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> One of the things I enjoy most about Stripe’s work culture is the notion that “nothing is Not My Job.” I’m very eager to know: If you want to be successful in

> One of the things I enjoy most about Stripe’s work culture is the notion that “nothing is Not My Job.” I’m very eager to know: If you want to be successful in such a culture, what mental habits/skills can you develop which let you know with confidence where to direct your attention? How did patio11 develop these? ——— EDIT: How do you know that what you are working on is not a distraction?

toomuchtodo 8y ago
Not patio11 but if he would be so kind as to allow me to hazard a guess I’d say intellectual curiosity and tenacity. Don’t stop asking why and keep digging. You’ll want to mix in emotional intelligence so when you communicate with stakeholders, you do so in a way that they feel a desire to assist you in your endeavor, perhaps finding ways to align everyone’s incentives for success. I could be entirely wrong though.
- JoblessWonder 8y ago
  I think you are spot on. I think a specific amount of hubris to go along with the intellectual curiosity and tenacity is important. It is the amount of confidence to say, "Hey, I can take this on. I'm not familiar with it directly but I understand enough of the context to help." You do have to be careful to not have too much confidence because then you will alienate your peers/management and be viewed as a know-it-all. It is a fine line that depends a lot on company culture. It sounds like Stripe really welcomes it, where other corporations are very "stay in your lane." I wear an insane amount of hats at my company because 1) I'm confident/stupid enough to believe I can handle it [see the part above about hubris] and 2) I actually have a track record of being able to tackle whatever has been thrown at me. My curiosity helps me from getting bored because I'm fine jumping from researching DC EV chargers to file permissions issues to tax law to.... anything.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - arandr0x 8y ago
    This is exactly true. Any tips how to identify companies that welcome this during interviews? (Or companies that don't.) I wouldn't have considered myself as having "hubris" but I have a kind of semi-wild enthusiasm for being able to do things that people have reacted badly to before for exactly the reason you said. I'm not sure how to signal to companies "my deal is I want to do things; I will more or less literally jump off my seat to assist anyone and no job is beneath me and I will stay up and work 16 hours straight if I screw something up; but I'm not really good at hearing no".
    - toomuchtodo 8y ago
      > I'm not sure how to signal to companies "my deal is I want to do things; I will more or less literally jump off my seat to assist anyone and no job is beneath me and I will stay up and work 16 hours straight if I screw something up; but I'm not really good at hearing no". "I have a proven track record of executing relentlessly, rapidly delivering value, and moving between internal roles effortlessly. What challenges are you facing I could contribute to in a meaningful way?" Be more comfortable hearing "No". Trust takes time to build.
    - adaptiveValleys 8y ago
      I'm very much like you, and I think startups/small companies with a flat management structure (i.e. level obfuscation as another commenter phrased it) or where most managers have engineering backgrounds. In my experience at large companies, on teams that were technical and heavily collaborated with engineering, but were not overseen by engineering managers. Middle management was entirely focused on optimizing for metrics that were either assigned to them, or would result in career progress; instead of what was best for the company. Regardless of whether the companies claimed to have a "nothing is someone else's problem" culture. As a result, any embodiment of that principle, was either punished or perceived as creating problems by non-technical managers. Even if direct praise was often received from engineers and their managers for those actions. In that workplace dynamic, it inherently carries a lot of risk and easily puts a target on your back. Besides posts like this that give first-hand accounts from employees. It's quite hard to identify what would be an honest signal of true dedication to that principle. Especially in interviews where you're a very qualified candidate, it's difficult to tell if interviewer is trying to selling you the idea of working there.
  - rarecoil 8y ago
    I don't think it's hubris that you need. Hubris often inflates and becomes the problem that you have in the next statement of being a "know it all". Instead, I think the core of it is perpetuating "beginner's mind" - that is, you approach every problem with the enthusiasm of a beginner, not with conviction that something can or cannot be done. It's not necessarily pride or self-confidence as much as it is a belief that the thing can be done by someone, and it's just the knowledge you don't have that keeps you from accomplishing it.
chapium 8y ago
If everything is your job, how can you be measured by what is your job fairly?
- draw_down 8y ago
  Spoiler: There are plenty of things that people avoid doing because it's not their job, it's just that this situation must sometimes be finessed a bit. So, you don't avoid doing something because it's "not your job", you move it to another team who is better positioned to address the issue. Or maybe you deprioritize it because it doesn't fit in with your team's current priorities, etc. Eppur si muove.
- icebraining 8y ago
  Having worked for a tiny company, where this is pretty much inevitable, I'd say you define what your job is at the moment by what you commit yourself to do.
- rarecoil 8y ago
  I don't think that's the point of the statement. Facebook culture makes a similar statement: "Nothing at Facebook is someone else's problem." I don't take it to mean that you are supposed to be the Atlas of the organization, but rather that when you see problems and issues that might arise, you don't ignore them because it's "not my job" or "not my problem" - you embrace it, escalate or forward it to the correct people, and then go back to what else you have to do. This type of thinking stops issues from being buried when they're noticed by someone, even if it's something outside of what they are judged on in their responsibilities (and performance reviews). A good hypothetical example of this is a crash condition you may trigger as an engineer. You might not quite know what is going on but you have a reproducible testcase of a crash condition in someone else's stack, and saying it's not your job means the bug doesn't get fixed or reported. Had you submitted that crash condition and made it temporarily your problem, you could have indirectly helped patch a deserialization bug that could've led to code execution on that tier with a more malicious testcase (i.e. exploit). In smaller companies, I think everything technical kind of ends up being your job, so your job becomes what you make of it at that moment. Do what needs to be done to ship the thing.

toomuchtodo 8y ago

Not patio11 but if he would be so kind as to allow me to hazard a guess I’d say intellectual curiosity and tenacity. Don’t stop asking why and keep digging. You’ll want to mix in emotional intelligence so when you communicate with stakeholders, you do so in a way that they feel a desire to assist you in your endeavor, perhaps finding ways to align everyone’s incentives for success. I could be entirely wrong though.

