A quick guide to Stripe’s culture
stripe.com
stripe.com
Preface: offline, I've heard good things about working at Stripe. So the following is intended as constructive.
The 'values' read more like a description of what the owners of any high-performance company would want out of their employees, transactionally-speaking. It reads much less like Stripe has a strong cultural identity. Reading this, it sort of feels like you are asking for a lot of my commitment to the Stripe mission without giving me any reason to buy into it.
I'm not sure there is anything idiosyncratic about this list. It doesn't really convey to me what it's really like to "be a Stripe" as opposed to "being a Googler".
Oh, and this phrase, "being a Stripe", it is the very worst kind of SV affectation. Maybe it works for people who are already at Stripe and proud to be there, but from the outside in, honestly it sends me cringing into the next universe. I don't think you have to be an enormous cynic to have that reaction to it.
Overall this seems to fail the test it sets itself: it doesn't convince me that the top team at Stripe are striving to building the best imaginable place to work, which surely is the best part about building your own company.
Maybe it's not a fair comparison, but contrast with the Valve new employee handbook, which makes it clear what it's actually like to work there and how their culture impacts the workplace.
Take Facebook's "Move fast and break things." The inverse would be something like "Take your time and do it right." Both of those values are great! They both have good and bad points and which one a company aspires to really tells you something about how they balance competing goals.
This method doesn't work 100% of the time, but it's pretty good.
For example, a company's value as stated might be "Education and experience don't matter and the most junior employee can argue with architectural choices as long as they are willing to argue cogently and with evidence." Then if you "invert" it you get "Education and experience matter; give weight to other people's expertise, education and experience in a field."
So both of them are "still something good", I guess. But a startup might choose the former.
If I've understood your suggestion correctly, then the problem with your suggestion is that some cultural values are about things that tech startups get wrong, and the inversion is not any good at all.
How do you invert something like "don't bully other employees or pick on them due to their belonging to some protected class - to overcome subconscious biases, if you do not belong to that class then stop for a moment and consciously treat them the same as if they belonged to the same class as yourself"?
What is the "inversion" of this obvious cultural choice which is obviously good?
Do you think that it is "bland and generic" just because it is obvious that it is right and its inversion is wrong?
I don't think it's obvious at all, and I think a lot of companies get these cultural values completely wrong, and, for example, do foster an atmosphere of harassment.
I want to get this comment away from the political so I'll make another, purely technical example: if a rule is, "make sure something actually builds before you check it in" then the inversion is "don't worry about making sure it builds before you check it in"? That's not "still something good" as you've stated, so...does it make the specific technical suggestion I listed "bland and generic"?
So I'm not sure how helpful your rule is.
1) I think a company that really epitomizes the point you are trying to make here is Slack. They seem to value diversity and inclusion more than any other SV company right now. This has probably helped them be successful, but to me it seems like they care about this value above and beyond the effect on their business. They want to make the world a better place and will expend resources to do so.
Conversely I slick of PayPal back in 2000. Levchin has spoken explicitly about how they valued hiring a team of people with very similar world views and how that helped them avoid wasting time arguing and instead focus on execution. I've also heard stories about how engineers would literally wrestle to solve disputes[1].
These sound like very different companies! I can imagine people that would relish working at the former and hate working at the latter (or vice versa). Both quite successful though.
2) WRT building before you check in that obviously brings me back to FB's "move fast and break things." I dunno about breaking the build as I've never worked there, but I definitely know that for the longest time FB was very very cavalier about breaking their external API. From one perspective that certainly sounds like a bad thing, but on the other hand maybe that "move fast" part really was a big part of the key to FB's success?
Perhaps some of the things that you think are absolutely wrong are just wrong according to your particular values. You should obviously want to work at a business that aligns with those values but perhaps there are other businesses that operate the opposite way and that oppositeness helps them succeed.
1. http://blakemasters.com/post/21437840885/peter-thiels-cs183-...
You might think I'm being silly and that real values aren't like that - that I'm just not seeing the alternative viewpoint or trade-off.
But I actually think there are a huge class of values like this.
I guess that's just my opinion.
https://www.ibm.com/ibm/values/us/
Just try to read it without your eyes glazing over. Can you even get to the end?
