Pros
- Excellent collaboration: coworkers tend to be smart, "exothermic", and want to help each other. Most ICs want to learn & grow. - Quality of work: Generally, shipped code is solid quality and well-reviewed. That said, no company is perfect, including Stripe; incidents are not uncommon. - Improvement mindset: New features are constantly being shipped and the company is always being "edited". - Opportunity: With the complexity of Stripe's product, day-to-day work is rarely stale. In my experience, ICs always want to learn together and are thoughtful about releasing good work constantly. - The Collison brothers attempt to (1) be transparent in company communications, (2) listen to employees, and (3) make frequent company-wide appearances. - Most tech teams respect focus time. - Documentation is ubiquitous. - Comp is solid
Cons
- Intense work culture: Reorgs are constant, layoffs are common, and performance standards are sky high. IC jobs never feel safe. - Middle Management: breeds culture point above. Disconnected from nuances of how tech works. Elitist leaders with flippant attitude about how work gets done. - Inconsistent direction: company priorities and direction often shift when senior leaders are hired or Patrick reads a new favorite book. The perceived value of your work can change month to month. - Over-documentation: Duplicated docs almost always exist. It's rarely clear where up-to-date / maintained documentation can be found. Red-tape around projects and decisions often requires docs prior to taking action, which drives further confusion. Changes in documentation software preferences (Confluence, Dropbox Paper, Google Docs, etc...) is also to blame. - Incidents: Intense, high-visibility, grueling and frequent. Unfortunately, incidents are the only way to get the attention of middle management. You may have to fix someone else's bug over the weekend and accurately gauge the impact to avoid the ire of your skip-level.