What I Miss About Working at Stripe

https://every.to/p/what-i-miss-about-working-at-stripe

by herbertl • 4 years ago

99 131 4 years ago

erulabs• 4 years ago

Well written - I’m also a former stripe although a far more cursory one, and I quite often miss my former team.

I’ve tried very hard to keep my current company from becoming a “lgtm” company — but my god do you need a lot of resources to pay enough engineers to do anything other than “lgtm”. If I could have raised 1/5th as much for my startup as the impact I’ve had at large corporations, I’d probably be able to pull it off. Alas.

markwillcollins• 4 years ago

+1 I'm a former stripe too, and miss the culture and team

elliotto2• 4 years ago

I found this article profoundly sad. It's good to be passionate about your work, but this person seems to have been exploited. They had their vacation cancelled by management, were working 15 hour days, and spent late nights working and crying, and to what end? To manage API stability of an online payments platform, making a few other people rich? They are clearly a capable, intelligent person, but have had their energy funnelled into a personally destructive endeavour, and look back on it wistfully.

Imagine if they taken their same zeal and contributed to a real community, creating both personal reward, real purpose, and value for the individuals around them.

nrki• 4 years ago

But they got pizzas!

I agree, I think these things are able to be found at other organizations without everyone doing 15 hour days.

j7ake4• 4 years ago

They got more than pizzas… they built a new ecosystem for enabling e-commerce.

Second they are probably rich enough to not have to work ever again after their 5 year stint at stripe.

if Stripe did not become a success the story would not have had the same impact.

lazzlazzlazz• 4 years ago

I understand your point about "it's just a payments platform", etc. Believe me that I do. And I value this person's life profoundly.

But you are failing to fully appreciate the leverage of the work: when Stripe works just a little bit better, many millions of seconds/dollars are saved. Chargebacks and fraud is avoided, checkouts succeed, people don't need to retype or retry charges, merchants get paid, etc.

I'm not making an argument that Stripe is especially benevolent. The point is that there are far-rippling consequences of "a little more work" when you're at a company with such deep network effects spread so far across the global economy. "Making a few people rich" trivializes how exactly how and why people become rich — namely, by building systems that affect many millions or billions of people using the labor of mere thousands.

KoolKat23• 4 years ago

And in the bigger scheme of things it's still a charade. These devs I'm sure are extremely talented, double your headcount and pay them half, everyone will still be smiling all the way to the bank. It's unfortunately nothing but greed.

gonzaloalvarez• 4 years ago

Tell me you have Stockholm syndrome in as many words as you can…

Being proud of your work because of what you deliver with it is great. Being proud of canceling holidays because your manager says so is slavery with extra steps.

whymauri• 4 years ago

Sounds like a cult. They can look back on this work culture with rose colored glasses because Stripe was successful. But for every Stripe there are dozens (hundreds?) of companies with equally demanding cultures that simply fail.

I doubt this person would feel the same if Stripe had been a failure. Articles like this encourage companies that don't have product-market fit (no amount of 15 hour days will fix product market fit, sorry), adequate talent, nor adequate resources to imitate this kind of culture. The end result isn't pretty.

I might be biased because I could never imagine myself working this hard for an Internet payments platform (noting that in 2015, Stripe was already worth $5B. This is not a seed or Series A/B scenario). Maybe it's because I came from bio- and medical engineering where the people who work this hard save lives and cure diseases.

ergocoder11• 4 years ago

OP probably takes in 3-5M a year. It is far from a cult when its benefit is a borderline generational wealth.

It is not surprising that OP likes Stripe so much.

You would fucking love your company if you were paid $5m USD per year as a regular engineer. Let's not kid ourselves lmao.

dataflow• 4 years ago

Being proud of canceling holidays because your manager says so is slavery with extra steps.

Stripe pays a little more than slave wages...

shaky-carrousel• 4 years ago

Nice, they will be the richest corpse in the cemetery.

elgolem89• 4 years ago

So, you miss burnout? lol

jackblemming• 4 years ago

I couldn't make it through. I felt deeply uncomfortable hearing her working 15 hour days to make the executives millionaires. I'm sure she was well compensated too, but it made me feel physically uneasy. Something feels quite wrong with our society at large.

andrethegiant• 4 years ago

The post reads a lot better skipping over the 15h days / pizza section. I wish the author had omitted that part.

jerojero4• 4 years ago

But that's the reality of what they were doing, the fact that it makes people uncomfortable is indicative of how wrong the culture is. I'm glad they said it.

The fact that people think it is inspiring to learn about others willingly working for such long hours, to undergo stress that is so bad it makes them cry is truly abhorrent. But that's reality, isn't it? That's what these companies are starting to expect from their people.

I was fired from my last job because my boss said I didn't have "the hunger"; I said I valued my personal time a lot and wasn't really all that interested in spending my free hours learning how to make myself a better programmer. I said: "I think just by working here everyday I am learning a lot, I don't think it is necessary for me to be putting extra work" and I guess that shows my lack of "hunger". Of course, every workplace is entitled to require a certain level of expertise from their employees, but I don't think it is healthy to promote a work culture that is based on people working (paid or unpaid) at all times.

I think maybe because tech has always been surrounded by a very geeky culture, and that a lot of people in tech start to get into it as a hobby (it is after all very creative work) that we have ended up in a situation were the lines get blurred. And, I mean, they have money and there are many people out there willing to put up with these situation. My best friend easily works 10-12 hours a day out of his own accord, but his personal life is suffering a lot.

deanCommie• 4 years ago

This is obviously going to be controversial but the people talking about how this is abuse or slavery or exploitation are missing the point.

