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My Time Working at Stripe

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Re: My Time Working at Stripe

#71

Post by wtfparanoid »

varispeed wrote: post #61
DeathArrow wrote: post #31

>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 remember feeling a mix of anxiety and excitement rise in my chest. I sat pondering what I would share. I decided to go for more than 10%. I shared about how my marriage had almost collapsed a couple year…

> I’d like us to try and be 10% more vulnerable than we normally would I would have reported manager to HR for this and if they didn't take action I would take company to tribunal. This is pure simple coercion into sharing personal data that then other workers could use against you. I can't see the world where sharing personal stuff at work is ever appropriate, let alone be subjected to peer pressure to share it.

what kind of dystopian workplace do you go to where people are looking to use things against you?

The jobs I stick with are the ones where colleagues have got each others back.

All this zero-sum game playing toxicity is what ruins work for the collaborative pro-social people. Find a work place that doesn't reward that kind of behaviour.

Re: My Time Working at Stripe

#72

Post by varispeed »

keiferski wrote: post #13
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…

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…

> finishing work at the end of the day and being done

You can try to find your own thing that you'll focus on after work. After 5 I would switch off any company equipment, phone etc. Make sure that there is never an expectation that you could be available outside of your work hours. Feel free to forget anything you worked on after 5, you'll catch up next morning. Some workplaces will be against that and make fuss. Find another job then and if it is not possible, just deliver as little as you can without being sacked. If manager is unhappy, but not unhappy enough to let you go, then you are doing great.

Re: My Time Working at Stripe

#73

Post by Aeolun »

DeathArrow wrote: post #31

>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 remember feeling a mix of anxiety and excitement rise in my chest. I sat pondering what I would share. I decided to go for more than 10%. I shared about how my marriage had almost collapsed a couple year…

To be fair, 10% more vulnerable than “I won’t talk about my private live at work,” is still “I won’t talk about my private life at work.”

I find it strange that the same people that ask you “How are you doing?” Without expecting an answer, are so into this kinda fake buddy buddy thing.

Re: My Time Working at Stripe

#74

Post by jakub_g »

Thanks for this writeup. I hope the author recovers soon.

Some of the situations feel familiar to my experience in other companies, so here's some advice to younger folks, which took me some time to grasp:

- Communication with the manager is critical. Better to overcommunicate than undercommunicate. It's a natural tendency for curious folks to do "side quests" and while you were supposed to work on X, you noticed that you can improve Y which in your opinion is more important. At the very least, drop your manager a Slack message like "hey, I was supposed to work on X but I have an idea about Y which can bring more benefit, I will take N hours/days to dig into that if that's ok with you" and see what's their response (also make sure to time constrain it to avoid getting sidetracked for too long). I was definitely burned by this in prev job: I shipped some nice things but I was supposed to work on something else which I didn't do, and each time my manager mentioned this (i.e. N months later in performance evaluation), I knew it was correct for him to point it out, but it made me feel bad.

- In bigtech the work happens in quarters. If you're unhappy about things you work on currently, take some time to prepare the work items you do want to work on, and seed your manager's mind before next quarter planning about things you DO want to work on, why, how is the impact and so on.

- When feeling overwhelmed with too many things on your plate, talk to your manager to dispatch some responsibilities to other team members. Don't be the messiah who needs to fix everything by yourself silently and burn out.

- For candidates: When doing interviews, you absolutely should do everything to streamline things and avoid distractions. Most likely use JS or Python for coding. Probably avoid TS, definitely avoid C++. It's too easy to get lost fighting the compiler or "reinventing the world" with languages like C/C++. You won't get extra points for going uphill, but you will get minus points for not finishing.

Re: My Time Working at Stripe

#75

Post by runarberg »

wtfparanoid wrote: post #71
varispeed wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’d like us to try and be 10% more vulnerable than we normally would I would have reported manager to HR for this and if they didn't take action I would take company to tribunal. This is pure simple coercion into sharing personal data that then other workers could use against you. I can't see the world where sharing personal stuff at work is ever appropriate, let alone be subjected to peer pressure to share it.

what kind of dystopian workplace do you go to where people are looking to use things against you? The jobs I stick with are the ones where colleagues have got each others back. All this zero-sum game playing toxicity is what ruins work for the collaborative pro-social people. Find a work place that doesn't reward that kind of behaviour.

