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My Time Working at Stripe

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Re: My Time Working at Stripe

#341

Post by kelnos »

_heimdall wrote: post #326

The common sentiment here that the manager's "10% vulnerable" exercise was inappropriate or even abusive is a little surprising to me.Maybe I'm just showing my age a bit, but my immediate reaction would have just been that this is a stupid team building exercise (whether accurate or not, that's just how I'd see it).Assuming I generally like my boss I wouldn't be a jerk about it, but I wouldn't be interested in partic…

I think "abusive" is a bit hyperbolic, but I do think it was inappropriate. If the manager was asking them to be a little more vulnerable about a professional situation they went through, perhaps that would be ok. But it's completely inappropriate to expect people to share deeply personal stories during a work meeting.

And the power imbalance compounds the problem. Good on you for feeling comfortable and confident enough in yourself and your position that you'd be fine telling the boss that you're not interested in participating. I think most people wouldn't be able to do that, and some would feel pressured to participate ("because the boss asked") even if they were uncomfortable doing so, even if it's presented as "if you're willing to..."

I wouldn't be comfortable with that kind of sharing in a work setting either, but my approach would probably be to share a "vulnerable" professional situation, or, if I wasn't even feeling up for that, to just share a situation that I was fully comfortable talking about.

And being a teammate I'd also be uncomfortable if someone I didn't know on a close personal basis started talking about how their marriage almost fell apart during a team meeting. This stuff isn't any of my business, and I'm not at work for this!

(Re: your "showing your age" comment, FWIW, I'm in my 40s; not sure if that's old or young by your standards when it comes to this sort of thing.)

Re: My Time Working at Stripe

#342

Post by kelnos »

shubhamjain wrote: post #21

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…

> 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.

Sure, because that's too late. Once you've already collapsed, pretty much the only thing that's going to fix it is quitting and taking a break, possibly with some therapy.

You need to "treat it as just a job" from your very first day there. You need to "find happiness elsewhere" every single day of your life, not just when you're feeling burned out.

Regardless, I'm glad you've now found a path that's working for you!

Re: My Time Working at Stripe

#343

Post by _heimdall »

kelnos wrote: post #341
_heimdall wrote: post #326

The common sentiment here that the manager's "10% vulnerable" exercise was inappropriate or even abusive is a little surprising to me.Maybe I'm just showing my age a bit, but my immediate reaction would have just been that this is a stupid team building exercise (whether accurate or not, that's just how I'd see it).Assuming I generally like my boss I wouldn't be a jerk about it, but I wouldn't be interested in partic…

I think "abusive" is a bit hyperbolic, but I do think it was inappropriate. If the manager was asking them to be a little more vulnerable about a professional situation they went through, perhaps that would be ok. But it's completely inappropriate to expect people to share deeply personal stories during a work meeting. And the power imbalance compounds the problem. Good on you for feeling comfortable and confident en…

Thanks for the comment here, I'm genuinely curious how I may be seeing it so starkly different from many comments here.

> During one of his early meetings at a team onsite he asked the team, “for this meeting I’d like us to try and introduce ourselves a little differently. If you’re comfortable, I’d like us to try and be 10% more vulnerable than we normally would in a work setting.”

I had to go back and double check the original post here to make sure I remembered it right. This may actually be part of where I read it differently, if I heard a manager say this in a meeting I would have still assumed it was to be more vulnerable in a work context rather than breeching the wall between work and personal life. Maybe I would share a code review that made me feel uncomfortable, not a personal trauma in my life.

For better or worse I do tend to have a habit of speaking my mind, hopefully in a kind way that makes it clear I'm being genuine. I'd speak up in this kind of situation in part hoping that it makes others less likely to speak up feel more comfortable or willing to then speak up.

> Re: your "showing your age" comment, FWIW, I'm in my 40s; not sure if that's old or young by your standards when it comes to this sort of thing

It may not be a generational thing at all. I'm not far behind you, in my late 30s, and my initial reaction could very well have been the bad (and timeless) trope of "kids these days just don't ..."

Re: My Time Working at Stripe

#344

Post by onetokeoverthe »

snapcaster wrote: post #322
onetokeoverthe wrote: post #164

No wonder I cannot find an easy to use payment processor.

in my experience stripe's software is great, and their documentation is top notch. What is your problem with the product?

I￶t's not a personal "me or your" problem.

It's "macro, structural".

Prohibited Businesses￶:

