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What I Miss About Working at Stripe

99 points by herbertl 4y ago

gonzaloalvarez 4y 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 4y 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.
  - ergocoder 4y 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.
    - crooked-v 4y ago
      Of course, there are many other people in exactly the same situation who end up with nothing at all because they guessed on the wrong startup to work for.
      - ergocoder 4y ago
        Are we talking about Stripe? Or you like to vent about startups in general? If this is just about startups in general, I fully agree. I didn't know we have moved on to a new topic but ok. I was responding to the parent thread regarding Stripe being a cult. No other cults pay most of their members in millions of dollars.
        crooked-v 4y ago
        The point is that getting paid that much is, for the average employee, purely a lucky result of having happened to choose the company that succeeded.
        ergocoder 4y ago
        Sure, so it is not related to stripe. I totally agree with you. Bad luck and/or choosing bad company would get you in a bad situation. Water is also wet.
    - tomnipotent 4y ago
      > OP probably takes in 3-5M a year. I would be surprised if they're bringing in more than $250k pre-tax.
      - kache_ 4y ago
        lol >levels.fyi
        ergocoder 4y ago
        250k is like base salary for staff level. It is not that high.
        tomnipotent 4y ago
        You're completely out of touch if you think that. Maybe a SWE/PM with 10 years of experience, but OP is a writer/researcher at a company of one. No one is paying mid-level PR/comms that well. At $250k you're in the top 5% of earners.
        ergocoder 4y ago
        OP was at Stripe. And while at Stripe, she likely earned way more than 250k a year. You are the one who is completely out of touch.
        russelldjimmy 4y ago
        I’m reminded of this article when I see a comment like this https://www.riknieu.com/the-gods-on-hackernews/ https://www.riknieu.com/the-gods-on-hackernews/
        RikNieu 4y ago
        You called? XD
        russelldjimmy 4y ago
    - junofan 4y ago
      OP is not an engineer.
- dataflow 4y 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 4y ago
    Nice, they will be the richest corpse in the cemetery.
erulabs 4y 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 4y ago
  +1 I'm a former stripe too, and miss the culture and team
elliotto 4y 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 4y 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.
  - j7ake 4y 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 4y 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.
elgolem89 4y ago
So, you miss burnout? lol
jackblemming 4y 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 4y ago
  The post reads a lot better skipping over the 15h days / pizza section. I wish the author had omitted that part.
  - jerojero 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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.
- elliotto 4y 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
armatav 4y 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 4y ago
  100% There were a lot of “buts” in there to weaken the whole point. You can ignore everything before that word.
doctaj 4y 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 4y 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 4y ago
  > A little bit culty to say the least. > Better yet, ship these people off to Ukraine. Holy shit did you proofread this
humanistbot 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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."
  - fatnoah 4y 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.
jerojero 4y 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 4y 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 4y ago
  > And all of this for what? To make their boss a billionaire at the cost of their own health
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Montaque 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y ago
sounds like stockholm syndrome
beastwinger 4y 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 4y ago
  OP is someone who worked in marketing and left 3 years ago. They're waxing poetic about a company that no longer exists.
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phsource 4y 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.
- borroka 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 https://www.linkedin.com/in/brie-wolfson-17758724). So that (at least partially) explains the stance on culture she espouses.
didibus 4y 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 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 4y ago
  Wait, the newsletter about building company culture is called "The Kool-Aid Factory"? In the "actually, it was Flavor-Aid" sense?
ROTMetro 4y 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.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
koch 4y ago
ITT: Gatekeeping what people are allowed to enjoy
BonoboIO 4y 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_war https://www.ted.com/talks/sebastian_junger_why_veterans_miss...
- j7ake 4y 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.
camgunz 4y 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.
koshergweilo 4y 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
j7ake 4y 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.
borroka 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y ago
  Amen
- twohaibei 4y 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.
- fatnoah 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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”.

99 points by herbertl 4y 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 4y 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.
- ergocoder 4y 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.
  - crooked-v 4y ago
    Of course, there are many other people in exactly the same situation who end up with nothing at all because they guessed on the wrong startup to work for.
    - ergocoder 4y ago
      Are we talking about Stripe? Or you like to vent about startups in general? If this is just about startups in general, I fully agree. I didn't know we have moved on to a new topic but ok. I was responding to the parent thread regarding Stripe being a cult. No other cults pay most of their members in millions of dollars.
      - crooked-v 4y ago
        The point is that getting paid that much is, for the average employee, purely a lucky result of having happened to choose the company that succeeded.
        ergocoder 4y ago
        Sure, so it is not related to stripe. I totally agree with you. Bad luck and/or choosing bad company would get you in a bad situation. Water is also wet.
  - tomnipotent 4y ago
    > OP probably takes in 3-5M a year. I would be surprised if they're bringing in more than $250k pre-tax.
    - kache_ 4y ago
      lol >levels.fyi
      - ergocoder 4y ago
        250k is like base salary for staff level. It is not that high.
        tomnipotent 4y ago
        You're completely out of touch if you think that. Maybe a SWE/PM with 10 years of experience, but OP is a writer/researcher at a company of one. No one is paying mid-level PR/comms that well. At $250k you're in the top 5% of earners.
        ergocoder 4y ago
        OP was at Stripe. And while at Stripe, she likely earned way more than 250k a year. You are the one who is completely out of touch.
        russelldjimmy 4y ago
        I’m reminded of this article when I see a comment like this https://www.riknieu.com/the-gods-on-hackernews/ https://www.riknieu.com/the-gods-on-hackernews/
        RikNieu 4y ago
        You called? XD
        russelldjimmy 4y ago
  - junofan 4y ago
    OP is not an engineer.
dataflow 4y 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 4y ago
  Nice, they will be the richest corpse in the cemetery.

erulabs 4y 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 4y ago
+1 I'm a former stripe too, and miss the culture and team

elliotto 4y 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 4y 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.
- j7ake 4y 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 4y 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.

elgolem89 4y ago

So, you miss burnout? lol

jackblemming 4y 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 4y ago
The post reads a lot better skipping over the 15h days / pizza section. I wish the author had omitted that part.
- jerojero 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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.
elliotto 4y 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

armatav 4y 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 4y ago
100% There were a lot of “buts” in there to weaken the whole point. You can ignore everything before that word.

doctaj 4y 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 4y 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 4y ago
> A little bit culty to say the least. > Better yet, ship these people off to Ukraine. Holy shit did you proofread this

humanistbot 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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."
- fatnoah 4y 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.

jerojero 4y 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 4y 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 4y ago
> And all of this for what? To make their boss a billionaire at the cost of their own health

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Montaque 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y ago

sounds like stockholm syndrome

beastwinger 4y 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 4y ago
OP is someone who worked in marketing and left 3 years ago. They're waxing poetic about a company that no longer exists.

deleted 4y ago

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phsource 4y 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.

borroka 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 https://www.linkedin.com/in/brie-wolfson-17758724). So that (at least partially) explains the stance on culture she espouses.

didibus 4y 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 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 4y ago
Wait, the newsletter about building company culture is called "The Kool-Aid Factory"? In the "actually, it was Flavor-Aid" sense?

ROTMetro 4y 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.

deleted 4y ago
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koch 4y ago

ITT: Gatekeeping what people are allowed to enjoy

BonoboIO 4y 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_war https://www.ted.com/talks/sebastian_junger_why_veterans_miss...

j7ake 4y 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.

camgunz 4y 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.

koshergweilo 4y 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

j7ake 4y 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.

borroka 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y ago
Amen
twohaibei 4y 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.
fatnoah 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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”.