TE
TechEcho
Home24h TopNewestBestAskShowJobs
GitHubTwitter
Home

TechEcho

A tech news platform built with Next.js, providing global tech news and discussions.

GitHubTwitter

Home

HomeNewestBestAskShowJobs

Resources

HackerNews APIOriginal HackerNewsNext.js

© 2025 TechEcho. All rights reserved.

My Time Working at Stripe

398 pointsby jondlm7 months ago

56 comments

DeathArrow7 months ago
&gt;he asked the team, “for this meeting I’d like us to try and introduce ourselves a little differently. If you’re comfortable, I’d like us to try and be 10% more vulnerable than we normally would in a work setting.” I remember feeling a mix of anxiety and excitement rise in my chest. I sat pondering what I would share. I decided to go for more than 10%. I shared about how my marriage had almost collapsed a couple years prior and a taste of how painful it was. Some of my coworkers shared deeper things I’d never heard in a work setting. It was awkward. It was beautiful.<p>I&#x27;d rather not have my manager forcing me to do group therapy. I owe the company some work hours and they own me money.<p>If I want to have personal relations with someone from my work, befriend somebody, share personal things, that is my choice. My personal life is not the company business.<p>Of course I wouldn&#x27;t say all that to the manager, but &#x27;I&#x27;ll put him on the list of people I should be careful about, and fake some confessions.
评论 #42025082 未加载
评论 #42025478 未加载
评论 #42027115 未加载
评论 #42025299 未加载
评论 #42025628 未加载
评论 #42025366 未加载
评论 #42025708 未加载
评论 #42026201 未加载
评论 #42026095 未加载
评论 #42025013 未加载
评论 #42026334 未加载
评论 #42025612 未加载
评论 #42026207 未加载
评论 #42026813 未加载
评论 #42025015 未加载
评论 #42027432 未加载
评论 #42025842 未加载
评论 #42027522 未加载
评论 #42026899 未加载
评论 #42026882 未加载
评论 #42027773 未加载
评论 #42025966 未加载
评论 #42025285 未加载
评论 #42026700 未加载
评论 #42027738 未加载
评论 #42028788 未加载
评论 #42026734 未加载
评论 #42025683 未加载
评论 #42029726 未加载
olivermuty7 months ago
What you are experiencing is the symptom of working in a large company where no matter how well you perform, you can not significantly move the needle yourself.<p>Coupled with the fact that, as you yourself pointed out, there is a literal endless amount of work to do, forever. This is also due to the nature of the company being so big.<p>All companies always has work to do, and no one is ever «done», but in a giga-enterprise all meaningful deadlines and deliveries sort of tangentially rounds down to zero in terms of impact.<p>I almost burned out from this myself working in Microsoft. I was succeeding in my work by most metrics, but I am motivated more by my work being MEANINGFUL and having impact more than anything. That is almost impossible to achieve in any large enough company.<p>Jumped off to be a startup CTO and life started smiling again instantly.<p>Take time away from work, but not too much time. Comments such as «it takes years» can be true if you have ground yourself down to a nub, but trying (and being ok with failing) to do some work that lets you feel like you mean something and contribute back to society is an understated and important part of the healing process.<p>Good luck!
评论 #42024902 未加载
评论 #42025325 未加载
评论 #42024488 未加载
评论 #42024541 未加载
评论 #42029617 未加载
评论 #42024957 未加载
评论 #42024946 未加载
评论 #42028144 未加载
评论 #42028093 未加载
DeathArrow7 months ago
I think the author had unrealistic expectations from working at a large company.<p>He expected doing something meaningful that will change the world. He expected to be applauded like a hero for his efforts.<p>But things don&#x27;t work like that.<p>If you work your ass out, don&#x27;t expect more than a pat on the back. Managers won&#x27;t care about your efforts, your mental state or your sleepless nights. They care about looking good in front of their superiors.<p>So it&#x27;s better to do just that is expected for you, enough to get a good evaluation.<p>If you come out with a brilliant idea that might help the company a lot don&#x27;t just do it. Find some allies in the higher hierarchy, explain to them what is their advantage, do a POC or MVP, then let the top management know in a public meeting. That way you get a lot of credits and applause for doing great things for the company and fighting the good fight.
评论 #42027445 未加载
评论 #42025170 未加载
评论 #42027860 未加载
评论 #42025303 未加载
评论 #42053918 未加载
abc-17 months ago
Great blog, but reading it gave me deep secondhand anxiety and even exhaustion. It’s strikingly clear this person is a people pleaser to potentially unhealthy levels, maybe due to low self-esteem or something else, and it could be contributing to the depression. Legitimately, therapy might be the right call here. But on the positive side, they do seem like a good person who wants to build good things. That’s commendable.
