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> It's difficult because it's very infectious and it's extremely stressful to everyone who doesn't fit in with the expectations.

Not only that, but it can breed a culture of toxic behavior towards those that don't meet expectations. I was new at a company that was extremely proud of its culture of support and collaboration, blah blah blah. I get pulled into a meeting with an architect who was not in my chain of command who ambushed me by telling me that he thought I wasn't good enough to work there and I should be concerned about my job status. I was floored.

The worst part was that he was universally beloved within the company, he had incredible charm that he could turn on whenever he wanted to, the dude was a straight up narcissist.

Long story short, I reported him and nothing really happened. He was on my team so I had to see him every day, and I wound up leaving shortly after. Abusers like that hide in plain sight and writing rah rah pieces how amazing a culture is is what makes it harder to find them.

I'm sorry to tell you I don't see what is so toxic about this. Are we just supposed to assume you're some excellent employee? Perhaps he's beloved because he is honest, direct, and puts the company's interests (and those of the employees who built that positive culture) first.

Come on there is nothing untoxic about telling a newcomer they don't belong. At best this person may not have ramped up at the same speed. There are much better ways of giving this feedback instead of being hostile no? What you now want this new employee to walk in eggshells from this moment onwards?

Yea, no. Been in numerous situations where it was painfully obvious, within a week, that a certain individual was fundamentally a poor fit. It's not that they are bad people or incapable of any good work, just not in the role or company they were hired into.

Sometimes it's better to sever ties quickly, than have the employee remain miserable trying to make it work at a company he or she will never sync up with, and the existing team losing steam and getting frustrated as it is dragged down.

This individual was not in my chain of command. If you're not my boss, then you have no right to threaten my job status as a coworker. That is fundamentally abusive and manipulative and is textbook harassment meant to intimidate and cause fear. There's nothing constructive about it.

I am struggling to picture this - there is no indication this Architect was the person's manager. The manager is the one who should be the one giving feedback based on observation and evidence and not just gut feel. Onboarding takes time - especially at bigcos the stack is so inhouse and complex no way even the most senior person (this person didtn seem so) takes atleast O(weeks) if not O(months). Even if the architect had some authority (and evidence) to provide feedback this just looks like a prison ritual of intimidation/hazing. How is this acceptable?

Also (and the OP could be hiding info) there doesnt seem to be any indication of this being a cultural issue - unless the OP did something so in-your-face illegal/offensive. Again the point is not to dissect what the OP did/did not do but really - what happened to welcoming and being kind to your colleagues?

I'd just say there are two sides to every story, and we've only heard one, vaguely. I'm not saying the architect guy was definitely right or justified, but, having seen various workplace conflicts, I'm not going to automatically condemn him or the company based on the OP's version of the story only.

If someone is not a good fit it’s their managers job to fix the issue. Professionally and without impugning someone’s abilities.

Telling someone that they aren’t good enough to work at a company is a level of unprofessional that puts the whole company in question. If they put someone that bad in a position of responsibility the most likely scenario is the company is a clown car.

If you think you can tell someone that you are most likely a clown.

And if the manager can't fix it? And if existing colleagues are repeatedly complaining about the quality of the new person's work product? If people are having to repeatedly stay late or cancel vacation days to re-do the new person's tasks?

Idealism is great, but most of us work in the real world.

The manager fires the person, professionally and without attacking the person. You do this by citing specific instances of things that are the cause of the firing. All of those things are things that the manager has previously discussed with the person and helped them improve.

This is manager 101 stuff. Further, if I were a manager and found out another employee told my employee they didn’t belong at the company I’d make it my business to ensure that behavior was addressed by the persons manager. Because it’s absolutely clown shoes.

And given your implication that I don’t work in the “real world”, I’ve been working as a software professional for over 2 decades in everything from valley darling startups to rough and tumble prop trading firms. The behavior mentioned wouldn’t have been tolerated at any of them.

You really have a thing for clowns...

When you post a comment where the only possible outcome is not just positive, but Hollywood film stuff (protagonist is struggling in a new situation and gets bullied, boss/friend/wise elder shows him path to success, protagonist is triumphant over the bully -- literally the exact plot of Karate Kid, Rocky III, Die Hard and countless others), then it reads as idealistic. Your next comment, where you finally acknowledge that not everything is fixable and firing might be an outcome, is a lot more reasonable.