It's not that anything in the list is wrong or bad. It's just boring. It's obvious. Who cares? I bet 90% of IBM employees have never even read the damn thing much less ever actually changed anything about how they do their job because of it.
Great values statements are great because they are shocking, because they get people to pay attention, and because they actually get people to change how they do things. Move fast and BREAK THINGS(1). The god damn CEO telling employees to break things. That's how you differentiate yourself.
1. Sorry to keep using this example. It's just the best. I don't even particularly like Facebook but this is just a fucking great corporate values statement. It's so great that millions of people outside the company know it and have thought about it.
I've rewritten the top of the document to invert it.
I stopped, but obviously could have continued to go through the rest of the document. So by your proposed standard of "is the inverted version still good" the answer is "absolutely". But that doesn't make these good values!
I agree with you that it is not a great document at all. Even though it can be inverted without any problem or challenge. I simply can't accept the inversion tool you proffered.
Thanks!
(meanwhile all my other contri bributors
• Dedication to every client’s success
• Innovation that matters-for our company and for the world
• Trust and personal responsibility in all relationships
The obvious inversion (to me) is:
• Dedication to every client’s failure
• Innovation that matters to nobody
• Mistrust and lack of responsibility in all relationships
But actually, the positive values as written are contradictory. What if there's a conflict between innovation that matters to the world vs a client's success - which comes first? Both are positive. But these values don't discriminate.
You might have missed it beecause there are a couple of conversations going on in this thread. Pay attention to the usernames.
Anyway for the inversions, I am playing by that person's rules and following that person's terminology, not simply negating these statements.
Some statements can't be inverted. (For example it's not possible to invert "don't murder your colleagues.")
It could be there because the company is serious about combating harassment. Or it could be there because the company has a harassment problem and is covering its ass.
The lack of the clause could be because the company actually has a harassment culture or because the company has a great culture and has never seen the need to add the clause.
The point is that every company will say that they're against harassment so the only way you can tell how effective they are about it is through deeds not words.
But clauses that can be inverted positively actually have a chance of telling you something.
I think you hit the nail on the head when you called it a generic technical rule -- it's not a value that distinguishes the culture of the company. So while it might be sensible corporate policy, it doesn't really say anything about the company culture (not sure I would call it bland, but that's just wordsmithing).
Taking that a step further, suppose company policy included that and a host of other "bland technical rules" with which most practitioners agree. Then company values might state "We follow industry best practices." You can imagine an inversion, "We feel free to ignore best practices if it helps ship a product early", that would express something meaningful about the culture of working there.
Values are things you push for, but might not attain (think aspirational goals), but policies are "set in stone" and if you don't follow them you're punished.
Using the examples you mentioned that are clearly policies, "don't bully other employees or pick on them due to their belonging to some protected class" is a perfect example of a policy vs value. That's clearly a policy and one that if didn't exist at a job, I'd never join said company. Bullying isn't something we strive not to do, it's something we must not do, or else be fired. Checking in broken code may get you a slap on the wrist the first time, but repeatedly do that and again you'll likely be punished.
Secondly, I'm afraid I disagree with the essence of your comment, even given your weird definition of the meaning of policy.
It seems that your view is that the second a value is phrased in an actionable and effective way you call it a policy: I read your definition of a value as something that cannot be parsed or disagreed with such as "awesome is better than great and great is better than good; but good is better is than bad." That sounds like a value, but if I made it meaningful, actionable, and effective, then it would become a policy. (according to you.)
We are just too far apart to have a meaningful conversation I'm afraid. I read your comment carefully several times before coming to this conclusion.
1. You are wrong that all companies you know of have "comply with applicable laws" in their policies.
Before we get to your interpretation, first let's look at the proposed fact that all companies you know of have "comply with applicable laws" in their policies. There are extremely clear examples such as Uber which actively did not have such a policy as well as very actively keep regulators from enforcing laws against them: https://www.google.com/search?q=uber+regulators - read those links. "Uber used an elaborate secret program to hide from government regulators"; "Justice Department begins criminal probe into Uber's use of software to help drivers evade local regulators."
Here are Uber's 14 official cultural values: https://www.quora.com/What-are-Ubers-14-core-cultural-values which include "always be hustling" and "let builders build". One definition of hustle is a fraud or swindle, or obtaining illicitly. At any rate none of those values had anything like "comply with applicable laws." Likewise AirBNB certainly did not have a core policy of complying with hotel and zoning regulations.