评论 #42026027 未加载
fnordpiglet7 months ago
These symptoms are a classic sign of burn out. One thing I notice in your writing is you’re very tied up in things having meaning and mattering in some specific way. This itself can lead to burnout because if everything must matter you must be emotionally invested in everything. But you can care without it mattering to you. You can do a good job without being totally invested in everything about it. You can love what you do without it having significance in every detail.<p>In a complex job with a fast pace, a fair amount of tech debt around every edge, a relentless pace of innovation happening, and - yes - growth, there’s too much to be invested in everything. It doesn’t have to matter that much. The parts you really care about, the craft and quality of your work, your relationships, mentoring and growing the people around you, seeing things get better one piece at a time, and a few things - they can matter. But everything can’t. And even those you have to at some very deep level realize don’t matter really.<p>Stripe doesn’t really exist in this world. It’s a shared fiction to help frame the interactions between you and a few people you actually interact with in a day. The real truth is the only thing that happens in your days is you type on a computer and talk to a few people. It actually doesn’t matter in any meaningful way what you typed or some higher purpose around humbling honesty or exothermic curiosity or PMEs or whatever stories we tell ourselves to create some sort of reality out of the fiction. The only important things you really do is how you shape the lives of the people you interact with, and how you shape your own life.<p>Burnout is hard. Adopt a daily meditation practice. Let your mind heal by letting go of meaning and practice enjoying the moment you’re in with whomever you’re with, but most especially yourself. The joy will come back faster the faster you let go of things needing to matter or have deeper meaning, especially when those things are a fiction like a company or a career or any of the other small and big lies we’ve been told and we reinforce to ourselves daily. I know I’ve been there man, and I know exactly - exactly - the sensations and experiences you describe. It gets better, but I think once you get there it never totally goes away and it’s easier to slip back.<p>FWIW I don’t think burnout is the same as depression. I’ve felt both and burnout is different. It’s that loss of ability to engage - which overlaps with depression - but usually doesn’t come with the thoughts of hopeless despair and desire for life to be over. It’s just more of a deadness and inability to initiate what you think you should want to do but can’t, and it pervasively impacts everything.<p>It gets better.
评论 #42026823 未加载
评论 #42028645 未加载
评论 #42027055 未加载
评论 #42025204 未加载
评论 #42026719 未加载
评论 #42026064 未加载
评论 #42026035 未加载
评论 #42026285 未加载
评论 #42026868 未加载
评论 #42028418 未加载
评论 #42027166 未加载
评论 #42025128 未加载
评论 #42026608 未加载
评论 #42026258 未加载
guitheengineer7 months ago
I’ve seen this pattern repeated so many times that I feel like it can be generalized:<p>when your mental health collapses nothing else holds value, it really doesn’t matter if you achieved your dream job, got all the prestige and income you initially desired, being mentally healthy is the basis of the pyramid.<p>Something I learned based on that is to really prioritize it!<p>Even if someone considers their career to be everything, realize that spending some of your earnings seeking professional help (therapy) is even a cheap investment considering that if you break and have to quit, you’re going to lose hundreds of thousands, and to recover it will suck (I’ve heard of people trying to quit tech altogether after burning out)<p>Sneaking something else related to mental health: sleep should be #1 health wise, when you’re consistently not getting quality sleep for months, there’s nothing you can really do to get around that, it will eventually just break you (your body won’t care if you’re coping with coffe or exercising!)<p>Btw that’s great writing and I really appreciate your courage in sharing this! I hope you’ll find your joy again.
评论 #42025085 未加载
mndgs7 months ago
Sorry for a probably unpopular opinion here, and let me generalize a bit: Gen Z all the way... (Saying this makes me feel a bit old, I guess I&#x27;m certainly am than the author).<p>On a serious note, in my book there are hints of perfectionism right from the start of the story (fonts dimming, wait 30 sec to join the meeting..). And too much fragility in personal attidudes. S&#x2F;he is probably a relatively young idealistic person, early in the career. Such people often don&#x27;t last long, if they can&#x27;t change inside and take manager&#x27;s or corporate shit. One needs at least some &quot;fuck it&quot; attitude to preserve one&#x27;s dignity. Your performance review does not and cannot define you as a person. Else you&#x27;re likely to end up disappointed and&#x2F;or emotionally exhausted. And that&#x27;s what I see here.