I don’t know whether you are American or not, but I find it ironic that on a forum who’s demographic skews American, this sentiment of anti-individualism at the workplace is so widely shared.

America is supposed to be this super-freedom, super-individualistic place. Except when you are a worker at a workplace. Then you are supposed to spend at least 40 hours a week (except you are supposed to want to spend more time than that; and most do [except they don’t want to]), you are supposed to leave your politics behind, don’t talk about politics at work, you are supposed to do everything your boss tells you without question, and certainly don’t bring in your morals. Your workplace is a dictatorship (in a freedom loving country) and you are not supposed to complain about it. You are supposed to like your work, so you are not even entitled to your feelings. And suddenly your workplace is supposed to be this communist utopia, where every worker has a task, and the work is supposed to make them happy, and the whole workplace has a comradery of peers. Except you are all making money for your boss (or worse, your shareholders) and only keep a tiny portion of what you produce, but you are not supposed to complain and definitely not supposed to unite in bargaining for better, only unite in being exploited (except you aren’t supposed to see it that way).

The American workplace is probably as far away from the American dream as it possibly could be.

Re: My Time Working at Stripe

#76

Post by keiferski »

varispeed wrote: post #72
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…

> finishing work at the end of the day and being done You can try to find your own thing that you'll focus on after work. After 5 I would switch off any company equipment, phone etc. Make sure that there is never an expectation that you could be available outside of your work hours. Feel free to forget anything you worked on after 5, you'll catch up next morning. Some workplaces will be against that and make fuss. Fi…

That's definitely possible, but in my experience it's not the same thing as actually being done when you're working at a bakery or wherever. Then you don't need to turn off your phone, avoid company messages, think about what project you have to do tomorrow. You don't need to care about the job at all until your next shift starts.

Re: My Time Working at Stripe

#77

Post by Aeolun »

lmm wrote: post #53
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…

The flip side of that is that if companies make "passion" a hiring criterion, they'll end up hiring people who care about making a difference, which may serve them poorly if the position doesn't actually fit that.

Of course not. They got 4 years of fantastic work out of the guy before he burned out. That serves them just fine. The only requirement is that you have no morals.

Re: My Time Working at Stripe

#78

Post by Aeolun »

varispeed wrote: post #64
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…

> a brilliant idea that might help the company a lot don't just do it. Never do it. It will never end up benefitting you, even if you find "allies" - who might even stab you in the back and take credit for the idea and then let you go once they get a promotion. If you have a brilliant idea, keep it to yourself, try to think of a way it could be used outside of the company and if it is strong enough start your own bus…

I mean, brilliant ideas can still be fun to work on. Who cares if you don’t get appropriately rewarded for saving the company $50k/month, it was time well spent.

As opposed to working on that pointless crud thing your boss likes.

Re: My Time Working at Stripe

#79

Post by vladvasiliu »

varispeed wrote: post #72
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…

> finishing work at the end of the day and being done You can try to find your own thing that you'll focus on after work. After 5 I would switch off any company equipment, phone etc. Make sure that there is never an expectation that you could be available outside of your work hours. Feel free to forget anything you worked on after 5, you'll catch up next morning. Some workplaces will be against that and make fuss. Fi…

Indeed. And I think this is both a case of managing expectations (if you're always available, people will learn to expect it) and also of realizing what is and isn't expected of you.

Where I work, a normal workday is 9 AM to 6 PM with an hour lunch. There's some flexibility as to the actual hours, I usually do 8-5, others do 10-7. Yet, some people always put in very long hours for some reason, complete with gulping down a sandwich in front of their computer for lunch. I'm not sure what gives them the impression they have to do it, since it's clearly not expected from our common higher-ups.

Re: My Time Working at Stripe

#80

Post by Aeolun »

DeathArrow wrote: post #32
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…

>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. You can't move the needle unless you are part of management and learn how to do politics. Large companies mean lots of politics being done. And you want to position yourself on the part of the winning team. Also, people skills always trumps technical skills.…

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…

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