Objectively speaking, it is absolutely false that "comply with applicable laws" is an actual policy at all companies you know of. You're simply mistaken about the world.
But let's step away from this and see why your interpretation is also wrong.
2. Your interpretation if you were right about 1 is wrong
So your facts themselves are wrong but let us assume the counterfactual that your facts are true, and that "all companies" have a "comply with applicable laws" in their policies.
Under your interpretation "comply with applicable laws" also subsumes "don't harrass people based on a protected class" since that's illegal.
Continuing with your (wrong) interpretation, when jsjohnst writes about that statement, "if it didn't exist at a job, I'd never join said company" then it's nonsense given that no such company can exist under your proposed interpretation.
So it is like saying "I would never join a company that did not abide by the laws of physics." Under your interpretation, a nonsense statement. (All companies abide by the laws of physics; all companies have a policy of "comply with applicable laws" under your wrong facts, and under your wrong interpretation this implies not harrassing people based on a protected class.)
Your interpretation changes jsjohnst's statement to be as meaningful as declaring he would not work for a company that did not abide by the laws of physics. Clearly he has no reason to express such a sentiment.
Therefore your interpretation must also be rejected from this conversation.
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I am sorry to be so harsh but as we are talking about values and policies, we cannot introduce wrongness on so many levels, because the results are disastrous.
I hope you do not feel that I have made this personal. I attacked only a 1-line interpretation you have offered and clearly you are free to change your mind. I do respect your contributions to hackernews and believe you are right on many other things, however, not this issue.
You're making yourself look silly, not harsh!
The point of an inversion test for values is to see if they have any information content (i.e. can act as a discriminator between companies). If the inversion of a value is something that you'd obviously not do, then it's not actually a value; it's just something that normal people should do. Policies are like this. If a policy is inverted and it sounds absurd or criminal, that's ok - policies are hard rules that define normal behaviour. But if a value is inverted and it sounds absurd, it's not actually a value.
Policies are a dividing line between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour.
Values suggest an inclination or bias between two acceptable behaviours.
The reason it's important to distinguish between them is that high-level policies, whether stated explicitly or not, are by and large the same at every company (precisely because their inverse is abnormal or ridiculous); values, on the other hand, make companies distinct. Reading about a company's policies won't tell you whether it's a good place to work or not, although reading between the lines of what they assert their policies to be, may give you a clue as to their values.
I will just quote one line. You write:
>Reading about a company's policies won't tell you whether it's a good place to work or not.
which is one of the most absurd things I've ever read. I don't see how we can engage in meaningful conversation, sorry. We can just drop it.
I just realized that in another comment you called me "silly" but we can just agree that we have very different viewpoints. We view these matters completely differently.
Well then, I'm very sorry to say, you don't understand what values mean or simply are just going for broke on being argumentative. GP did a better job than I explaining why you were mistaken on what a value is in this context, if you refuse to accept it, that's your right. Just realize you're risking coming off as someone who thinks the earth is flat.
You guys don't know what a policy is. you (jsjonst) think it's "follow all applicable laws" which subsume anything illegal like harassment over some protected status. so you think no company needs any specific policy about anything related to that.
your parent thinks policies don't say anything about what it's like to work somewhere.
you both think there are no values that are unambiguously good and whose alternative no one adopts or would adopt, but which are meaningful to adopt. To me "meaningfully adopt" means "immediately add actionable, objective policies everyone can follow" to. to me, that's how you adopt a value. through policies. to you two, there is no relationship between the two.
I simply disagree with both of you.
we have nothing further to talk about. we are too far apart.
I can agree to disagree with the two of you without calling you flat-Earthers.
we just have completely different opinions.
Believe it or not that is how companies use to operate till recently. Most companies didn't even have guides/books/web pages on culture.
I know, know, know to attract top talent you have to make a place look more than just a job like your on some epic moral spiritual journey.
Now I read this stuff and it sounds like a great mission statement that is being forced on to the employees in some disingenuous way to make people "passionately" pump out work overtime while blindly believing whatever the company says.
