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In my experience, Stripe is full of very smart, interesting people, but most of what's described here is an aspirational view of how the current executives thin

In my experience, Stripe is full of very smart, interesting people, but most of what's described here is an aspirational view of how the current executives think product should work at Stripe. That's OK, in some sense any view of the "self" is going to be aspirational, but it seems naive/koolaidy to believe that all of the following things can be true at the same time (these are all quotes from the article): - "it’s an incredibly deep-thinking culture. It’s a written culture really focused on getting to the right answer" - "The company is especially dedicated to moving very, very fast." - "deep thinking and speed are combined with a substantial amount of user focus and user empathy." - "We talk a lot about building multi-decade abstractions." - "Quick-thinking, quick-acting people do really well here." - "It’s craftsmanship and a huge amount of dedication to getting all of the details right." - "There is just the feeling that it should all be exceptional. We should push for an extreme quality bar on all of the fronts." This seems like a pretty standard fluff piece that's aimed at recruiting PMs who want to identify as near-super-human talent. Stripe is a fantastic place to work but this kind of communication does them and their employees a disservice -- that said I'm not a recruiter and can't say what kind of tactics work best for finding PMs.

czbond 5y ago
I can see how many of those items fit - at times I thought they were literally describing me. Founder that got into products at first using CompSci skills - but finally realized it is the problem solving through business that kept me engaged and pulling me back. The 30 year vision helps stretch the mind from what is around us (pulling from what is know) to creating an ideal solution and working backwards.
msiliski 5y ago
Michael from Stripe here (the interviewee). While it’s true we are always hiring, this wasn’t meant to be a recruiting piece—it’s a personal interview Ken (the author) asked me to do based on demand from his readers. It’s fair to say this is how we want product building to work, and we certainly don’t always live up to it. But I do think it’s broadly reflective of the operating model our product managers, engineers, etc. aspire to and what we hold ourselves accountable to. Do we fall short of our own aspirations regularly? Absolutely.
- peter_l_downs 5y ago
  The interview is certainly useful in that it reflects Stripe's aspirations as a product team. I would have found this interview much more interesting if you had been able to go into detail about the reality of working on a product team where you're holding yourselves to a set of mutually incompatible constraints -- what tradeoffs you tend to make, how you think about making them, what are the common failure and success modes. Maybe a good follow-up post; consider this a single reader's suggestion, not a demand :)
hitekker 5y ago
I think little of zeal outside of close-knit groups. It takes too much effort, it's easily misdirected, and it can be faked. At scale, it incurs a deficit between input and output, willpower and reality, and eventually achieves its close cousin and exact opposite, cynicism. In the world after zeal, trying becomes pretending, enthusiasm becomes opportunism; anything done the cause becomes suspect in the eyes of those who had to suffer the cause. The inability to control zeal seems common to communist republics[1], "rocket-ship" startups, and other half-baked endeavors that don't know how to get work done without demanding religious fervor/perfection from their unfortunate subordinates. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Soviet_man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Soviet_man -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_Sovieticus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_Sovieticus
- ngc248 5y ago
  This is a very nice analysis, highlighting the problem which creates the in-crowd who are zealous and the out-crowd who have become cynics.
captainoats 5y ago
I hear this “fast is slow, slow is fast” type culture perpetuated a lot in product. What they’re describing is lots of experience, practice and general intelligence. Always feels pretty masturbatory when you write it out.
vbtemp 5y ago
Am I alone here in feeling like that all sounds incredibly exhausting and like a pretty draining place to work, and not-so-subtly seeks to attract workaholics? It's like there's lip-service to things that we as software engineers enjoy about our profession (eg craftsmanship, deep thinking, high-quality work), but it comes across as just throat clearing before hammering in "moving very, very fast". I read that constant repetition of "moving fast" as "you will always have an endless backlog of work that you will nonetheless have to endlessly crank through with all your energy, and our hiring/retention policy only selects for that"
- ZephyrBlu 5y ago
  > Am I alone here in feeling like that all sounds incredibly exhausting and like a pretty draining place to work, and not-so-subtly seeks to attract workaholics? Yes, but if someone loves what they do why wouldn't they want to immerse themselves in it and get paid well for it?
  - onlyfortoday2 5y ago
    because they will burnout.....
  - mikeortman 5y ago
    How to burnout 101. Setting an unrealistic performance expectation by doing what you love is fine, but that expectation won’t cease once you are asked to do something uninteresting or frustrating.
- onlyfortoday2 5y ago
  nope! I agree with you 100%
- fukmbas 5y ago
  Get used to it because with product+agile that is how everything is going. Bunch of MBA middlemen trying to make your hour as productive as possible for the product. You get little say in your day to day, constantly managed and keeping admin productivity sites up to date so they can allocate you for what they see fit. RIP tech jobs, enjoy it while you can.