The author knows how it sounds. And yet...

"it felt good to care about anything that much"

Purpose is fleeting in modern existence. Religion is waning. Spirituality is trivialized. Both for excellent reasons. So many people in the world are just surviving, while others are going through the motions of modern existence, as if on a treadmill. Achieving milestones but without feeling connected to them. Chasing Instagram highlight reels.

But we still have a human desire for impact, achievement, and purpose.

In Silicon Valley - the place, the culture, the TV show - the term "Changing The World" has been completely squeezed of it's meaning and replaced by grifters who are only seeking a quick buck. Maybe it always has.

But there are those places - and Stripe is one of them - that can lay honest claim to having done something legitimately groundbreaking and impactful to the world.

And to those that worked there, it gave them a *MISSION*, and *PURPOSE*.

There is no need to scoff at that. If you found your own purpose without working 15 hour days and making your boss a multi-billionaire, that's wonderful. If you haven't, but think you'd never do it at this cost, that's also a valid choice for you.

But for this person, it was the right choice. And it was/will be for many others also.

enumjorge• 4 years ago

So in their minds, these people are happy with the tradeoff, and that, on its own, makes it worthwhile? But that's the issue with drinking the kool-aid. I'm sure there's cult members who feel very fulfilled by devoting their lives to whatever leader or organization has taken over their psyche, but it doesn't make it any less sad for those of us looking from the outside in.

elliotto2• 4 years ago

Purpose is fleeting in modern existence. Religion is waning. Spirituality is trivialized. Both for excellent reasons. So many people in the world are just surviving, while others are going through the motions of modern existence, as if on a treadmill. Achieving milestones but without feeling connected to them. Chasing Instagram highlight reels.

I think this is a really important idea and I love the way you have phrased it.

However, I don't agree with your statement that writing copy for Stripe is anything other than achieving a milestone without feeling connected to it. Stripe is (primarily) an online payments platform that helps ecommerce transactions operate smoothly. I would not describe this as being groundbreaking and impactful to the world.

The author is highly motivated and driven, and has directed her energy towards what she (and you) have percieved to be a valid purpose. But imagine a world where she contributed to any other system. This could be academic research, volunteering in her community (I suspect she would be a great leader), or political/environmental activism. But instead, she has been coopted to work overtime and cancel holidays to make Patrick rich.

“The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads.” –Jeff Hammerbacher

jerojero4• 4 years ago

I think it is beautiful that there are some people out there capable of dedicating themselves to something with such passion.

But that's precisely the problem with the structures surrounding it. Organisations exploit these characters because they don't reward them as much as they put in. But not only that, you also have to think of the people around them. They point out in many places in the article how they weren't stopping because their neighbour wasn't stopping: a group expectation is formed that everyone is supposed to be putting 10-15 hours a day because that's what it means to be passionate, to care for your company. As others have pointed out, this is cult behaviour and believe it or not a lot of these companies precisely use cult-tactics to incite this behaviour on their workers.

I admire passion. But I want to see people putting that passion into constructive projects that improve their own lives as much as as everyone else's. That's the shift in perspective that we need, how much of this person's life was taken by this company? This kind of stress and hard work takes a toll on your health, it might not be immediately evident but it is real! And what do they have to show for it?

ergocoder11• 4 years ago

And what do they have to show for it?

I'm so surprised about the comments. Working hard for a huge reward sounds totally fine to me.

Senior eng who joined Stripe in 2015 would earn 3-5m USD a year. So, possibly 20m in total for 4 year offer

Is that enough for showing? Or does it need to be even more money?

tangjurine• 4 years ago

One day I hope to provide this opportunity for others: the privilege of making me rich!

Montaque2• 4 years ago

Reading the rest of this thread is like reading /antiwork on reddit. We have the life we have because our ancestors worked hard. My father worked as a welder for 50 years and has health issue at just about every joint. My grandfather went 2km down a mine shift in some of the worst possible conditions. Its a privilege to be able to earn my living working on a pc and put in a couple of extra hours to get sth%t done. Most commentary here is trying to vilify hard work and often from some of the highest relative earners.

faddypaddy34• 4 years ago

What are the good reasons for waning religion and spirituality?

modeless• 4 years ago

I'm getting major /r/antiwork vibes from this comment section. I think this attitude often comes from a place of fear. People don't want high performers who actually care about the work to "ruin the curve" for them. Especially now when a recession is starting after a long boom and people may feel their jobs are threatened for the first time in their careers.

ergocoder11• 4 years ago

They all thought OP is poor.

If anyone ever saw Stripe offer in 2015, OP likely earns 3-5m per year.

antiwork cannot comprehend a regular employee earning this much.

armatav• 4 years ago

It's interesting how this personality type of ultra-neurotic who is confusing fulfillment with work, as follows, is the ultimate carry for almost every team in the Valley;

"It’s more about missing that universal agreement that it’s really, really cool to devote yourself fully to your work."

"But I do think work can be a source of real meaning in life. But, we’ll only ever get out what we put in."

"And of course I believe you can love something without it having to hurt. But I’ve never truly loved anything that didn’t move me to my core."

And then she gets her vacation cancelled for her by her manager. You got absolutely railed for your time and confused it for camaraderie.

In life, you get less than what you put in if you're working on the wrong things. You get what you put in if you aren't working on the right things. And you get more than what you put in if you're working on the right things.

agentultra• 4 years ago

100%

There were a lot of “buts” in there to weaken the whole point. You can ignore everything before that word.

doctaj• 4 years ago

I’ve had moments at work - under super stressful conditions - where people pulled together to get something done, and they are some of my fondest work memories. A perfectly executed project is probably beautiful to someone and it’s low stress, for sure, but it’s not memorable or exciting. Just need to find balance.

jollybean• 4 years ago

Fully appreciate the dedication to something useful, that's entirely understandable ...

