I am glad author found the time at Stripe to be a great experience, but the points mentioned may not be rosy to everyone. This is not to say Stripe is a bad com

I am glad author found the time at Stripe to be a great experience, but the points mentioned may not be rosy to everyone. This is not to say Stripe is a bad company, but what works for you, might not for everyone. > Keeping team channels public helps to keep everyone on the straight and narrow in avoiding badmouthing other people or teams in the company. Shit-talking was culturally unacceptable in the team. If a private DM conversation started to go in that direction, someone would speak up to take the conversation to a public channel, and things returned to a more constructive tone. The intention isn't bad here, but if it isn't said on Slack, it will mostly be left unsaid or will be said in closely knit groups. It's not always possible to be critical of someone on a public channel. The culture of everything must be public can easily result in perpetuating bad hires. Of course, no reason to worry if everyone is 10/10 employee, but this isn't always the case. I mean, are you suggesting that there were no mumblings of mismanagement after Stripe laid off 10% of workforce? > The Atlas team does track date estimations, but those dates are always accompanied with a confidence level in that date. It is understood and embraced that these numbers will change over time, and changes are always communicated clearly in writing, and sometimes discussed in weekly “Ships Review” meetings. This just becomes another field that employees have to fill, without adding any real value. Software development is simply a messy process. How can I estimate my chances of reaching the due date? It all depends on unexpected roadblocks, and the problem being more complicated that I initially estimated. > The Atlas team also reinforces this in their Friday wrap-up meetings in a segment called “Mad Props”. The /++ feedback is collected by the meeting DRI (see below) into a meeting doc, and others from the team can add their own kudos and mad props to that section. The person doing the thanking reads or mentions their items for the team to hear in the meeting. Again this isn't problematic, but a mechanism for gratitude isn't unique to Stripe either. In fact, I have only few companies where it wasn't there. The problem is that it quickly becomes where everyone is thanking everyone. And maybe even thanking for not the right reasons. Let's say Employee A thinks that creating lots of UML diagrams is a good quality and they thank Employee B for working that way. But I simply think it's a waste of time. Since you publicly thanked someone for that, it'll make everyone believe that's the ideal way to work. It's possible that I might be wrong, but public gratitude unintentionally signals what is valued at the company, which may or may not be in best interests of it.