评论 #42027330 未加载
评论 #42026596 未加载
评论 #42028161 未加载
评论 #42027507 未加载
评论 #42027882 未加载
wkjagt7 months ago
There&#x27;s a lot of comments on the &quot;10% more vulnerable&quot; part of the post in here that amount to &quot;I just owe the company work hours, and they owe me money&quot;, and a strong aversion to showing anything resembling human connection going slightly further than &quot;how are you&quot;, &quot;fine&quot;. One commented even called the question by the manager &quot;abuse&quot;, and suggested the manager should be fired.<p>But if on most days we&#x27;re spending most of our time with these people, what do we gain from automatically disqualifying them from human connection just because they work at the same place as us?<p>And let&#x27;s not pretend that the manager in this story forced anyone to do anything.
评论 #42026288 未加载
评论 #42025805 未加载
评论 #42025983 未加载
评论 #42028455 未加载
评论 #42041582 未加载
评论 #42026259 未加载
评论 #42027971 未加载
评论 #42031633 未加载
pammf7 months ago
Ways I found that helped me the most dealing with this kind of situation:<p>- Refine your definition of what’s “meaningful”: anything that helps you, your colleagues, helps you to learn a new thing or simply allows you to create something beautiful can be meaningful; there’s a lot of meaning in giving a meal to someone starving, even though you’re not solving any big societal issue or being applauded by many for that single act.<p>- Don’t take people like the OP’s first manager too personally: with time you realize they’re generally not evil or terrible human beings, they’re just in a different mission. Usually they are also as lost as we are, trying to find meaning and recognition. Just lower the importance you give to them (if you’re really incompatible with their personalities) and focus on your work. If even then it becomes toxic, then move.<p>- Most importantly: reshape your relationship with work. Who you are and what you do are not necessarily the same thing. I don&#x27;t like the advice of &quot;slacking and collecting your pay check&quot; (been there, you also feel shit after a while), but I think that going a bit to that direction helps to find balance.
silisili7 months ago
Well written.<p>The one thing that immediately pissed me off was you doing something awesome, then having management attack you for reason X, where X attacks everything but the results. The reason never really matters, the real reason is that you threatened them in some manner and they need to justify their job.<p>Honestly, I would have just quit at that point. You&#x27;re a saint for staying any longer.<p>This sounds like an absolutely terrible company to work for.
评论 #42026062 未加载
评论 #42025903 未加载
评论 #42025513 未加载
hu37 months ago
&gt; Still more time passed and then came the depression. I found myself increasingly demotivated in all aspects of my life. I could hardly even muster the energy to play video games (my usual haunt). Some evenings I would literally sit and stare at a wall. My sleep went to shit.<p>I&#x27;m sorry for that. I went through something similar and I managed to bounce back up but it took longer than I anticipated. Years, not months.<p>Be gentle with yourself and forgive yourself.
评论 #42024735 未加载
评论 #42024466 未加载
1010087 months ago
Not sure if this helps someone, but I joined a new German company a few months ago, the type of company that has a great culture and everyone wants to work for (when I announced it on Linkedin my stats increased and I received a lot of invitations).<p>Anyway, on-boarding was awful and codebase is terrible. For the first four months I have been struggling, suferring, getting frustrated, and everything impacting my life outside work (weekends, sleeping, etc)<p>Then I realized. This is just a job. What is the worst it could happen? Getting fired and these people thinking I&#x27;m an idiot? I can live with that. I won&#x27;t probably meet them again (perks of remote) and I could find another job down the line. And that helped me.<p>What you do at work and how are you seen at work, as long as you are responsible, shouldn&#x27;t be that important. Leave it at work and try to enjoy your life. Don&#x27;t carry it with you, especially when it is a position where you don&#x27;t have much control.
dlevine7 months ago
Reading this, I do get the impression that the Partially Meets Expectation was given to get more work out of this guy. It&#x27;s the worst kind of manipulation - spinning something that was an unqualified success into a &quot;failure.&quot; Especially because the boss clearly already had an internal narrative, and it sounds like they cherry-picked feedback from coworkers to support that narrative.<p>Having had something somewhat similar happen in the past, it seems like this is common at high-growth tech companies. Everyone pretends to be your friend, and there are definitely some genuine people, but getting ahead is clearly number 1.
yellow_lead7 months ago
This is a great post and I&#x27;m glad the author was able to share it.<p>I feel like I had a similar experience. Start working at a new job, hustle for several years, get promoted, projects do well, then ended up feeling bored and unexcited. Not exactly burnt out, but burnt out on the current pattern of life. I quit and moved to another country.<p>I don&#x27;t know if the author is &quot;burnt out&quot; or not. This is a privileged take, but sometimes it feels like a full time job is a leash. Life becomes so defined by your job it can feel suffocating. You can take a few weeks off, but a few weeks a year is hardly enough to have your own life.