... but these people need to go on missions to build hospitals in poor places, join the Coast Guard or otherwise put this kind of extra energy where the resulting surpluses don't just go to line some guys pocket.

A little bit culty to say the least.

Without getting into the Religion/Spirituality argument to deeply, seems like there are some things missing here, including a lot of 3rd spaces.

Better yet, ship these people off to Ukraine. Probably not suited to the 'front line' but surely the administrative engine could use some help I'm sure.

mmmpop• 4 years ago

A little bit culty to say the least. Better yet, ship these people off to Ukraine.

Holy shit did you proofread this

humanistbot• 4 years ago

Once, my manager asked me to reconsider the vacation I had been planning because my team needed me. “If you go, who will cover your work?” I looked around at my colleagues who were also regularly working 15-hour days and decided to stay put. I’m proud of that choice.

Nope.

civilized• 4 years ago

When I interviewed at Stripe last year, some people made weird, obliquely braggy comments about how compulsively they worked. Other folks were great, though.

Overall, it felt like a once-decent culture rapidly turning rancid.

nobody wanted to be the first person to leave the office, even on Friday.

This is just a terrible workplace smell. Especially at a company that lacks a compelling mission, that is just another payment processor trying to get their 2-3% cut from as much of the market as possible.

People, please don't expect to find your life's meaning working at Stripe. For fuck's sake.

bombcar• 4 years ago

nobody wanted to be the first person to leave the office, even on Friday.

This line is meant to sound like awesome camaraderie and instead sounds like deeply instilled fear. "Be the first to leave, might as well never return."

fatnoah2• 4 years ago

Yeah, that very much sounded like my first startup where someone leaving at 3pm would receiving a some version of a "half day today?" quip on the way out the door.

jerojero4• 4 years ago

This article is personally very worrisome to me.

I think this is pretty much what most start-ups in the tech sector expect, it's similar to the over-optimisation problem in that because this technique has worked for some very successful companies then obviously every other tech-start up needs to overwork their employees and requires employees to dedicate their life to "the mission".

It's difficult because it's very infectious and it's extremely stressful to everyone who doesn't fit in with the expectations. I've had work experiences where I'm paired with very over-achieving engineers and managers might fall into the trap of comparisons: "Well he gets things many things done in a day and very quickly, why can't you also do that? We really want people to be motivated, to put in those extra hours if needed". And it's a difficult conversation because, how do you tell your boss you're not really interested in working those extra hours? That you don't really value productivity as much as they do, that well... that you have a life that you want to enjoy.

Building up unrealistic and unsustainable expectations is not okay. It's not okay to cry at work because of how stressful a deadline is. I mean, let's be honest here, this person was working at Stripe she's not a nurse that has someone's literal life in their hands. It's not okay to work 15 hours a day, our bodies and minds can only do so much.

And all of this for what? To "increase the internet's GDP"? Might as well just start a war while we're at it, that will for sure increase some countries GDP as well. Seriously, we are people not machines. It's good to be passionate, but where we put our passion is very important.

lumost• 4 years ago

These companies have incredibly anti productive social dynamics. When someone is putting in 80 hours, they do it for a reason, and typically are looking to get promoted fast.

What happens when 5 people on a team do this? A lot of disappointment usually. You can't go a different direction on a project, because the project is the persons life. When projects get restructured it almost always results in burnout and attrition.

imran-iq• 4 years ago

And all of this for what?

To make their boss a billionaire at the cost of their own health

ergocoder11• 4 years ago

A senior eng who joined Stripe on 2015 would make 3-5m USD per year.

I don't think they would complain that their bosses become billionaires.

charlie0• 4 years ago

I completely understand your point and sympathize with employees who are working near minimum wage and don't have much of a choice, but you are way off the mark here.

I'm pretty sure Stripe SWEs are, on average, some of the highest paid employees on the planet. It's entirely their prerogative if they choose to sacrifice their health for it. They have options to leave if they wanted to.

flakyfilibuster• 4 years ago

yeah right, we're not talking about a barista here, these devs were making good money

thr0wawayf002• 4 years ago

It's difficult because it's very infectious and it's extremely stressful to everyone who doesn't fit in with the expectations.

Not only that, but it can breed a culture of toxic behavior towards those that don't meet expectations. I was new at a company that was extremely proud of its culture of support and collaboration, blah blah blah. I get pulled into a meeting with an architect who was not in my chain of command who ambushed me by telling me that he thought I wasn't good enough to work there and I should be concerned about my job status. I was floored.

The worst part was that he was universally beloved within the company, he had incredible charm that he could turn on whenever he wanted to, the dude was a straight up narcissist.

Long story short, I reported him and nothing really happened. He was on my team so I had to see him every day, and I wound up leaving shortly after. Abusers like that hide in plain sight and writing rah rah pieces how amazing a culture is is what makes it harder to find them.

listenallyall5• 4 years ago

I'm sorry to tell you I don't see what is so toxic about this. Are we just supposed to assume you're some excellent employee? Perhaps he's beloved because he is honest, direct, and puts the company's interests (and those of the employees who built that positive culture) first.

neilparikh2• 4 years ago

To "increase the internet's GDP"? Might as well just start a war while we're at it, that will for sure increase some countries GDP as well.

Do you really think that allowing people to make transactions/trades (that they previously couldn't easily) isn't a very socially valuable thing? And do you really think it's comparable to starting a war?

