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Building Products at Stripe

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Re: Building Products at Stripe

#31
post #18

In my experience, Stripe is full of very smart, interesting people, but most of what's described here is an aspirational view of how the current executives think product should work at Stripe. That's OK, in some sense any view of the "self" is going to be aspirational, but it seems naive/koolaidy to believe that all of the following things can be true at the same time (these are all quotes from the article): - "it’s…

Am I alone here in feeling like that all sounds incredibly exhausting and like a pretty draining place to work, and not-so-subtly seeks to attract workaholics? It's like there's lip-service to things that we as software engineers enjoy about our profession (eg craftsmanship, deep thinking, high-quality work), but it comes across as just throat clearing before hammering in "moving very, very fast". I read that constan…

'Moving very, very fast' for me personally doesn't imply breakneck speed, burning bridges, breaking things, etc. You can still take time to think AND move quickly. Far too many (software) engineers can dwell endlessly on 'The Best Solution' and never get anything done.

That said, I'm pretty sure if you are a tech company, time and timing is of the essence to get your products to market and find out what needs to be changed asap.

Also, there will always be a never-ending backlog. That's why you make decisions and prioritise.

Re: Building Products at Stripe

#32
post #6

In my experience, Stripe is full of very smart, interesting people, but most of what's described here is an aspirational view of how the current executives think product should work at Stripe. That's OK, in some sense any view of the "self" is going to be aspirational, but it seems naive/koolaidy to believe that all of the following things can be true at the same time (these are all quotes from the article): - "it’s…

I think little of zeal outside of close-knit groups. It takes too much effort, it's easily misdirected, and it can be faked. At scale, it incurs a deficit between input and output, willpower and reality, and eventually achieves its close cousin and exact opposite, cynicism. In the world after zeal, trying becomes pretending, enthusiasm becomes opportunism; anything done the cause becomes suspect in the eyes of those…

This is a very nice analysis, highlighting the problem which creates the in-crowd who are zealous and the out-crowd who have become cynics.
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