DeathArrow7 months ago
&gt;motivated more by my work being MEANINGFUL<p>I quit trying to find meaning in my work long time ago. And work never depresses me. I work to have food on the table for me and my family. That is enough of a motivation.<p>If I want to do something meaningful, I either work on a personal project or contribute to one, outside work.
评论 #42026809 未加载
sourcepluck7 months ago
&gt; The tech I build protects well-being and promotes human flourishing. Tech should never exploit weaknesses no matter how well intentioned.<p>That&#x27;s from the &quot;values&quot; section of the website under the &quot;Tech as a tool&quot; subsection. How does working for Stripe fit with this value?<p>As a mere user of &quot;tech&quot;, and a concerned observer of what I perceive to be its negative effects on society around me the last 5-10 years, it feels impossible to deny that the main drivers of the tech space haven&#x27;t been &quot;protecting well-being&quot; and &quot;promoting human flourishing&quot;, rather the opposite, and often rather brutally.<p>The article leaves the question unanswered of what actually led to the depression, and I&#x27;m left wondering if the author explored that question specifically. Perhaps Stripe aren&#x27;t building technology that promotes human flourishing, and perhaps the author&#x27;s core values were clashing with the reality of a modern tech company.
calmbonsai7 months ago
Sleep is a definite signal. If you&#x27;ve eliminated diet, medication, and personal relationships (tough one) as causes, you&#x27;re left with professional obligations.<p>Note too that &quot;chronic fatigue&quot; is NOT &quot;lack of sleep&quot;.<p>The brain fog is the net resultant of the body being in a constant &quot;fight or flight&quot; mode for too long. Psychologically, you&#x27;ve been doing WWI &quot;trench warfare&quot;.
jakub_g7 months ago
Thanks for this writeup. I hope the author recovers soon.<p>Some of the situations feel familiar to my experience in other companies, so here&#x27;s some advice to younger folks, which took me some time to grasp:<p>- Communication with the manager is critical. Better to overcommunicate than undercommunicate. It&#x27;s a natural tendency for curious folks to do &quot;side quests&quot; and while you were supposed to work on X, you noticed that you can improve Y which <i>in your opinion</i> is more important. At the very least, drop your manager a Slack message like &quot;hey, I was supposed to work on X but I have an idea about Y which can bring more benefit, I will take N hours&#x2F;days to dig into that if that&#x27;s ok with you&quot; and see what&#x27;s their response (also make sure to time constrain it to avoid getting sidetracked for too long). I was definitely burned by this in prev job: I shipped some nice things but I was supposed to work on something else which I didn&#x27;t do, and each time my manager mentioned this (i.e. N months later in performance evaluation), I knew it was correct for him to point it out, but it made me feel bad.<p>- In bigtech the work happens in quarters. If you&#x27;re unhappy about things you work on currently, take some time to prepare the work items you do want to work on, and seed your manager&#x27;s mind before next quarter planning about things you DO want to work on, why, how is the impact and so on.<p>- When feeling overwhelmed with too many things on your plate, talk to your manager to dispatch some responsibilities to other team members. Don&#x27;t be the messiah who needs to fix everything by yourself silently and burn out.<p>- For candidates: When doing interviews, you absolutely should do everything to streamline things and avoid distractions. Most likely use JS or Python for coding. Probably avoid TS, definitely avoid C++. It&#x27;s too easy to get lost fighting the compiler or &quot;reinventing the world&quot; with languages like C&#x2F;C++. You won&#x27;t get extra points for going uphill, but you will get minus points for not finishing.
arcticbull7 months ago
Big tech is very much a function of your team and manager. Any job is a function first of your manager, second of your team, third of your ability and fourth of your project. I always select teams in that way, within a company and outside, and this has been incredibly helpful.<p>Stripe is a great place to work in some ways but judging from the writeup they had a ton of context switching preventing their productivity and the needs of the team didn’t align with what they did best. I’ve seen this feedback many times in many jobs.<p>I’ve been there myself! No doubt this person will find something exciting in no time.<p>Apropos of nothing as interviewers we do not put any weight on your submitting solutions after the window closes because we have to evaluate candidates consistently for business and legal reasons. We can’t give one person extra time because that’s not applying a consistent bar. Smaller companies may be more flexible but big tech won’t be. On the plus side big tech knows interviews are often a function of luck and setting and will generally always invite you to apply again without prejudice a few months later.<p>Being in a position to recover by getting bored and hacking on stuff you’re passionate about without pressure is something we’re really lucky to have, and I always try to do this between jobs.