And FWIW, I don't think starting a war will increase the total GDP of the world; it'll probably reduce it...

rebelos2• 4 years ago

It’s now a commodity business with a range of competitors. Do people at Stripe really become this bamboozled? You’re not changing the world anymore, you’re just making money. You’re mercenaries who've been fooled into believing you’re missionaries. The counter-factual of a Stripeless world in 2022 is the market share gets split across the other providers and the world keeps on trucking. Get over yourselves.

flashgordon5• 4 years ago

Umm sure this could be the noblest thing but nothing in the constitution about being love with the company mission. It is a job. They pay you, you provide labor. As long as the employee isn't acting maliciously or maligning the company what gives?

jerojero4• 4 years ago

Yes that is why I said "some countries" and not the world. It is hyperbole. Of course I think Stripe provides a valuable service, but I don't think it is more valuable than, say, a hospital. I don't think it provides a service that is valuable enough for people to have to be putting 15 hours of work a day and for people to be stressed to the point of crying in the workplace because of it.

And my biggest problem is that, it is very likely that the culture that is fostered is precisely one where "the mission" as in "increment the internet's GDP" is seen as a form of life-or-death situation. That workers at these companies genuinely end up believing these things. But where really is the value that they are generating going to? In reality, these workers are being over-worked to generate value for the VCs and share holders of these corporations.

I mean, i there's another comment pretty much sums up how tech culture is now a days and it's basically wasting our most brilliant minds to optimise slot machines. Anyway, I do think Stripe is useful but I don't think any company really should treat workers and foster this kind of culture.

dzikimarian6• 4 years ago

What's worrisome to me is, that so many people believe that, any emotional engagement and passion for something, you're doing for 30% of your adult life is "toxic" and "unhealthy".

Then we get posts in the line of "I've very good life, well paid job, but I feel empty" - I believe, there were two of them this week already and it's only Wednesday.

To be clear I'm not saying you should suddenly fall in love in pushing CRUDs for your international corp. But maybe next time when choosing a job, try to include into equation: "would I actually want to do this if not for the money?". In SWE we've quite unique opportunity to actually have this choice and yet many try to ignore it on purpose, because apparently it's not "cool".

nus07• 4 years ago

Yeah a lot of people would rather teach poor kids but teachers can barely make a living in America. When you live in a country with such high inequality and healthcare dependent on your job you are forced to hustle . Not everyone can study Art History at Columbia and have the connections to get a job as a curator. The conundrum you see is exactly because of that inequality. You very rarely see it among Western Europeans. But hey the US pays the highest and you can live a charmed life if it works out . So I will fall for a manager and corporation’s promises .

knighthack• 4 years ago

For us to come around and examine/judge her as if she was a brainwashed fool in a startup cult makes no sense.

First, she chose to work there. She was not forced to. She has agency; she could leave at any time.

Secondly, the discussion is about work culture. It's not that she painted the work culture as toxic; she painted the work culture as inviting, meaningful, and something that helped her grow, despite the long hours. Surely something can be gleaned from that.

Thirdly, this is a startup culture. You can't choose to work in a high-paced kitchen, and complain about the heat. If you can't take the heat, leave. It is the company's problem to find someone to replace you and your value; just like you can't blame the world to change and fit you (as you must make the change to yourself), you can't blame the company to adjust around your style. Companies are commercial ventures; they have different goals and expectations than the individuals working for them.

plywoodtrees• 4 years ago

... as if she was a brainwashed fool in a startup cult makes no sense. First, she chose to work there. She was not forced to. She has agency; she could leave at any time.

The whole point of the concept of brainwashing is that people can be manipulated or sucked into making nominally free choices that are not really free choices, or at least not what they would say are in their interests if they were out of that situation.

Whether this is really true for her, I don't know, it's hard to tell from outside, and it gets into slippery concept of free will if you look too closely. But people can be manipulated.

ctvo• 4 years ago

It's not okay to cry at work because of how stressful a deadline is. I mean, let's be honest here, this person was working at Stripe she's not a nurse that has someone's literal life in their hands.

Crying at work because your boss is harassing you or your coworkers are toxic -- agreed, no one should have to endure that. Crying at work because you're invested and care about the outcome? What's the problem here outside of your belief that these people are ignorant or fooled by capitalism?

It's good to be passionate, but where we put our passion is very important.

Thankfully you don't have the right to tell people where their passions should lie. For many of us we like our work. It's a large part of our identity. We like the impact it provides, we like being good at it, we want to be good at it, and we're invested in it. The financial security it provides for us and our family is another strong motivator.

Your reply is patronizing and full of judgement. Implicit in it are professions you think are noble, and worthwhile of care, and the rest? Sheeps, wake up! Go find a hobby!

Montaque2• 4 years ago

The author clearly values hard work. She felt meaning in her work and reflected on that. The idea that all hard work or, God forbid, a hard working culture is toxic is probably why it's so much harder to achieve big things in the modern world. Hard work isn't always burn out and hard work isn't always bad.

More often than not its during the hardest working times that you learn or achieve the most.

Arainach• 4 years ago

All hard work is not necessarily bad in small doses. A culture of constantly working, being afraid to go home, and skipping vacations for the company's benefit is toxic, full stop.

I mean this in the most literal sense - that kind of environment breeds stress that kills you. 3 years of long days at one company turned my hair gray by 28. Another 3 years at that company had me on blood pressure meds. I'm doing much better at a BigN now, and other than a week of primary oncall each quarter (for which I am well paid), I go home at 5pm every day and do other things with my life.

floober• 4 years ago

Agreed. If you're an individual who wants to work this hard, hopefully you can find a team of like-minded folks who will work hard with you and make sure that it is structured in a way that you all reap the benefits.

iTradeWarez• 4 years ago

sounds like stockholm syndrome

beastwinger• 4 years ago

I've worked at a company that people really love to praise and it's by far the most challenging place I've worked. In my couple years, I've had 6 managers and been re-org'd almost every year.

