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> ..."build the things that people want to use" culture causes people to experiment, to hone their skills, and to develop Maybe it depends on the size/stage of
by dperfect 8y ago
> ..."build the things that people want to use" culture causes people to experiment, to hone their skills, and to develop
Maybe it depends on the size/stage of the company to some degree. In the startups I've been involved with (< 10 people), developers have little - if any - time to experiment with things that fall outside the core product.
Company hackathons (as mentioned in Stripe's case) can be a good outlet for that kind of creativity, but the kind of quality you mention ("immaculate attention to detail") doesn't come out of hackathons. The company's leadership still has to make those things a priority (which, by definition, deprioritizes other things).
- atonse 8y agoYes but at the same time, like they said in the blog post, this particular problem reared its head when they were approaching and passing 150 employees. At that point, yes, people can take some time off to work on a truly nice solution to a problem that, like others have said, mostly receives half-baked solutions.
- SnootyMonkey 8y agoIt's interesting, we've talked to a LOT of companies about this as customer research for our SaaS product (https://carrot.io https://carrot.io) and 150 is actually where this problem become unbearable. We see this problem first come up consistently at 30 people, become a major problem at ~100 people that starts to get lots of attention inside the company, and becoming a real hindrance and burning issue if not addressed at ~150+. It's not at all surprising to us that both Stripe and Square have spent a lot of time and money on this problem to support their quick growth past 1,000 people.
- joncrocks 8y agoYou might be interested in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number if you aren't already aware of it.