评论 #42024595 未加载
nunez7 months ago
Hitting a wall sucks, and FAANG style tech companies know how to hurl their engineers (and their management) straight towards it.<p>I&#x27;m glad you got out. Gotta look out for you, always; (most) companies sure as shit won&#x27;t.<p>Unrelated, but if OP is here, about this:<p>&gt; Things were moving rather smoothly despite my sweat soaked armpits. I silently resented my wife’s decision to unilaterally give up anti-perspirant due to chemicals.<p>Check out Arm and Hammer&#x27;s Essentials deodorants. They don&#x27;t contain aluminum and smell great despite being all natural. I switched to this deodorant after noticing that Mitchum deodorants were staining the pits of my shirts.
whiplash4517 months ago
The bigger lesson is that no company in the world (except <i>maybe</i> your own) should trigger so much emotional involvement from day one.<p>With time you learn to put everything in perspective.<p>I am worried that the author did not learn that lesson in the end since he quit with no job behind, which is not a sign of emotional stability.
评论 #42029349 未加载
评论 #42031475 未加载
sashank_15097 months ago
&gt; &gt;he asked the team, “for this meeting I’d like us to try and introduce ourselves a little differently. If you’re comfortable, I’d like us to try and be 10% more vulnerable than we normally would in a work setting.”<p>I think this is a ham fisted attempt at trying to solve one of the most isolating and painful issues of modern day work environments: the complete lack of any friendship or camaraderie whatsoever.<p>I was not born in the 1980’s but just reading stories of how people worked then, makes me feel that there was a level of trust and friendship somehow that is completely lacking in a modern job. It is a painful life when you cannot be friends with the folks you spend 40+ hours a week your entire life. I don’t know why or how it has gotten to be this way. Modern pop psychology recommends you to be vulnerable and open, but that’s definitely wrong, maybe even opposite of what you should do, I was never vulnerable with my college friends, but we did have kickass time in college and we were friends. I would much rather that just have continued into my professional life, but instead we get a sterilized environment, that we just live through trying to find meaning in our work, to make the passing of 40+ hours more pleasant.
评论 #42027243 未加载
deeplogiccom7 months ago
I think it might help to focus on staying grounded and regulating your emotions, especially when it comes to thinking about Patrick and his success. While it’s natural to admire someone who has built an impressive company and achieved significant financial success, remember that people are often respected for being authentic and secure in who they are, rather than for how much they admire others.<p>I think a good approach would be to consider asking for adjustments to your work hours or talking with your team lead about creating a plan to make your work environment feel more manageable. It might also be helpful to discuss with a therapist why Patrick’s success affects you so strongly. Understanding the root of this could help you focus more on your own growth and well-being.<p>The challenges you experienced at Stripe aren’t unique to that company. These same lessons are likely to come up in future roles if they’re left unaddressed. You have the choice to face these issues now or later, but life has a way of bringing them back until they’re fully understood and resolved. Taking proactive steps now can set you up for a healthier, more resilient future in your career and beyond.
评论 #42111838 未加载
skwee3577 months ago
Corporate environments tend to destroy the human souls. More so with “dream companies”.<p>Sure, job is a big part of our life, but it’s better to leave as “just job”, and not focus on it too much.<p>Wishing the best to the author!
_heimdall7 months ago
The common sentiment here that the manager&#x27;s &quot;10% vulnerable&quot; exercise was inappropriate or even abusive is a little surprising to me.Maybe I&#x27;m just showing my age a bit, but my immediate reaction would have just been that this is a stupid team building exercise (whether accurate or not, that&#x27;s just how I&#x27;d see it).Assuming I generally like my boss I wouldn&#x27;t be a jerk about it, but I wouldn&#x27;t be interested in participating and would say that as matter-of-fact as I could. Especially if the manager led with &quot;if your willing to...&quot; that should be that, I&#x27;d be on with my day no harm no foul.<p>For anyone coming by that would read the situation as inappropriate or abusive, what&#x27;s different? Why do you see it abusive where I might see it a waste of time that I would just opt out of?
评论 #42030156 未加载
angarg127 months ago
This is what happens when you make your work most of your identity.<p>At the end of the day work won&#x27;t love you back. Managers will come and go. Projects will start and end. Colleagues will join and leave.<p>For most of us work is an important part of our lives, after all we spend a big chunk of our life there. But try to find meaning outside work.
nine_zeros7 months ago
I think this post highlights one of the core reasons why tech jobs suck so much and why burnout is so common among such smart people.<p>It is because a lot of these jobs are oriented towards PERFORMANCE REVIEWS that are based on BS unrelated to the actual work - such as feelings of others or sometimes # of commits.<p>Big tech management has departed from being leaders to being raters and rankers of things they are unqualified to rate and rank. They have organizational authority which they should be using to make good choices for customers, employees and projects. But the management only uses it for reviews.<p>Of course, this is toxic. No one wants to be led by people who don&#x27;t care more than them and don&#x27;t contribute in helping the work. Why wouldn&#x27;t someone get burned out in such an environment?