The tooling is terrible, we constantly thrash priorities, the "culture" is non-existent beyond emojis. Getting stuff done is often met with hostility by other teams, or even worse, bad-faith requirement tail-chasing.

Rant: At one point, they locked down everyone's ability to review code and had everyone fill out a google survey with questions like "name 2-3 people who you trust to review code". The people with the most nominations became the only ones that could approve code reviews. To get into this club, you had to provide 10 example PRs that demonstrated your worth, and being a certified code reviewer even made it into the eng ladder as an expectation (I can only imagine the amount of wasted work people put in creating/finding/reviewing "complex" PRs). Eventually the backlash caused them to relax the system but it shows how they treat the old guard against the new folk (in their eyes reliability problems are due to the new people, not the broken systems that can't scale beyond 3-4 people). Everything is code-gen'd and checked into source control due to some insane invariant, trying to reason about infrastructure outside of the 1-2 major usecases (ruby monolith api or java payments code) is a punishment reserved for the new hire or in the worst case the "runner", who has to carry the world on their shoulders because the eng organization runs off of reactive-jira-wackamole (enhanced by slack integrations!) competing against a bi-annual waterfall planning (that your manager needs to deliver or else .. nothing happens, we fudge the OKR scores and do it all again). God forbid any non-tech org need eng help, that's not going to happen so they build their own mini-kingdom with competing tooling and n+1 SaaS integrations.

I've been oncall for major systems that power the internet and our oncall/runner toil is the worst I've seen, we pathologically throw humans at problems because tech leadership can't commit to a smaller set of priorities as the can has been kicked one-too-many times. The product is great and the company is well run fiscally but I believe the eng org requires a major shake up.

dirtyfrenchman• 4 years ago

OP is someone who worked in marketing and left 3 years ago. They're waxing poetic about a company that no longer exists.

phsource• 4 years ago

I'm sad to see all the hate this article's getting in the comments, but also can't say I expected anything else.

Most of the hate I'm seeing here is focused around work-life balance, but even the author acknowledges that "I don’t think people should cry or feel like impostors or skip their vacations regularly." There's so much more here! Kudos to Brie too for really putting herself out there like this.

Taking apart what the article mentions, the fulfillment she felt at work came from:

- A sense of shared mission: of the mission statement, "it was a little abstract, but we believed in it enough to recite it with pride"

- Being pushed to do better: "My work was meticulously but warmly critiqued by my peers and leaders alike, and my work got better and better because of it"

- A community and culture: "It felt like magic, but there was deep thought, care, and intention behind everything. I had a tingly feeling that I was part of an organization that had cracked something about creating a great culture"

Forget work -- think about a side project, a hobby, a sport -- anything that you've applied yourself to. Does it feel good to hold yourself to a high standard, in the company of other peers who are into the same things?

That sounds like something we can all get behind!

Stripe may not have been perfect, but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater here.

borroka2• 4 years ago

"it was a little abstract, but we believed in it enough to recite it with pride"

I have worked for companies that had a mission I believed in, although from my position I was far from moving the needle in any direction.

Maybe that gave me an extra kick at times; maybe I stayed up late a few times without complaining because it was necessary to finish off some crucial work.

But rest assured that I have never proudly recited a shared mission statement written by someone (the "company"-- its executives and vice presidents and so on) who would have no hesitation to let me go--with great sadness--because there are hard times coming. "But," they would say, "it has been great working with you, we wish you the very best."

jdbernard• 4 years ago

Everyone is focused on work-life balance because so much of the article praises the idea that dedicating your life to work is what makes companies "incredible sources of community and self-actualization."

Imagine you are a young adult with a young child, and your partner also works. How is any of the following tenable?

"Everyone stayed for dinner every night [..] there was no way I was going home before my neighbor was."

What about a family?

"my manager asked me to reconsider the vacation I had been planning because my team needed me. “If you go, who will cover your work?” I looked around at my colleagues who were also regularly working 15-hour days and decided to stay put."

What about your family? What about your colleagues' families?

"Call me masochistic, but I have to admit that it felt good to care about anything that much."

But this only works if you don't have other pursuits in life that you care about that much.

"But I am still nostalgic for a time when the gravitational pull of work was strong. For me and everyone around me."

As a husband and a father, as a manager, I want to create a place that allows people to do their best work, and then go home and give their best to their families without feeling pulled constantly back to work.

"It’s more about missing that universal agreement that it’s really, really cool to devote yourself fully to your work."

10 years from now most of us are not going to be working for the same company. 10 years from now most of my kids will be grown and I'll have lost the opportunity to invest in their lives and our relationship. I'm devoted to my work, but not at the expense of my wife who I promised to share my life with, or my children who I literally brought into this world. If I'm not there for them, present in their lives, who will be? I want to build that community. I want children who take to me when I'm older. I want a family that shares values. That only happens if I surge enough time with them, over time, to know what they value, to show what I value, to grow together as they change.

How many of those coworkers will we be sharing and creating close community with ten years from now? Are we really building a lasting community around this mission?

You say:

Forget work -- think about a side project, a hobby, a sport -- anything that you've applied yourself to.

And I agree with you about the value of having a performance oriented community focused on a meaningful mission, but if we work the way the author is advocating through her examples we won't have time/energy to apply yourself to any other pursuit.