The biggest irony out of all the culture "guides/books/page" is that they often tout or say how much they are for diversity (I know stripe doesn't in this case). It seems wrong to say you are for diversity when you are requiring people to think and act a certain way because you think its optimal.
This is because whether or not a company acknowledges it, a culture does exist and whatever that culture looked like had real impact. I agree that companies often take it too far, and a company saying it's culture is one way doesn't mean that it's entirely accurate. But it's generally better to be explicit about your culture if you can be so that employees have realistic expectations.
Of course culture concerns existed before but it was way more spelt out if you will.
When I used to ask companies "hey what is your culture like" they would say...
Well:
* We work 9-5 but when something big is due people stay to get the job done
* Our dress code is blah blah
* We have a yearly off site trip to some where
* You get this much vacation and we encourage taking it
* We have a diversity program
* We have continued education programs
* We love families and provide such and such
* If you have any problems we have a unbiased HR teams
All of these are concrete!!!
Far more useful than the ambiguous stuff Stripe is saying that almost all companies would say regardless.
A company's culture is how it thinks about resolving disputes, making decisions internally, and how employees should generally behave towards one another, especially when in conflict. It's not the benefits, or dress code, or HR department.
As Uber's proven, just because everyone gets to wear t-shirts, doesn't mean they aren't jerks to each other.
In fact I believe it isn't stating concrete things (ie a lack of formality) that may actually lead to things like Uber.
When you say this is the hours, and this your vacation time, and this is who you talk to about personal issues (aka HR) you are setting an expectation. And yeah you set clear goddamn concrete things like if you get caught harassing or fishing of the company pier we will terminate you. You tell them concretely up front.
When you don't set guidelines people can forget its work and do just plain inappropriate things!
I'm sure Uber has/had a similar manifesto. Do you think they put in the whole sexual harassment in that document.
It's like a government writing what the culture of a country should be.
You really need blind interviews to know what the culture is.
See: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/07/uber-work...
Yes, it's possible that guidelines misrepresent a company's culture. But it seems unfair and arguably, unproductive, to presume that. It's an open statement of what they want their culture to be, which seems a lot better than simply not having any goal at all.
Are you really saying you'd prefer to work for a company that doesn't think about what its internal culture and values should be?
maybe.... kidding. culture is really hard to define. But yes your point is taken but my point is by defining concrete things you can create a culture.
For example one concrete thing could be a company that says our top level executives or performers are only paid 3x than the lowest paid employee. That would indicate a lot more to me than the fluff that Stripe wrote.
> and values should be?
I absolutely care about this. This IMO is different than culture (or maybe they overlap). You can have intense high work ethic culture that have many of the big picture same values as one that does not (one example would be school systems).
You can also have very similar companies in goals and values in completely different areas of the world that have completely different culture because naturally that region has a different culture.
That being said you make valid points.
This is a really big problem for companies. Trust is not something that you can fake or "present" in an etiquette sense of the word. When workers at a company do not like each other, they do not trust each other. Where they do not trust each other, a growing bureaucracy creates formal process creep to ensure that different interests are protected. Bureaucracy and formal process slow work down and prevent the organization from adapting quickly to changing market conditions. Organizations which cannot adapt in time with the argument lose touch, become irrelevant, decline, and eventually close.
The specific culture which evolves at the company is less important than its role in ensuring that the people in the company like each other and therefore can continue to trust each other.
Some personalities might be better at different roles. My point is not everyone has to like everyone.
Oof. Two weasel words in the one sentence. Especially in such an important sentence, that shoots up a big red flag for me.
edit: It didn't sound as nuts as Netflix's hiring manifesto, but something about it still seems fishy.
But working here will mean some late nights, some weekends, and (especially if you end up in a position of significant responsibility) paying attention to email even during off-hours.
"We work hard to staff projects realistically. If overtime is needed we either compensate you by paying for additional hours or you can take the time off later."
This makes me feel like I am being respected.
I was pretty sure, based on the research and discussions I had with people in the company, that they did take family very seriously, certainly much more seriously than the corporation I am working for currently.
I didn't get the job, but I believed it enough that I was ready to join if an offer was made. I like to think of myself as a dedicated father to 3 young children.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Japan#Ties_with_bus...
