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Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

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Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mexico is part of North America, remember NAFTA? (North American Free Trade Agreement) It's as easy to hire Mexican remote employees as Canadians, see W8-BEN

W8-BEN has nothing to do with work autorization, rather with IRS reporting of accounts.

Exactly. Companies are afraid of wiring money to Mexican/Canadian accounts. (IANAL btw, but work remotely from Mexico)

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#72
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience is that some people genuinely are less productive without the social pressure net of their co-workers around them, or literally the boss on-hand as a sort of "productivity enforcer." It's varied wildly from job to job, office culture to culture, and at an individual level, but I take all those experiences with me and it tints my perceptions of productivity as well. I remember when I was a recruiter it w…

"If you were still in the office at 7, you could expect a heartfelt appreciative email" This sort of thing is horrible. Stop normalizing this. It's OK not to work all day. My kid goes to bed at 7:30 and I hate that my colleagues are so willing to work late, normalizing the idea that 6-7PM calls are OK. I mean, I get it - it's not their fault I had a kid, but hell, when IS it OK to stop working?

I don't intend to normalize it. I think it's bad. That's why I became an engineer.

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#73
post #15
post #12

Where do I apply?

Our jobs page is at https://stripe.com/jobs or you can attend a coffee chat with us and then let the conversation continue that way. https://stripe.events/remote-coffee

Are there any plans for remote data science or remote data engineering roles beyond those listed on the jobs page?

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#74
post #21

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) wh…

While it's not sufficient, travel budget is an important element IMO. I'm more or less remote but the ability to get together multiple times a year with both formal team members and other people who I collaborate with is pretty important to me. Also just getting out of the house to have regular contact with other people in the industry. I suppose, I could more proactively do more local events but, generally, I find interacting with people at events an important part of working remotely.

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#75
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We use Slack, Zoom, Google Docs, Github, and a handful of other widely-adopted technologies. They're really good and we couldn't do this without them, but they're probably not the lynchpin to making this work at scale. We're working constantly on improving the integration of peers throughout the company. Something Stripe Atlas does, for example, is schedule time for the team to low-key socialize without an explicit a…

@patio11 - thanks for your reply. > I cannot conceive of a reason we'd track screen time for employees, remote or otherwise. I can model why a company which had an adversarial relationship with employees might want to do that (to discourage shirking). We do not have an adversarial relationship with our employees, and (hopefully) have more interesting utility functions than that. its not about the company. See you guy…

You could slice the "quality of life" argument the other way too i.e. the people at the office have instant access to their team's knowledge on hand.

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#76
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure this says anything about the wages being equal. The remote wages are anecdotally lower. Judging by the offers I’ve seen coming out of SF compared to some of their other hubs, it’s significantly lower. Not just in salary, but in equity as well.

It's certainly possible that Stripe is offering productivity as the reason for their embrace of remote work when it's really about cheaper labor, but I'm hopeful. I know there are other companies where those decisions are transparently about lowering costs, but if what you say about remote workers typically getting less equity is true, too, that's pretty disappointing.

Honestly I don’t know how fair businesses can be with respect to this while being economically rational. Differences in markets are very real, and if you can get good developers who can’t work in the US for less, why not? It’s not surprising the Zoom founder tried so hard to make it to America.

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#79
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We use Slack, Zoom, Google Docs, Github, and a handful of other widely-adopted technologies. They're really good and we couldn't do this without them, but they're probably not the lynchpin to making this work at scale. We're working constantly on improving the integration of peers throughout the company. Something Stripe Atlas does, for example, is schedule time for the team to low-key socialize without an explicit a…

@patio11 - thanks for your reply. > I cannot conceive of a reason we'd track screen time for employees, remote or otherwise. I can model why a company which had an adversarial relationship with employees might want to do that (to discourage shirking). We do not have an adversarial relationship with our employees, and (hopefully) have more interesting utility functions than that. its not about the company. See you guy…

> So it is a A versus B for those people - people who are having to commute for hours to work, mandatorily sit at their computer screens . Versus others who wake up late (because no commute) and can walk about the house in their pyjamas.

It's a false dichotomy. It's not commute + "mandatory" screen time vs. sleeping in and wearing PJs.

When I worked in offices, I enjoyed commuting, it gave me time to listen to podcasts and transition between home and work. Working in an office with other people brought many opportunities to socialize, get pulled into impromptu conversations, take long lunches, and leave really early (to beat the commuters) if I needed to get home for some kid's after-school activity.

I work remotely now, and I still have to wake up on time, get dressed (hello video chat!), and be accountable. If I step away for a measurable amount of time, then I let people know in chat. It's far easier for a remote person to engage in overwork because there's not a clear boundary for when you're "at work" vs. "at home" (unless you create one). For better or worse, I "work more" as a remote employee than I ever did in an office.

The office folks who commute sometimes get to work late (traffic, train/bus issues, etc.), are pulled into random conversations and are unexpectedly unavailable just as much as any remote person. Are they contributing more by being in the office, or is the value just in their "presence", that you could literally tap them on the shoulder?

IMO, It all comes down to communication and empathy. If you're experiencing a major issue because you have to wait 10 minutes for someone to finish walking their dog, then imagine that person were in the office but in the bathroom. Would you still sneer at them because they were holding you up? Very few conversations are _SO_ urgent that you absolutely need an answer immediately. Having remote coworkers allows us to engage more thoughtfully with each other, and often pushes us to write more (and more useful) documentation so that we _aren't_ expecting immediate answers from any specific human.

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#80

I've always wanted to switch to fully remote. I worked from home for a couple weeks after my son was born and my current company didn't like it. My productivity was down and they noticed so they informed me I wasn't allowed to work remotely anymore because of it. Obviously it had nothing to do with the fact that they gave me 3 days of parental leave after the birth, so I was trying to help a recovering wife take care…

I don't think that has anything to do with "remote work" vs "working and caring for a newborn at the same time," which, obviously, would heavily distract you from work in any setting.
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