SamvitJ• 4 years ago

One added piece of context: the author now runs a consultancy on the "important, but often non-urgent, work of culture-building" (https://www.linkedin.com/in/brie-wolfson-17758724).

So that (at least partially) explains the stance on culture she espouses.

didibus• 4 years ago

Seems like a self-promoting post, I wouldn't really trust it, because when I looked them up this turned up:

Brie Wolfson @zebriez helping founders craft company culture via @koolaidco, musing on http://founder-fodder.ghost.io used to @stripe

It seems to be tailored for the founders looking for ways to get more free work out of their employees, through "culture".

Maybe I'm cynical, but the whole thing reads like they didn't ask for high standards, care and respect in your work, but that they just asked for more of your time at no additional cost.

There are studies showing that output quality degrades with more crunch, overtime, and fatigue. Getting a good night sleep has more impact on software defect than writing software proofs.

So if you cared about quality, you'd take that into account as well, and you'd respect people's time.

Or if I'm less cynical, maybe it's true the author experienced coworkers that were truly good at their jobs, and put care and pride in their work, but unfortunately at the same time had bad respect for their own worth and time. If that's still the only place that felt that pride and care, I can see missing it, and almost not being able to seperate one from the other. In reality, having both is even better, and that's what should be the gold standard, working with people who respect their work and their worth equally.

djur• 4 years ago

Wait, the newsletter about building company culture is called "The Kool-Aid Factory"? In the "actually, it was Flavor-Aid" sense?

ROTMetro• 4 years ago

I tried the 'change the world'. I got so messed up at that job and ultimately the market went with product Y instead because it was an easier sale to the bean counters.

Then I went to just a job to pay the bills after leaving the Bay Area. I took a few seconds off the time of the average of something used by a lot of people and saved a ton of cumulative time for humanity.

But...the road to hell is paved with good intentions. My original "make the world better software" had a side effect I didn't know/understand in that the savings came at a indirect cost, people wouldn't get something subsidized anymore (because my efficiency removed the need to give it away). Imagine improving say the food supply chain at grocery stores and making groceries cheaper, but at the cost of less goods damaged and then donated to food banks. Indirectly people suffered, maybe died.

Tried to make the world better = Killed people for money.* Didn't care = Saved the equivalent of 80 lifespans at least so far.

*For legal reason I want to clarify indirectly. Not through negligence or malice. Improved efficiency reduced companies donating excess.

koch• 4 years ago

ITT: Gatekeeping what people are allowed to enjoy

camgunz2• 4 years ago

I've been sitting with this for a little while, and I think I've figured out what I want to say.

The first thing is that I 100% identify with and understand what Op's written here. It does feel amazing to be a member of a committed, like-minded group of people all working as hard as they can towards a common, worthy goal--especially when you haven't found a lot of acceptance previously in life. I found this working on US presidential campaigns (etc), all of which were life changing for me in every way I can think of. It's exhilarating in a way I find hard to describe, but I recognize it in this post.

The second thing is that these experiences are, similarly, 100% exploitative. Presidential campaigns aren't good working environments. They're not good for people--even people who enjoy them and seemingly thrive are insidiously destroyed by them. Relationships are very hard. Balance with other aspects of your life (like parenting) is impossible. Taking care of yourself mentally, physically, and emotionally is laughable. Toxic behavior and substance abuse is rampant. More often than not, people use campaigns and "the mission" as excuses to be their worst selves: which means anything you can imagine that might mean (implementing dark patterns, abusing people, workaholism). You are wildly overworked and underpaid. Your relationship to work is forever warped by the workload, the mission, and the experiences (highs, lows, etc). No other job is like it.

Which brings me to the last thing, which is: at least presidential campaigns are for a good cause (well, half of them anyway ;). Stripe seems fine and I enjoy all the posts I read from them, but they're a payments company. We (and by "we" here I mean humanity) don't need young people mortgaging every other aspect of their lives for years to get a payments company off the ground. This goes for ridesharing companies, search engine/ad companies, social networking companies, probably 99.999% of what SV works on (maybe there's a climate change or refugee startup out there that's worthy, hard to know).

We don't need it, and we don't need the fallout from it. We don't need to warp people's sense of work. We don't need managers extorting their ICs with "who will be responsible for your work while you're on vacation" (the answer is "the person who built my team with redundancies so we don't burn out", btw). We don't need to reduce our understanding of our lives to who we are and what we do at work. This isn't a war; it's not us against the fascists. It's a payments company.

I'm pushing 40 at this point (what a wild thing to say haha), and to my fellow near-middle-agers out there, I will say it's up to us to not do this to the next generation. Don't let people work 15 hour days, ever. Don't let people work on weekends. Ensure they take vacations, even if they're just staying home and taking longer showers. Don't text/Slack/whatever them outside work hours. Hold the line when your manager tries to do this to you. Talk about it openly; make this the culture where you work.

If you're looking for an experience like Op describes, this is what community is for. Find a hackerspace, find an activist community to volunteer in, mentor a child. You can find communities of capable, like-minded people without the annihilation of the rest of your life. It's not a necessary component.

throw_away_1234• 4 years ago

100% agree. I think it's also important to acknowledge the extent to which financial distortion can cause cognitive distortion. Some other comments here have pointed out that this person probably made between three and five million US Dollars per year, and the commenters have used this information to reach some relatively specious conclusions (e.g. that comments against the work culture are not founded due to the amount of money in play).

It is true that most people cannot even imagine making enough money to buy six to ten million Jack in the Box tacos every year. I am a public defender, and this person's alleged salary exceeds the annual budget of most places I have worked, and the five-year budget of some of them. I think it's precisely this effect that makes the article itself so problematic.