Once I decided I didn't want to torture myself or my subordinates it became very easy to kill that culture - on my team at least. I told HR that I would not do OT until they provided x FTEs (which was slightly less than the peak usage rate of my team). When they balked at hiring, I told my team members to go home at 5:45 every day. Suddenly urgent dev requests are not urgent anymore and we have less meetings.
If one's manager is selfish or weak, he or she probably wants to score brownie points off of a subordinate's service overtime. It's easy for them to say "this is how it is in Japan" - but it's not a Japanese thing, just a weak leadership thing
There's quite a number of people still there after, say, 10pm.
In the cases where I know the people very well this is especially interesting because they are incredibly nice people that told me the culture is overly focused on not making people feel bad. Coming from these people this statement was a real eye opener.
I currently work in a very "nice" culture. People from places where being nice isn't a priority have trouble with it sometimes. One thing people tell me I'm good at in this culture is delivering constructive criticism in a way that is accepted and acted on without the recipient feeling "bad." All of that said, Stripe sounds like it takes the work culture I'm in today and squares it. Many people will not be able to operate effectively in that kind of culture -- both in terms of being able to deliver criticism with the right degree of nicety and in terms of not receiving or being able to understand criticism that would help them improve their performance. This is potentially a detriment to those people and to the company.
If I were Stripe I would cover this head on. In the spirit of what's already there, I'd add something like "are you capable of performing at your best without direct feedback about areas where you can improve?"
As I constantly interact both with europeans and americans, it's really shocking sometimes seeing the difference and how crippled the communication lines are when constantly worried about the form of the message.
The kicker is that communications that don't have that extra layer to them don't feel bad or are offensive in any way, unless people go out of their way to be rude/aggressive. It just feels a lot better: it's more honest, more trustworthy, you're not left wondering if the person on the other end is saying nice things just to make you feel better.
This usually leaves me with a bitter taste in my mouth where these kinds of relationships have lots of asterisks to them and I don't feel I can trust the other person. I can't even imagine what it'd be like to be surrounded in that environment at work and feeling that way about all my colleagues.
(I'll add to that though that as someone who interacts with Stripe a lot, I've had nothing but positive experiences with them so YMMV)
Paragraph 2 => You will work nights and week ends all the time. You'll never be compensated for it.
- "Don't let Stripe go down. Uptime is more important than features. Failure is not an option."
- "Don't lose a transaction. We handle real money and people depend on us not to lose it."
- "Don't let our customers get ripped off. Security of funds really matters."
Our users entrust us with their money, their businesses, and their livelihoods. Drivers in San Francisco and jewelry sellers in Latvia and software developers in Tokyo rely on Stripe to feed their families. When we mess up, miss a deadline, or slow down, it matters. We take that responsibility seriously.
We could potentially have phrased this in terms of e.g. uptime, but the gory details are covered in an appropriate amount of detail in internal documents but not really appropriate for a guide we give candidates so that they have signal on whether they'd enjoy working here. For one thing, it's hard without an in-depth understanding of the system architecture to map a particular technical concern (like e.g. API uptime of a particular component) to the specific way that would manifest in a user's life. For another, our concerns are actually a lot broader than the technical part of the business. There is a lot of hard and important work that happens between HTTP 200 and money actually showing up in a real person's bank account. If we were shooting for "Be perfect at engineering 100% of the time" that would both probably be a poor target as an engineering matter and, incredibly, not be nearly good enough.
On the plus side: we've got lots of intellectually interesting problems to be found while poking around the plumbing of the economy. If that sounds interesting, we're always happy to chat.
On top of that every single thing I've seen stripe do publicly has been well executed and gives the overall impression of competence, solidity and good service.
I guess that part is intentional, if you are handling money that's exactly what you'd want people to think.
This is not an exercise in creative writing, you aren't trying to create atmosphere, you're trying to convey information. That sort of writing requires sentences that are direct and to the point. I will be reading that page because I'm interested in working for Stripe and want more information that helps me decide if I want to, not for entertainment. So I want to know the facts. The facts we're conveyed perfectly by the GP in bullet points but your sentences put more emphasis on Latvian can drivers' families. When I read this I'm trying to achieve something, I am thinking about working at Stripe right now, so when I'm reading this I don't care about Latvian can drivers. What I do care about "highly mission critical operation."