评论 #42028304 未加载
nojvek7 months ago
Hey Jon,<p>Kudos for having courage to write it up. Enjoyed my time with you at Stripe.<p>Large company cog syndrome is very real. Especially when performance reviews are not tied to reality but someone’s inner monologue that you have no access to.<p>Take care. Time heals most wounds. Oregon is a beautiful place.
评论 #42111906 未加载
shubhamjain7 months ago
Every company I have worked at I have hit this point of mental health collapse, just like OP. At this point, I can try everything—&quot;Treating it just as a job&quot;, &quot;finding happiness elsewhere&quot;, &quot;just get shit done&quot;—but nothing works. For a long while, I only found myself to blame. I felt idiotic for not having the energy to work like everyone else does.<p>Past one and a half years, have been years of self-discovery. I have been hacking on projects full-time (hopefully, I will make sustainable money soon). And it&#x27;s been so fun, and relieving, and joyful to direct your creative energy to projects, with no authority to answer to. It&#x27;s not without difficult times though. Sometimes, I feel blocked to the point of abandoning months of hard work, but I am slowly learning how to avoid those situations.<p>Honestly, everything I was advised was a lie (or at least, didn&#x27;t work for me). I like being able to shape things, and use my creative energy to do useful things. Politics, and bureaucratic processes, drain my energy to an extent that I simply can&#x27;t function. And no matter how hard I try, I can&#x27;t ignore it with the mindset of &quot;it&#x27;s just a job.&quot; I can&#x27;t find happiness in &quot;being promoted&quot; or whatever rating I am given.<p>I just want to ship good software. When I am driven, I will forget about everything and just dive in to solve the problem. Sadly though, it&#x27;s not an easy ask in a modern-day corporate environment.<p>So, I would say what you&#x27;re experiencing is normal in many ways. Don&#x27;t kill yourself over it. If you have a list of fun projects, attempt them. For many of us, creative energy is precious, and needs to be directed well to keep ourselves sane.
评论 #42030175 未加载
vunderba7 months ago
<i>I remember the moment when my buddy Slacked me saying that my shipped email had been one of Patrick’s tabs in a Friday Fireside. I hadn’t attended because I was too busy trying to work more. My email admired by a billionaire? Bliss. The thought of Patrick noticing me felt unbelievably good.</i><p>Oof. Allowing other people to dictate your own self-worth is always a bad sign. I&#x27;ll take a five figure bonus pay out over a &quot;good job old boy&quot; pat on the back any day.
评论 #42027615 未加载
sourcepluck7 months ago
Also, this article prompted me to use Ngram for the first time, to compare &quot;camaraderie&quot; and &quot;comradery&quot;, which I was amazed and appalled by. The resulting diagram really helped soothe me, so here it is:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;books.google.com&#x2F;ngrams&#x2F;graph?content=camaraderie%2Ccomradery&amp;year_start=1800&amp;year_end=2022&amp;corpus=en&amp;smoothing=3" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;books.google.com&#x2F;ngrams&#x2F;graph?content=camaraderie%2C...</a>
评论 #42025305 未加载
FpUser7 months ago
&gt;&quot;She shared with me some concerns about my communication and project management. She, and apparently others she gathered feedback from, felt like I hadn’t done a good enough job pulling other engineers into the project.&quot;<p>You are software developer, not a manager. It is her job to worry about things like that.<p>&gt;&quot;for this meeting I’d like us to try and introduce ourselves a little differently. If you’re comfortable, I’d like us to try and be 10% more vulnerable than we normally would in a work setting&quot;<p>What a fucking moron. Most likely he was fishing for weak spots to be exploited. I do not get how one can fall for this type of crap.<p>Anyways this whole thing reminds me why I&#x27;ve never wanted to work for big companies and eventually went on my own. I do not need somebody else to organize my life. I do job, client pays money and this is where it ends.
kaiwenwang7 months ago
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ribbonfarm.com&#x2F;2009&#x2F;10&#x2F;07&#x2F;the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ribbonfarm.com&#x2F;2009&#x2F;10&#x2F;07&#x2F;the-gervais-principle-...</a>
pjot7 months ago
<p><pre><code> &gt; He gave me a coderpad link. I started to read through the question. I could already feel my mind moving like molasses. On the surface the question seemed straightforward enough. It presented a simple data structure and asked me to do some filtering based on a set of constraints. “No problem!” I thought. I fired up vim and got to work. </code></pre> Wait, since when can you use your own editor? Is this common? Did I just fail to ask?<p>My interview with Stripe felt similarly nerve wracking - with writing code in what may as well be TextEdit.app contributing to that feeling
评论 #42028114 未加载
评论 #42045579 未加载
nvarsj7 months ago
A lot of this post reminds me of my own experience in big tech.<p>I think it&#x27;s really brutal to those inclined to the highly sensitive person archetype (overly sensitive to external stimuli). Every little thing you do is analysed and the perf process is intense.<p>It can also be illogical - despite attempts to not be - as subjectivity in the perf process is almost unavoidable. Just take this author, who had a successful project, but got below expectations simply because their manager or a senior lead got a bad impression from probably a handful of interactions with them.<p>At these companies you _have_ to learn to not get emotionally or mentally invested in this process, or it can wreck you. Therapy can help a lot here.