Nobody would care what this person thought about work culture (or hire them to consult on the topic) if they didn't graduate from a SV unicorn that generated mythic profit. But many people, especially hopeful managers will read this, and try to emulate the obviously toxic and harmful practices espoused by the author. Emulation will be more harmful than the original practice, because organizations who emulate will not have junior level employees who can buy four to seven reasonably priced single family homes in NYC every year.

I say "organizations" rather than "companies" because fetishization of the hypercapitalist "grow fast and get rich" myth is not limited to the for-profit world. Plenty of government agencies and nonprofits will read blogs like this and plunder their organizations in a misguided quest for success.

Entangled with this is a causation fallacy. There is actually no reason to believe that Stripe was successful because of its culture. I acknowledge that this is not the author's explicit thesis, but one must make that underlying assumption to engage with the article. I think the most we should responsibly believe (I'm doing my best to be generous to the author), is that all of the toxic policies and cultural artifacts described in the article were endemic in the industry at the time. For example, everyone was expected to eat dinner at work, but it just felt good at this time and place because of the culture. With that frame, it's just as easy to infer that the causal link is reversed: it was more tolerable to work at Stripe because the company was sufficiently funded that it could hire the author at a salary which allowed her to buy a fully loaded Tesla Model X either three or four times every month.

camgunz2• 4 years ago

Absolutely. What the "this person probably made 3-5M a year" comments say to me is "if you pay someone enough, you can do whatever you want to them". We got rid of "right to contract" > 100 years ago for a reason: it's deeply exploitative.

There is actually no reason to believe that Stripe was successful because of its culture.

Even if there is (and I agree there isn't), I would argue that cultures like this exist in order to compete in a race to the bottom of who can exploit their workers the most. That's certainly the feeling in presidential campaigns: you can't control a lot, but you can control how hard you work, so work the hardest. We need legislation to protect workers here, but in the absence of that, we need unions and leaders in the workplace to firmly reject this culture.

Nobody would care what this person thought about work culture (or hire them to consult on the topic) if they didn't graduate from a SV unicorn that generated mythic profit.

Again agree. I will say there were some things in there that I liked and didn't think were toxic: the encouragement of open communication, the focus on precise language (something I constantly fail at), an emphasis on documentation, building teams (relying on others and being a person that can be relied on). But the overwork is just pure toxicity, e.g. this quote:

He looked down at his coffee for a moment. “I’m afraid I’m never going to see my best work again.”

Far from being my best work, my worst work materialized because I worked 16-18 hours a day, 7 days a week, and my brain was so broken afterwards I was afraid I would never see my best work again. I've mostly recovered, but I can still feel a difference. My experience isn't singular or even rare, though I don't know if it's the norm. I've read about this happening to others in other sectors (gaming, FAANG through stress and toxicity). It's a real concern.

I'm being pretty stark and unsentimental because I want to push strongly against any notion that this is romantic or honorable. Like you said, there's a real danger of this kind of mentality spreading and causing significant harm. Again, worth it for war (and maybe politics, I'm bearish though); not worth it for SV.

BonoboIO• 4 years ago

This reminds me of things that people experience in war times: „Fighting together, being there for another, don’t let your brother down, this is hell but together we made/make it“

I mean this not in a sarcastic way. War is hell, brutal, bone crushing and miserable, but you will never make a deeper connection with people you fight with [0]

You sit there with your buddies, some food and fight the „enemy“ (api failure) together and win, exhausted but happy … together.

There is time in your youth, time for the „good old days“, BUT don’t make it a habit, this will cost you … your health, your private life, your time and it’s only job at a company that can change. A company that can fire you in an instant.

[0] https://www.ted.com/talks/sebastian_junger_why_veterans_miss...

j7ake4• 4 years ago

the armies that fought and lost don’t really think back on those times with such rose tinted glasses. Especially since they probably suffered heavy losses. The dead also don’t get to tell their side of the story.

Workers who grind at Startups that end up failing don’t get their stories published.

koshergweilo• 4 years ago

Serious question but do any of these people have families? If I regularly worked 15 hour days my wife would leave me without a second thought

j7ake4• 4 years ago

There are countless startups with similarly intense work environments but where the startup fails in the end. In that situation, the story here would sound straight up depressing.

The only reason this story is even publishable is because of the success stripe. The general lesson here is that people’s emotional recollection of experiences (and also peoples reaction to the story) depend on the final outcome of the experience.

borroka2• 4 years ago

I read the article, wanted to comment, decided was better not to, went out for a run, and now I have decided to write something about it.

I found it a very disturbing article. Someone with a background in clinical psychology might want to explore the transference that seemed to happen in the author when she mistook a company she worked for, where she was apparently chastised, made to cry, and asked to skip vacation by appealing to her sense of guilt and importance, for a higher calling.

It is the kind of letter I would expect a North Korean army private to send to Kim Jong-un after coming back from three months of isolation in military barracks.

I also appreciate that there are people who are dedicated to the cause of corporate growth for reasons other than making bank, because I will never be one of those people.

angarg12• 4 years ago

I see OPs point. But I disagree with both the premise and conclusion.

Maybe it's because I come from a Mediterranean country, but I don't think we should tell people, and American even less, to invest even more time and effort in their job.

Sure, people need to feel fulfilled and with a mission. There are many ways to do it outside work, starting with family, friends, and community.

Also I find this advice a bit rich. Sure, it might have worked well for a twenty-something (I presume) early employee at a rocket ship. What about people later in life with families to support? what about all those who poured their souls into their starts just to get unceremoniously laid off?

