehow that is completely lacking in a modern job. It is a painful life when you cannot be friends with the folks you spend 40+ hours a week your entire life. I don’t know why or how it has gotten to be this way. Modern pop psychology recommends you to be vulnerable and open, but that’s definitely wrong, maybe even opposite of what you should do, I was never vulnerable with my college friends, but we did have kickass time in college and we were friends. I would much rather that just have continued into my professional life, but instead we get a sterilized environment, that we just live through trying to find meaning in our work, to make the passing of 40+ hours more pleasant.

It's corporate America, so I'm going to be unceremoniously fired eventually anyway, but in the meantime I might as well enjoy myself, impress my coworkers, snag a promotion or two, and get a "made a cool new thing increasing profits $XX million/yr" line item on my resume.

> start your own business

Probably eventually, but starting a business is very different from being at a place big enough that I can profit my salary many times over just from faster code. If I start one, I'll write fast code there too, but "fast" isn't a business idea by itself, and I don't see anything wrong with doing a good job for whoever happens to be writing my paycheck.

I'm almost certain this is talked about in most managerial training curriculums.

This manager's tactic sounds like a tip from a book they read. Creating a safe space for teammates to feel comfortable enough to be vulnerable is ver hard, but asking them to be a smidge more vulnerable than last time is inauthentic and potentially dangerous in the hands of management with ulterior motives.

- secret slack room to help me overcome my depression (wasn't invited of course, I just spotted it several times while looking at my colleagues' screens)

- lowest paid member in the team, while also being one of if not the most productive. 12x: verified. 30x: speculated if I had control over the architecture.

- 70h/week, no vacations, for 3 years. No paid overtime of any form.

- Double bind situation where I was used as a punching ball between the CTO and the #2 employee.

- Excluded from secret negotiations to obtain a raise.

You know what I did ? I quitted, cold turkey. That's when the CEO started to hate on me, feeling betrayed. The #2 left shortly after confiding he wanted to punch the CTO in the face. After realizing hiring someone to replace me wasn't cutting it, they distributed overtime to everybody on the team. Result: unionization. One year after my departure I received a call from the COO telling me he was willing to hire me back at the condition I would behave (since I was thrown at every hot issue, semantic propagation tied in their mind the idea I was also problematic). He was let go shortly after and replaced by a manager from the holding company (if you know what I mean). I haven't worked in 6-7 years. Most colleagues who left have had a similar empty period.