By registering for Stripe, you are confirming that you will not use the Service to accept payments in connection with the following businesses, business activities or business practices: (1) door-to-door sales, (2) offering substantial rebates or special incentives to the Cardholder subsequent to the original purchase, (3) negative response marketing, (4) engaging in deceptive marketing practices, (5) sharing Cardholder's data with another merchant for payment of up-sell or cross-sell product or service, (6) evading Card Network's chargeback monitoring programs, (7) engaging in any form of licensed or unlicensed aggregation or factoring, (8) airlines, (9) age verification, (10) age restricted products or services, (11) bail bonds, (12) bankruptcy lawyers, (13) bidding fee auctions, (14) collection agencies, (15) chain letters, (16) check cashing, wire transfers or money orders, (17) counterfeit goods, (18) currency exchanges or dealers, (19) embassies, foreign consulates or other foreign governments, (20) firms selling business opportunities, investment opportunities, mortgage consulting or reduction, credit counseling, repair or protection or real estate purchases with no money down, (21) credit card and identity theft protection, (22) cruise lines, (23) essay mills, (24) flea markets, (25) drug paraphernalia, (26) extended warranties, (27) fortune tellers, (28) ?get rich quick? schemes; (28) gambling (including but not limited to lotteries, Internet gaming, contests, sweepstakes, or offering of prizes as an inducement to purchase goods or services), (29) sports forecasting or odds making, (30) illegal products or services, (31) mail-order brides, (32) marijuana dispensaries and related businesses, (33) money transmitters or money service businesses, (34) multi-level marketing or pyramid schemes, (35) online or other non-face-to-face pharmacies or pharmacy referral services, (36) prepaid phone cards, phone services or cell phones, (37) pseudo pharmaceuticals, (38) quasi-cash or stored value, (39) securities brokers, (40) sexually-oriented or pornographic products or services, (41) shipping or forwarding brokers, (42) substances designed to mimic illegal drugs, (43) telemarketing, (44) telecommunications equipment and telephone sales, (45) timeshares, (46) travel agencies or travel clubs, (47) online or other non-face-to-face tobacco or e-cigarette sales, (48) weapons and munitions (49) virtual currency that can be monetized, re-sold or converted to physical or digital goods or services or otherwise exit the virtual world, (50) personal computer technical support, (51) selling video game or virtual world credits (unless you are the operator of the video game or virtual world), (52) selling social media activity, such as Twitter followers, Facebook likes or Youtube views, (53) human hair, fake hair or hair-extensions, (54) any product or service that infringes upon the copyright, trademark or trade secrets of any third party, or (55) any product, service or activity that is deceptive, unfair, predatory or prohibited by one or more Card Networks.

No hair extensions?!?

Re: My Time Working at Stripe

#345

Post by paulryanrogers »

ValentinA23 wrote: post #334
a123b456c wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean no harm, but I want to caution that you may have just over-shared in public again. I wish you well.

Why do you think it could be problematic ?

Future employers may consider your HN history before they hire you, or even fire you if they discovered criticism of past employers.

Re: My Time Working at Stripe

#346

Post by arcticbull »

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 randomness it’s a bias towards consistency and avoiding false positives at the expense of false negatives. There are more qualified candidates than roles, generally speaking. If that changes then I suspect process will change too, as the cost of a false negative will become higher.

Re: My Time Working at Stripe

#347

Post by wavemode »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #280
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…

I work at a much larger company than Stripe and I’ve definitely “moved the needle” myself. It’s all about finding high leverage projects to work on.

"Just find high-leverage projects to work on" is a truism. Of course everyone would love to work on high-leverage projects - finding them is precisely the challenge that we're discussing.

Re: My Time Working at Stripe

#348

Post by tdeck »

d0gsg0w00f wrote: post #266
DeathArrow wrote: post #40

I think the author had unrealistic expectations from working at a large company. He expected doing something meaningful that will change the world. He expected to be applauded like a hero for his efforts. But things don't work like that. If you work your ass out, don't expect more than a pat on the back. Managers won't care about your efforts, your mental state or your sleepless nights. They care about looking good i…

My big company strategy is to troll internal chats/forums for things that seem like interesting problems. Do something to fix them or make them suck a little less. Always be building solid, interesting things and make sure that if someone, for some reason finds them, that they would say "wow, this is cool, who made this?" Then I casually share links to those things in the right context. If I get a 10% hit rate then I…

This reminds me of a side project that got me multiple peer bonuses from strangers at Google. At some point the company decided to switch software for the performance eval system, and decided that everyone would have to copy their past review manually, piece by piece, into all the form fields of the new tool. In the FAQ they said that people asked if they could do this automatically and it wasn't practical to automate this process.

So I took a few hours one day and made a Chrome extension that did it for you. Wasn't hard to write. Saved people maybe 5 minutes. Some folks appreciated that so much they spent the 5 minutes nominating me for a peer bonus! I never really capitalized on that in any lasting way though.

Re: My Time Working at Stripe

#349

Post by astrange »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #286
Aeolun wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this is true, I find myself depressed by the idea of exchanging coding for herding everyone in the right direction. I’ve been trying to make that switch as it’s the only career prospect I have, but…

Many companies have parallel IC tracks. And even though higher level ICs do need to “herd” more you’re still doing a fair amount of technical work (maybe at least until director equivalent).

The director equivalents I know ("distinguished engineeer") still do plenty of individual work if they want to; it's simply expected that they know how to do things in a way that has the same leverage as a director. And yes, that can include temporarily recruiting people to do work outside their team.

Re: My Time Working at Stripe

#350

Post by charlie0 »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #256
captnObvious wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounded like an optional request not a command. I’ve managed and I’ve been managed and the relationship ships I’ve built along the way are deep enough to have conversations like these. We’re doing life with this people it’s not a dystopian novel about capitalism. If you have a genuine person as your boss moments like these help form friendships, and don’t feel like a dark Dilbert comic. Friendships increase team c…

An "optional request" in a public group setting like that is not optional. You were non-optionally forced to respond to the challenge one way or another. If you don't share, then you're the guy who opted not to share. It turns off the touchy feely types who like it and don't understand the problem and can be "not a team player" fodder for anyone who wants it. The actual respectful and considerate way is not to put pe…

Everything in life is optional.
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