Caring about your job can be an immense source of satisfaction and part of a well balance life. But let's not kid ourselves, the relationship between companies and employees is very asymmetrical. If you bust your ass working you might get a raise or a promotion, and make someone else a few million. If you lose your job, your life might get wrecked, and the company wont even flinch.

lfpeb8b45ez• 4 years ago

Most of the comments here fall into two camps: work can be inherently meaningful, or work is transactional. I think most of us would agree that there are certain goals worth sustained sacrifice. The question is: when is work worthy?

There are life experiences such as team sports that are opportunities for great personal growth with objectively silly goals (throw the ball into the hoop). For many young adults, the experience of being part of a passionate and dedicated community is itself intoxicating. It can be work, a religious group, or a Discord server. It may not matter what the goal is, the goal is the group. As people develop deeper attachments, have a family, this goal of belonging seems less important. We begin to reexamine the goals we have aligned our life around.

Eventually, it is human to question every goal. Why did I want to squat 400 pounds? To increase the world’s GDP? Why did I want to reach the moon? To reduce suffering? We may reject this line is thinking, or we look to those who have asked this question before us, and we find an explanation that lets us move on.

Smithalicious• 4 years ago

Meh, I don't want to speak on behalf of someone else and say she's brainwashed, has Stockholm syndrome or anything of that sort. If she's truly happy with that kind of work environment then I wish her the best of luck finding another environment like that, and all of us to whom this sounds like torture can be glad that there are plenty of workplaces that don't function like this.

There's no need to be presumptuous, different strokes for different folks.

dominotw• 4 years ago

Is this thinly veiled attempt at dissuading people to not work for this company. Or this has to be a parody of tech culture.

hipshaker• 4 years ago

Fuck the mission. Fuck the culture. You are doing nothing but shoveling money into founders, investors and shareholders pockets.

I am not saying you should not work hard and aim for achievements, heck, even help the world get a little better (in some cases).

But don’t kid yourself. Sure, culture and mission is needed in a company. But they are not for your benefit. Be the lemming, if that suits you. If you own or have a finacial stake in the company sure, grind-to-win applies to you. For everyone else sorry, but you are a special kind of retarded to trade your actual life (you only have one, remember) for the benefit of others who couldn’t care less about you.

It’s actually possible to do great work at 40 hrs or less per week. If you need more, you’re not doing it right.

jbverschoor• 4 years ago

Amen

twohaibei• 4 years ago

My thoughts exactly. Sacrificing health, relationships and my own life to bump someones liquidity event check seems like a bad deal. I can care about a lot of things, but without sacrificing for someone else's cause.

Workaholism is not an answer to the lack of personal goals or meaning in life. Its just distraction.

fatnoah2• 4 years ago

Cared so much that they knew pieces of company documentation by heart, and that nobody wanted to be the first person to leave the office, even on Friday.

Wow, this sounds like a terrible place to work combined with some misplaced priorities. Caring so much about the mission that they didn't want to be perceived as being a slacker or caring less than someone else.

sw104• 4 years ago

How does somebody work 15 hour days making blog posts (Stripe Press)?

Maybe I'm being elitist, but I pegged the long working hours and collaboration more with the engineering side of Stripe.

sonjat• 4 years ago

I get that being passionate about a job, bringing all your skills and all you have to a cause you believe in can create a fire. And isn't that a goal of life? To have a fire, a purpose? So kudos to her for finding that. That being said, a culture that demands that kind of hours is a culture that limits who will work there. Forget having young children. Forget having a time-consuming hobby outside of work. Forget even having a good social life. For some people, that is a worthwhile trade-off. For others, it isn't. Those others might be the very kind of people who could contribute a lot to your company, but they won't work there for long.

I think companies who encourage that kind of work environment are, to some degree, missing the forest for the trees. They get a lot of hours out of their employees, but they can only hire from a small section of the population. Potentially valuable employees are not available to such companies, and I think often this hurts the companies in the long run.

mushufasa• 4 years ago

The fundamental conflict between a founder and employees is the difference that founders/investors are only rewarded when things get done and there is external success (customers, acquisitions). That's company success.

There are many reasons that mindset is hard to spread among employees. Starting with: employees are more risk averse and don't want to be paid only when the company closes sales; they want a monthly paycheck. And ending with: as a company grows, the level of "information" of the company grows; it becomes too much for specialist employees to understand the full context of the organization, industry, business model, financials, customers, product, design etc.

It's very hard to spread the 'founder' mentality to employees. Many people in this thread seem to suggest that it's morally wrong for employees to have a 'founder' mentality because they don't have the same level of equity stake.

The reality is, it's much harder for any company to succeed without people putting care into the results. And if a company doesn't succeed, they have to layoff employees.

jscholes• 4 years ago

nobody wanted to be the first person to leave the office, even on Friday.

This doesn't sound like a healthy symptom of a positive workplace culture. I guarantee that for some people, this perspective could be flipped on its head, and rephrased as a fear of being seen as the first person to leave. Other parts of the article reaffirm that, e.g.:

My heart would beat out of my chest before heading into an exec review.
Once, my manager asked me to reconsider the vacation I had been planning because my team needed me. “If you go, who will cover your work?”

If this is what gets your juices flowing right now, good for you. But personally? I work hard, hard enough to justify a vacation without the accompanying guilt trip, and with sufficient diligence to make a difference and explain my decisions to leadership. Then I go home.

v0idzer0• 4 years ago

Comments here are predictable and depressing. Some people just want to do great work for the sake of doing great work. If you have to be the most compensated person in the company to care, that’s fine too. But it doesn’t mean everyone else does or a workplace is “toxic”.

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