“Don’t tell people they aren’t good enough to work at your company” is not Hollywood film stuff. It’s the basics of being a normal person and well well below the basics of professional behavior.

It would be reasonable to fire the architect in OPs example if it was a repeated behavior that had been discussed with them. If it wasn’t a recurring behavior the appropriate response is for their manager to document it as unacceptable with the person.

Telling someone they aren't good enough to work at <x> is never appropriate framing. A good leader can help people see opportunities to grow and show them their pitfalls without framing it as something fundamental to the person

If it’s unfixable, the person should be fired (by their boss). If it’s fixable, they should be explained why and how (by their boss).

For us to come around and examine/judge her as if she was a brainwashed fool in a startup cult makes no sense.

First, she chose to work there. She was not forced to. She has agency; she could leave at any time.

Secondly, the discussion is about work culture. It's not that she painted the work culture as toxic; she painted the work culture as inviting, meaningful, and something that helped her grow, despite the long hours. Surely something can be gleaned from that.

Thirdly, this is a startup culture. You can't choose to work in a high-paced kitchen, and complain about the heat. If you can't take the heat, leave. It is the company's problem to find someone to replace you and your value; just like you can't blame the world to change and fit you (as you must make the change to yourself), you can't blame the company to adjust around your style. Companies are commercial ventures; they have different goals and expectations than the individuals working for them.

> ... as if she was a brainwashed fool in a startup cult makes no sense. > First, she chose to work there. She was not forced to. She has agency; she could leave at any time.

The whole point of the concept of brainwashing is that people can be manipulated or sucked into making nominally free choices that are not really free choices, or at least not what they would say are in their interests if they were out of that situation.

Whether this is really true for her, I don't know, it's hard to tell from outside, and it gets into slippery concept of free will if you look too closely. But people can be manipulated.

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.

> And all of this for what?

To make their boss a billionaire at the cost of their own health

A senior eng who joined Stripe on 2015 would make 3-5m USD per year.

I don't think they would complain that their bosses become billionaires.

[ citation needed ]

Levels.fyi

If you joined Stripe in 2019, Stripe is ~20b.

A senior eng gets 200k in cash and 250k in stock per year.

Today Stripe valuation is 79b.

This eng would earn 1.2m per year.

Now imagine you joined Stripe in 2015 where Stripe was worth ~5b.

I have a few friends joining stripe at that time, and that's where 3-5m per year comes from.

I completely understand your point and sympathize with employees who are working near minimum wage and don't have much of a choice, but you are way off the mark here.

I'm pretty sure Stripe SWEs are, on average, some of the highest paid employees on the planet. It's entirely their prerogative if they choose to sacrifice their health for it. They have options to leave if they wanted to.

yeah right, we're not talking about a barista here, these devs were making good money

> 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.

Do you really think that allowing people to make transactions/trades (that they previously couldn't easily) isn't a very socially valuable thing? And do you really think it's comparable to starting a war?

And FWIW, I don't think starting a war will increase the total GDP of the world; it'll probably reduce it...

It’s now a commodity business with a range of competitors. Do people at Stripe really become this bamboozled? You’re not changing the world anymore, you’re just making money. You’re mercenaries who've been fooled into believing you’re missionaries. The counter-factual of a Stripeless world in 2022 is the market share gets split across the other providers and the world keeps on trucking. Get over yourselves.

> The counter-factual of a Stripeless world in 2022

The author worked there from 2015-2019.

Yes and by that point both Braintree and Square were in competition iirc. Probably others too.

And existence of competition, somehow, disables ability of company to innovate? Yeah, world could exist without them. It also could without any other innovative company - we would just have some slightly worse alternatives.

Btw - I'm not involved with Stripe in any way (at best they might be competition in some areas), but they have some things that are objectively better quality than other vendors.

Umm sure this could be the noblest thing but nothing in the constitution about being love with the company mission. It is a job. They pay you, you provide labor. As long as the employee isn't acting maliciously or maligning the company what gives?

Then in ten years you write post on HN "I have objectively good life, but it feels empty - what to do?" - every now and then there's a couple hitting front page.