JoblessWonder 8y ago
I think you are spot on. I think a specific amount of hubris to go along with the intellectual curiosity and tenacity is important. It is the amount of confidence to say, "Hey, I can take this on. I'm not familiar with it directly but I understand enough of the context to help." You do have to be careful to not have too much confidence because then you will alienate your peers/management and be viewed as a know-it-all. It is a fine line that depends a lot on company culture. It sounds like Stripe really welcomes it, where other corporations are very "stay in your lane." I wear an insane amount of hats at my company because 1) I'm confident/stupid enough to believe I can handle it [see the part above about hubris] and 2) I actually have a track record of being able to tackle whatever has been thrown at me. My curiosity helps me from getting bored because I'm fine jumping from researching DC EV chargers to file permissions issues to tax law to.... anything.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- arandr0x 8y ago
  This is exactly true. Any tips how to identify companies that welcome this during interviews? (Or companies that don't.) I wouldn't have considered myself as having "hubris" but I have a kind of semi-wild enthusiasm for being able to do things that people have reacted badly to before for exactly the reason you said. I'm not sure how to signal to companies "my deal is I want to do things; I will more or less literally jump off my seat to assist anyone and no job is beneath me and I will stay up and work 16 hours straight if I screw something up; but I'm not really good at hearing no".
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    > I'm not sure how to signal to companies "my deal is I want to do things; I will more or less literally jump off my seat to assist anyone and no job is beneath me and I will stay up and work 16 hours straight if I screw something up; but I'm not really good at hearing no". "I have a proven track record of executing relentlessly, rapidly delivering value, and moving between internal roles effortlessly. What challenges are you facing I could contribute to in a meaningful way?" Be more comfortable hearing "No". Trust takes time to build.
  - adaptiveValleys 8y ago
    I'm very much like you, and I think startups/small companies with a flat management structure (i.e. level obfuscation as another commenter phrased it) or where most managers have engineering backgrounds. In my experience at large companies, on teams that were technical and heavily collaborated with engineering, but were not overseen by engineering managers. Middle management was entirely focused on optimizing for metrics that were either assigned to them, or would result in career progress; instead of what was best for the company. Regardless of whether the companies claimed to have a "nothing is someone else's problem" culture. As a result, any embodiment of that principle, was either punished or perceived as creating problems by non-technical managers. Even if direct praise was often received from engineers and their managers for those actions. In that workplace dynamic, it inherently carries a lot of risk and easily puts a target on your back. Besides posts like this that give first-hand accounts from employees. It's quite hard to identify what would be an honest signal of true dedication to that principle. Especially in interviews where you're a very qualified candidate, it's difficult to tell if interviewer is trying to selling you the idea of working there.
- rarecoil 8y ago
  I don't think it's hubris that you need. Hubris often inflates and becomes the problem that you have in the next statement of being a "know it all". Instead, I think the core of it is perpetuating "beginner's mind" - that is, you approach every problem with the enthusiasm of a beginner, not with conviction that something can or cannot be done. It's not necessarily pride or self-confidence as much as it is a belief that the thing can be done by someone, and it's just the knowledge you don't have that keeps you from accomplishing it.

chapium 8y ago

If everything is your job, how can you be measured by what is your job fairly?

draw_down 8y ago
Spoiler: There are plenty of things that people avoid doing because it's not their job, it's just that this situation must sometimes be finessed a bit. So, you don't avoid doing something because it's "not your job", you move it to another team who is better positioned to address the issue. Or maybe you deprioritize it because it doesn't fit in with your team's current priorities, etc. Eppur si muove.
icebraining 8y ago
Having worked for a tiny company, where this is pretty much inevitable, I'd say you define what your job is at the moment by what you commit yourself to do.
rarecoil 8y ago
I don't think that's the point of the statement. Facebook culture makes a similar statement: "Nothing at Facebook is someone else's problem." I don't take it to mean that you are supposed to be the Atlas of the organization, but rather that when you see problems and issues that might arise, you don't ignore them because it's "not my job" or "not my problem" - you embrace it, escalate or forward it to the correct people, and then go back to what else you have to do. This type of thinking stops issues from being buried when they're noticed by someone, even if it's something outside of what they are judged on in their responsibilities (and performance reviews). A good hypothetical example of this is a crash condition you may trigger as an engineer. You might not quite know what is going on but you have a reproducible testcase of a crash condition in someone else's stack, and saying it's not your job means the bug doesn't get fixed or reported. Had you submitted that crash condition and made it temporarily your problem, you could have indirectly helped patch a deserialization bug that could've led to code execution on that tier with a more malicious testcase (i.e. exploit). In smaller companies, I think everything technical kind of ends up being your job, so your job becomes what you make of it at that moment. Do what needs to be done to ship the thing.