Microsoft's mission statement was once "A computer on every desk, running Microsoft software". Mission accomplished in the 1990s.
Patio11's response is stated at a reasonable level of abstraction, and he even explains why he does so. I can understand if that's not your style, but you might want to consider that some people consider his comment to be a very clear reply with actionable information.
Being intentional about a company's culture and practicing it on a consistent basis, from top to bottom, is very valuable in attracting talent and getting focus on the key things in the business. In our monthly checkins with employees, we reference our core values during the conversations.
We intend to keep curating on high quality full handbooks only but perhaps it's worth thinking about other sub sites or a blog at well at some point.
Glad you like it!
And massive bonus points for not heaving the bloated, disease-spreading corpse of identity politics into view!
> Stripes
Oiy. Painting all of your employees in a branded moniker isn't a great way to start off. It immediately creates a "us" vs. "them" attitude - "Oh, she wasn't a real Stripe."
> Many successful Stripes ensure that they have dinner with their families or friends almost every evening.
"Many". "Successful". "Almost". Lots of weasel words that indicate that Stripe is unwilling to make a commitment to build a company where people don't need to stay late, because they want to keep their employee count low. I've worked in the financial industry for three separate jobs now; I know it's possible.
Also, the only reference to holiday is that it is highly likely to be interrupted. When the entirety of your conversation about maintaining a balance between work and the remaining portion of poeple's lives consists of how it will be interrupted (and that it's perfectly acceptable), you're not describing a healthy environment, IMO.
If you really want to attract high skill, experienced talent, talk about how you're trying to fix this problem.
> not just because we don’t have cubicles
So, open office plans? Not very employee friendly. I'd personally rather have a cubicle.
> We’re moving quickly, changing regularly
Last time I heard this, the company had moved from Angular to React to Dart, each time before the previous re-write was completed. It's left a nightmare for the remaining front end folks to maintain and clean up. They also did yearly re-orgs that changed folk's titles and job responsibilities.
And lets be honest, stability is important to employee morale and happiness. If it wasn't, a lot less ink would have been spilled on topics like "Who Moved My Cheese?" The lack of stability is not really a good thing.
> We care about being right and it often takes reasoning from first principles to get there.
First principles from computer science or real life programming? The two are not very compatible, and it sounds a lot like a recipe for constantly re-learning lessons.
> Expect to receive feedback, and sometimes unsolicited work, from talented coworkers with less state about your projects than you have
AKA time lost bringing new folks up to speed, just to have them leave again shortly.
> we want to feel serious responsibility for the full long-term consequences of what we do.
<rant>Do you feel serious responsibility for the innocent parties caught up in your fraud protection schemes; for freezing your client's money and making investment profit on it?
I know how hard fraud is to combat; but there are too many people caught in the crossfire to not acknowledge it.</rant>
Long story short, the culture described here sounds like a soft sell into an environment that would be pretty hard to work in, especially if you have a life outside of work.
If those are truly representative to Stripe's values, then Stripe isn't a place I would want to work, for the reasons I pointed out. I would also not recommend it to anybody, based on what I perceive to be unhealthy values.
It's necessary in this case. If it isn't made clear that the word for someone who works at Stripe is "Stripe", then people will apply common grammatical conventions and call them "Stripers"... which has an unfortunate autocorrection.
If I'm talking to someone uninitiated and I say "I am a Stripe" they would look at me like am have 30 heads. Not a good way to make outside friends. I would say "I work at the payment processing company Stripe."
I don't get the whole "Stripes" thing. Nor do I get "Whovian" or "Dead Head” or anything in-between. You work somewhere/watch something/listen to something, that doesn't require a cutesy label. (IMHO of course, your results may vary.)
This seems like some kind of self-selection proxy.
When I was younger I thought cubicles were the worst: the pinnacle of boring-grey office culture. Now that I'm older, I yearn for a quiet place to call my own.
'Cubicles' if done right can be pretty damn good! When I worked at IBM, everybody got a 'PWA': four 9ft tall walls, a sliding door, a corner desk, and a few shelves. It was amazing, and took up no more space than a standard cubicle.
But they have Visa as an investor - while they want to be the payment processor of the web, the will probably have some investor guidelines to live with.