True but then it is a "you" problem rather than a company->employee expectation problem no? ie passion to a company's purpose is more of a selling point (and bargaining factor even for lower comp) than a daily pledge of allegiance job requirement. I am pretty sure when my parents worked in a postal office sorting mail as new (and highly qualified) immigrants they did it to feed me and my siblings rather than due to a passion for mail sorting.

I think there's couple layers to that. I would argue, that your parents would probably consider their job boring, underpaid, but in the end necessary and beneficial for regular people. Many of developers writing these posts, seem to have bullshit job complex.

Passion is very strong word. Maybe just sense, that what you're doing is actually useful and not just justification of existence of your managers job? Personally I perform much worse if I see, that project is waste of everyone's time.

Also - if your dilemma is feeding or not your children, then job satisfaction might be less important. It's obvious that software developers have extremely good position in this regard.

Original article is about someone's warm memories of working for Stripe (for I assume exceptional compensation, far from any food-related issues), and a lot of people complained in comments, because in their view, what you doing 8h a day MUST be least important thing in your life, no matter what.

+1 Intrinsic motivation is important (and personal too). But that I am not sure companies gets to demand that out of you as long as you are delivering (and not maligning). When this gets equated "well you are not putting 200% so you are not motivated" that is where I see the problem.

Also I am totally fine if the author of this article is reminiscing good old days of gruel and pain. I just couldnt find anything to empathize with her about and felt sad for her. Again if masochism is the author's thing then good for them.

I also think, that company cannot demand it. However some companies are able to convince you, that what they do is worthwhile use of your time - in general it feels better to work in places like this and I can see, that someone has warm memories of them, even if there were some pain along the way.

Wether its genuine or just bullshit facade just to squeeze you more - it's other conversation.

Also I get, that not everyone are into this (however I believe many end bitter over this later) or can afford it due to current life situation.

Yes that is why I said "some countries" and not the world. It is hyperbole. Of course I think Stripe provides a valuable service, but I don't think it is more valuable than, say, a hospital. I don't think it provides a service that is valuable enough for people to have to be putting 15 hours of work a day and for people to be stressed to the point of crying in the workplace because of it.

And my biggest problem is that, it is very likely that the culture that is fostered is precisely one where "the mission" as in "increment the internet's GDP" is seen as a form of life-or-death situation. That workers at these companies genuinely end up believing these things. But where really is the value that they are generating going to? In reality, these workers are being over-worked to generate value for the VCs and share holders of these corporations.

I mean, i there's another comment pretty much sums up how tech culture is now a days and it's basically wasting our most brilliant minds to optimise slot machines. Anyway, I do think Stripe is useful but I don't think any company really should treat workers and foster this kind of culture.

What's worrisome to me is, that so many people believe that, any emotional engagement and passion for something, you're doing for 30% of your adult life is "toxic" and "unhealthy".

Then we get posts in the line of "I've very good life, well paid job, but I feel empty" - I believe, there were two of them this week already and it's only Wednesday.

To be clear I'm not saying you should suddenly fall in love in pushing CRUDs for your international corp. But maybe next time when choosing a job, try to include into equation: "would I actually want to do this if not for the money?". In SWE we've quite unique opportunity to actually have this choice and yet many try to ignore it on purpose, because apparently it's not "cool".

Yeah a lot of people would rather teach poor kids but teachers can barely make a living in America. When you live in a country with such high inequality and healthcare dependent on your job you are forced to hustle . Not everyone can study Art History at Columbia and have the connections to get a job as a curator. The conundrum you see is exactly because of that inequality. You very rarely see it among Western Europeans. But hey the US pays the highest and you can live a charmed life if it works out . So I will fall for a manager and corporation’s promises .

That's extreme example. You can still program. Original article is about working as developer in Stripe.

The author is not a developer.

> 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.

Crying at work because your boss is harassing you or your coworkers are toxic -- agreed, no one should have to endure that. Crying at work because you're invested and care about the outcome? What's the problem here outside of your belief that these people are ignorant or fooled by capitalism?

> It's good to be passionate, but where we put our passion is very important.

Thankfully you don't have the right to tell people where their passions should lie. For many of us we like our work. It's a large part of our identity. We like the impact it provides, we like being good at it, we want to be good at it, and we're invested in it. The financial security it provides for us and our family is another strong motivator.

Your reply is patronizing and full of judgement. Implicit in it are professions you think are noble, and worthwhile of care, and the rest? Sheeps, wake up! Go find a hobby!