cobertos7 months ago
I&#x27;ve been in this position a few times now. God is it hard to explain to other people, especially when you know how success is metricized by others and silently judged. But at the same time, the collection of life experiences gained by doing stupid, impulsive things has made me happier than I could have expected in the long run. And has shown me a lot of things I would not have seen otherwise.
mparnisari7 months ago
Sounds like you are burnt out. You did the right thing.
评论 #42024442 未加载
dionian7 months ago
I identified with this story quite a bit. I had a similar experience at a cut-throat big name tech company. It&#x27;s extremely political and the business has to run extremely sharp to succeed. Hence the hightened politics and management involvement at that level. You did a great job with the writing! It was fun to read, and interesting to hear the story. Best of luck in the future
yieldcrv7 months ago
I read it but ohhhh my gawwwwd what compels you all to write stuff like this about an employer, why is this any part of your identity at all? This is the opposite of having a life.<p>Serious question, what is this mentality?<p>tl;dr Look at this guy! He left a job without another job lined up after making half a million for 4 consecutive years! but only thought it was a big deal because he learned how to write but was disillusioned by his masters in other ways.<p>Really, I don&#x27;t get resignation posts. Like the ones on linkedin, or other social media. Just surreptitiously go like all the other people who just weren&#x27;t there the next day. Whose slack randomly said (deactivated).<p>Live your life<p>But sure, whats the other perspective?
edlebert7 months ago
I quit Stripe after only six months because the pace, stress, and anxiety were not worth the paycheck.
评论 #42026589 未加载
NetOpWibby7 months ago
Big companies are great for job security, not so much for meaningful work (unless you’re senior, it seems). I’ve been at a massive company for four years and my work is uninspiring. Can’t wait to get back in the startup life.
xivusr7 months ago
Really appreciate the honest writing, and can appreciate the courage it takes to share this type of honest reflection publicly.<p>Definitely keep writing, the &quot;like a peacock&quot; line made me chuckle :-)
Brian_K_White7 months ago
What was the point of this to anyone who does not already know this person?<p>I thought the internal memo was going to just be the background to set up the actual point which would be something they learned or something.<p>Actually at first I thought it was going to be about Stripe&#x27;s culture but there was really nothing too exceptionally bad, just ordinary bog standard work in a too-big company issues. The standout most offensive thing Stripe did to them was something they actually liked.<p>So, fine, it won&#x27;t be about how good or bad Stripe is, just about some process they went through and it starts with &quot;I&#x27;m not feeling much purpose to my life and I&#x27;m not sure why not, but work as a developer in a generic bog standard tech company is not providing it.&quot;<p>Ok, got it. Setup established. Ready for the point now. But then that&#x27;s it. &#x27;No &quot;and then&quot;&#x27;.<p>Ok like, so what? The mere fact of deciding to quit a tech job for the vague reason of non-specific dissatisfaction is relevant to this person&#x27;s direct close friends &amp; family, <i>barely</i> relevant to anyone else at their company, and not relevant at all to anyone else.
评论 #42028105 未加载
celltalk7 months ago
I think this is the feeling when you realize what you’re doing does not matter. No big purpose, just a mere immortal. I think you need a bigger purpose bro, like really. Reach out.
snozolli7 months ago
<i>She, and apparently others she gathered feedback from, felt like I hadn’t done a good enough job pulling other engineers into the project. She spoke of how proud she was of the outcome but that it didn’t excuse my less than ideal methods.</i><p>I gather from what he wrote that he&#x27;s a software engineer. How is it his duty to &quot;pull other engineers into the project&quot;? What does management at this company do, besides invent contrived criticism to mash into a compliment sandwich? American corporate management culture has become laughably toxic over the last several decades.
