
A quick guide to Stripe’s culture - cumulo
https://stripe.com/us/jobs/candidate-info?a=1#culture
======
mdevere
Some feedback

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.

~~~
harryh
A thing I like to do with values is invert them. If you don't still get
something good then you're really just saying something bland and generic that
any old company probably aspires to.

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.

~~~
logicallee
It sounds like you think that values should be a description of which of two
reasonable choices a company wants its employees to choose...

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.

~~~
jsjohnst
I think you are over analyzing it and trying to find faults. At least two of
the things you mentioned should be company policies, not values.

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.

~~~
logicallee
I've reviewed your comment. Firstly, it sounds like you think "don't murder
other employees" is a policy at 100% of companies, but I don't think I've ever
worked at a company with such a policy and neither have you. Your definition
of policy is weird - you think policies exist regardless of whether they do. I
base this on your comment that you'd never work at a company without such a
policy.

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.

~~~
nicky0
Think about it from a less absolutist logical angle, and you may eventually
appreciate it. Currently, you are looking for counterexamples for the sake of
argument, instead of considering the cases where the principle is useful. You
are throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

~~~
logicallee
I don't find the principle of inversion as a test for values/policies to be a
useful tool, sorry. Yes, I'm throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

~~~
barrkel
Values != policies; the way you put them in a stroke relationship makes me
think that you think they're related. They're not.

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.

~~~
logicallee
I completely disagree with every single sentence you've just written. Since I
disagree with every single thing you've just written we are not going to be
able to talk effectively.

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.

~~~
jsjohnst
> I completely disagree with every single sentence you've just written.

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.

~~~
logicallee
you agree that a company's policies don't tell you anything about whether it's
good to work there? "If you clock in to work even 1 minute late even a single
time, you are not eligible for your bonus that month" is a real policy I've
actually heard about. it doesn't tell me anything about working there?

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.

------
agentgt
I'm going to be a little contrarian but I wonder what happened to the good (or
maybe bad) old days of just come to the company and do your job. You work
these hours, and have these benefits, and this is how much vacation/sick time
(none of this you have fake unlimited time). Do the job well and we will pay
you more. You don't even have to like the people or even the company but you
have to have proper biz etiquette.

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.

~~~
solatic
> You don't even have to like the people or even the company

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.

~~~
agentgt
I was sort of exaggerating there but I'm not entirely sure liking == trusting
(or the obvious reversal). In fact I would not be surprised if having say two
personalities that do not mesh well one on one but work great on a team to
maybe beneficial to the whole group.

Some personalities might be better at different roles. My point is not
everyone has to like everyone.

------
davidbanham
> Many successful Stripes ensure that they have dinner with their families or
> friends almost every evening.

Oof. Two weasel words in the one sentence. Especially in such an important
sentence, that shoots up a big red flag for me.

~~~
jbm
Personal anecdote; I interviewed for Stripe @ Tokyo and had a few discussions
on this point.

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.

~~~
jpatokal
Problem is, Tokyo is among the worst places on the planet to work in terms of
both business culture and commuting if you expect to be at home by 6 in time
for dinner.

~~~
mkagenius
Most bizzare thing about Japan is high suicide rate (perhaps due to high
stress [1]).

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Japan#Ties_with_bus...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Japan#Ties_with_business)

~~~
pmiller2
This would have been a better link:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kar%C5%8Dshi](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kar%C5%8Dshi)

------
sulam
They hint at this but don't really cover how incredibly "nice" everyone is
expected to be. I have had multiple angles of sourcing on this including
existing employees and high level management candidates. It doesn't sound bad
on the face of it, but apparently the culture is non-confrontational to (what
some perceive as) a fault.

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?"

~~~
scrollaway
I see this a lot in west-american culture in general, actually (I'm European).
Far more emphasis on form than content whenever communication is expected.

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)

------
user5994461
Paragraph 1 => Everything is a broken mess.

Paragraph 2 => You will work nights and week ends all the time. You'll never
be compensated for it.

~~~
maccard
From a quick look on Glassdoor, I'd consider 175k/year being compensated for
it.

------
Animats
What's not there:

\- "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."

~~~
patio11
I had a small part in writing this. I think we're in violent agreement with
regards to the underlying concern; here is how we phrased it in this document:

 _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.

~~~
Sleeep
Honestly, this is a failure to write for your audience.

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."

~~~
stephenhuey
Perhaps he was speaking more to me then. I find his description more
compelling for me than emphasizing "highly mission critical operation" because
I've worked for a giant bank, and I know they care about keeping track of
money, and I do too of course if I'm being paid for it, but I personally am
even more motivated if I can see how it relates to real end users whose faces
I can envision.

~~~
Sleeep
The thing is, information is being lost in the wordy, flowery prose. The GP
said three bullet points were missing when they actually are supposed to be
there. I also felt like I missed a lot reading through it and I felt like I
should start taking notes to see what it actually says. That's not good.

~~~
Animats
That's a good point.

Microsoft's mission statement was once "A computer on every desk, running
Microsoft software". Mission accomplished in the 1990s.

------
tijs
If your interested in how different companies deal with 'sharing' their
culture you might enjoy [https://handbook.work](https://handbook.work) We have
built this recently to start collecting company handbooks, and culture guides
like this, as inspiration for writing your own. Or just for the curious.

~~~
qntmfred
this is exactly what i was hoping to find in this thread's comments. thanks!
how long you been working on this? obviously would love to see a lot more (or
even just links to articles about various companies cultures if you can't get
a legit authoritative handbook for a given company)

~~~
tijs
We had been collecting these internally for a while now. We're working on a
product in this space currently so this seemed like a good time to start
sharing some of this stuff with the outside world.

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!

------
maxxxxx
Do they mention something about making good money? This sounds a little like a
cult where people find their personal fulfillment while sometimes even being
able to have dinner with their family and having some weekends off.

------
camdenlock
This is pretty cool for the most part, with a refreshing dose of
forthrightness. I thought it was going to descend into eye-rolling Silicon
Valley territory, but (aside from referring to employees as "Stripes") it
managed to give an interesting look at how they structure things and set their
expectations.

And massive bonus points for not heaving the bloated, disease-spreading corpse
of identity politics into view!

------
falcolas
Some red flags that pop up to me (though I'm not looking for a job at Stripe
myself, so that's important to keep in mind):

> 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.

~~~
cperciva
_Painting all of your employees in a branded moniker isn 't a great way to
start off._

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.

~~~
Sleeep
Why not just "employee?"

~~~
cperciva
"Employees of Stripe" gets cumbersome after a while.

~~~
Sleeep
Um, the vast majority of companies don't have cutesy nicknames of their
employees yet manage to write thousands of documents about them without any
problems.

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."

------
andygcook
Don't want to be too self promotional, but my startup, Tettra, put together a
list of all the culture decks we could find. Check it out if you like reading
about culture:

[http://culturecodes.co](http://culturecodes.co)

------
_pmf_
"Mission" and "culture" == cue to completely tune out as an employee, because
the next 10 minutes will be utterly meaningless drivel.

~~~
jpatokal
Did you even read the article? For corporate PR, it's remarkably free of
utterly meaningless drivel.

------
chinathrow
> "WE HAVEN’T WON YET"

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.