czbond 5y ago

I can see how many of those items fit - at times I thought they were literally describing me. Founder that got into products at first using CompSci skills - but finally realized it is the problem solving through business that kept me engaged and pulling me back. The 30 year vision helps stretch the mind from what is around us (pulling from what is know) to creating an ideal solution and working backwards.

msiliski 5y ago

Michael from Stripe here (the interviewee). While it’s true we are always hiring, this wasn’t meant to be a recruiting piece—it’s a personal interview Ken (the author) asked me to do based on demand from his readers. It’s fair to say this is how we want product building to work, and we certainly don’t always live up to it. But I do think it’s broadly reflective of the operating model our product managers, engineers, etc. aspire to and what we hold ourselves accountable to. Do we fall short of our own aspirations regularly? Absolutely.

peter_l_downs 5y ago
The interview is certainly useful in that it reflects Stripe's aspirations as a product team. I would have found this interview much more interesting if you had been able to go into detail about the reality of working on a product team where you're holding yourselves to a set of mutually incompatible constraints -- what tradeoffs you tend to make, how you think about making them, what are the common failure and success modes. Maybe a good follow-up post; consider this a single reader's suggestion, not a demand :)

hitekker 5y ago

I think little of zeal outside of close-knit groups. It takes too much effort, it's easily misdirected, and it can be faked. At scale, it incurs a deficit between input and output, willpower and reality, and eventually achieves its close cousin and exact opposite, cynicism. In the world after zeal, trying becomes pretending, enthusiasm becomes opportunism; anything done the cause becomes suspect in the eyes of those who had to suffer the cause. The inability to control zeal seems common to communist republics[1], "rocket-ship" startups, and other half-baked endeavors that don't know how to get work done without demanding religious fervor/perfection from their unfortunate subordinates. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Soviet_man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Soviet_man -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_Sovieticus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_Sovieticus

ngc248 5y ago
This is a very nice analysis, highlighting the problem which creates the in-crowd who are zealous and the out-crowd who have become cynics.

captainoats 5y ago

I hear this “fast is slow, slow is fast” type culture perpetuated a lot in product. What they’re describing is lots of experience, practice and general intelligence. Always feels pretty masturbatory when you write it out.

vbtemp 5y ago

Am I alone here in feeling like that all sounds incredibly exhausting and like a pretty draining place to work, and not-so-subtly seeks to attract workaholics? It's like there's lip-service to things that we as software engineers enjoy about our profession (eg craftsmanship, deep thinking, high-quality work), but it comes across as just throat clearing before hammering in "moving very, very fast". I read that constant repetition of "moving fast" as "you will always have an endless backlog of work that you will nonetheless have to endlessly crank through with all your energy, and our hiring/retention policy only selects for that"

ZephyrBlu 5y ago
> Am I alone here in feeling like that all sounds incredibly exhausting and like a pretty draining place to work, and not-so-subtly seeks to attract workaholics? Yes, but if someone loves what they do why wouldn't they want to immerse themselves in it and get paid well for it?
- onlyfortoday2 5y ago
  because they will burnout.....
- mikeortman 5y ago
  How to burnout 101. Setting an unrealistic performance expectation by doing what you love is fine, but that expectation won’t cease once you are asked to do something uninteresting or frustrating.
onlyfortoday2 5y ago
nope! I agree with you 100%
fukmbas 5y ago
Get used to it because with product+agile that is how everything is going. Bunch of MBA middlemen trying to make your hour as productive as possible for the product. You get little say in your day to day, constantly managed and keeping admin productivity sites up to date so they can allocate you for what they see fit. RIP tech jobs, enjoy it while you can.