评论 #42030963 未加载
thecleaner7 months ago
I kinda applaud OP for sharing their personal story. However, I personally never understood why people give a shit about objectives which aren&#x27;t tied to business objectives. I mean the build improvement of 10x is great, but so what ?<p>Also, Stripe is barely profitable. As an engineer in big tech, I wouldn&#x27;t even consider applying. You&#x27;re better off targeting Principal engineer at Big Tech since it implies doing some really ground breaking software work. At that point, you probably don&#x27;t have to worry about middle management and that bs. Outside the big 4 I had an experience where the manager read a Software engineering management book and would follow the things down to the letter like a superstition. It was a stupid exchange but ChatGPT really helped build my repository of meaningless corporate soeak. I find it to be a very useful skill.
评论 #42027240 未加载
评论 #42029060 未加载
lquist7 months ago
<i>My email admired by a billionaire? Bliss.</i><p>Hoping this is satire
评论 #42111868 未加载
akomtu7 months ago
I feel sorry for this guy, but he will be alright in the end. Corporations create a facade of a rosy kindergarten, they lure in smart but immature guys like him, extract their energy and once they look depleted, they gaslight them into thinking they are failures and throw them out.<p>&quot;Until I had my next one on one with my boss. She shared with me some concerns about my communication and project management. She, and apparently others she gathered feedback from, felt like I hadn’t done a good enough job pulling other engineers into the project. She spoke of how proud she was of the outcome but that it didn’t excuse my less than ideal methods.&quot;<p>Manipulative managers like her willingly fuse themselves with the beast that is corporation, and become its tentacles of some sort.<p>But this guy has also learnt a lesson that he shouldn&#x27;t seek happinesses in someone&#x27;s approval. What his manager thinks of him matters very little and once he has grown out of this kindergarten mindset, he&#x27;ll realise that he is his own judge and the only thing that matters and the only source of happiness is whether he does the right thing.
neilv7 months ago
The stereotypical brogrammer hazing interview at the start kinda foreshadowed everything else.<p>When you see that a company is playing games in an interview, the questions are what other forms will the doofus&#x2F;jerky culture take if you join, and how will it affect you.
评论 #42028159 未加载
评论 #42028309 未加载
评论 #42027833 未加载
kev0097 months ago
Of course we only see one side of the story here, but as written the original manager sounds like a maniac. Letting someone complete a major and well received project and then sniping backward at how they did it with a performance review reeks of incompetent tyrant. Where the hell was the feedback and mentoring when it mattered?<p>If you are worth your salt as a manager your reports should know exactly where they are going into performance reviews and that process should just be a formality to make the HR department whole. Unfortunately, a lot of dipshits end up in management because once you make it here it is a lot harder (ironically) to get performance reviewed out.<p>The second manager also sounds pretty foolish, but at least in a more endearing and earnest way. That kind of emotional thing can and should be discussed on 1:1s once you have built up the relationship. As a manager you should be looking out for your reports and trying to set them up for long term success, and that means learning about their personal life to the extent that is mutually decided to be appropriate. Forcing emotionality out into a group setting sounds like a cringe moment in the Silicon Valley sitcom. This is a bad idea for so many reasons.. for one a lot of us are introverts and doing that is crushing anxiety.. and the innate peer pressure if others are doing it are going to lead to overshares and yet more anxiety. No.<p>If the depression era fell under the same manager they also missed the importance of momentum. Momentum carries you through failure, depression, hard times.. and you need to give your team easy wins if they are falling behind to rebuild momentum. Otherwise it feels like jumping back on to a moving train.<p>Based on this I&#x27;d wonder what&#x27;s going on at Stripe. Run not walk from a situation like that, author made the right call.
评论 #42028981 未加载
onetokeoverthe7 months ago
No wonder I cannot find an easy to use payment processor.
评论 #42029059 未加载
siliconc0w7 months ago
It makes sense to care about a &#x27;startup&#x27; if it&#x27;s like a few small teams, everyone knows each other, resources are still constrained, etc.<p>But when the company is public or on their series Z funding round and the once nimble startup has devolved into a big ball of bureaucracy- the psychologically healthier thing is to not care. Your project may be no-scoped by a higher up for no discernable reason. Your trash manager was probably imported from a similarly bureaucratically burdened company and will import and impose their bullshit. You don&#x27;t have any real agency or identity to this company which will treat you as an interchangeable resource. Sure, try to be useful where you can but seek validation and meaning outside of work. I generally recommend a side project you have agency in that can maybe one day replace your primary employment.
Mali-7 months ago
Incredibly melodramatic<p>&quot;Having his avatar beside mine on an unfinished google doc felt invigorating&quot; - are you fucking kidding me.
chiefrubberduck7 months ago
thank you for sharing your story and experience through all of this
评论 #42111857 未加载
kopirgan7 months ago
Gave up about 30% of the way..
gradschoolfail7 months ago
Time for PG to, with chainsaw &amp; pernach, remind Patrick about founder mode?