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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

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.
- KoolKat23 4y ago
  And in the bigger scheme of things it's still a charade. These devs I'm sure are extremely talented, double your headcount and pay them half, everyone will still be smiling all the way to the bank. It's unfortunately nothing but greed.
  - j7ake 4y ago
    Doubling headcount may not solve your problem and can even delay projects because of the overhead for every added person. People in video game industry now this. You can actually delay a video game release by hiring more people on the team.
    - slavik81 4y ago
      That is Brook's Law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law
      - theonlybutlet 4y ago
        Interesting principle thanks

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.

KoolKat23 4y ago
And in the bigger scheme of things it's still a charade. These devs I'm sure are extremely talented, double your headcount and pay them half, everyone will still be smiling all the way to the bank. It's unfortunately nothing but greed.
- j7ake 4y ago
  Doubling headcount may not solve your problem and can even delay projects because of the overhead for every added person. People in video game industry now this. You can actually delay a video game release by hiring more people on the team.
  - slavik81 4y ago
    That is Brook's Law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law
    - theonlybutlet 4y ago
      Interesting principle thanks