Sofia Sarwat Casanova’s Post

In 2018, three former Stripe employees set out with a bold vision to revolutionize customer support operations. Now, six years later, the company they started has reached a significant milestone of its own: a team of 100 strong. To mark this achievement, we spoke with some early hires who not only shaped the culture but continue to embody our values to this day. Here are a few themes that emerged across all interviews: 🤝 At Assembled, we believe in the power of empathy and genuine connection. Our cultural value to "act like a support agent" shines through in the kindness and dedication of our team. 🔄 Feedback is a cornerstone of our growth. We embrace the philosophy that "feedback is a gift," fostering an environment where giving and receiving feedback empowers us to innovate and excel. 🌟 No prior experience? No problem! Our team members continually step outside their comfort zones, embracing new roles with enthusiasm and excelling in ways they never imagined. Ready to meet the Assemblers who helped make the company what it is today? Find their stories on our blog. https://hubs.ly/Q02DZ8Gk0

“My intuition is that more of Stripe success than one would think is down to the fact that people like beautiful things and for rational reasons. Because, what does a beautiful thing tell you? It tells you the person who made it really cared, and you can observe some superficial details, but probably they didn’t only care about those and did everything in else in slapdash way. So, if you care about the infrastructure being holistically good, indexing on the superficial characteristics is not an irrational thing to do.“ Couldn't have said better and proud to have Patrick as an investor in @linear. We shouldn't accept poorly made things and that lack beauty. (- Karri From linear writes on Stripe prioritising craft in thier products) https://t.co/dxsXdBvcXO

The hard truth: that company vision statement of yours is useless. 90% of the time it doesn’t achieve anything. It doesn’t fuel your progress. It doesn’t power your performance. 10% of companies (maybe fewer) get it right. They understand that a vision statement on its own is like a speed car without fuel. Read on to see what Stripe and San Francisco 49ers have done to fuel their performance. It all comes down to AMBITION.

Want to get first hand information about Stripe’s roadmap? Join us at Sessions to hear Nazneen (Naz) Irani share. (DM me for my promo code.) #womenintech #womeninstem #womenengineers #solutionsarchitecture #womeninengineering

This is something that's been bothering me lately. 😤 A lot of folks these days just don't have that sense of ownership over their work.  They let themselves become victims, defined by work struggles, instead of taking control and facing challenges head-on. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to bash anyone here. At Stripe, I was fortunate to work with Claire Hughes Johnson who helped us better understand this concept. The unique analogy addressed by her in this video raises an important point. When things go wrong You see kids trying to cover up their mistakes by building stories You see people in sports trying to blame weather and equipment  You see drivers blaming accidents on bad roads instead of acknowledging risky driving habits. Similarly, as professionals, we face challenges and setbacks, but how we respond can make or break our success. - Acknowledge the situation  - Take ownership - Learn from the experience  - Outline steps to resolve the problem Because at the end of the day, You are not a victim of your circumstances. Rather, you might be one for how you deal with your problems.

One year after myself and 12000 other Googlers were laid off, the pattern seems to be repeating, with Google and with the industry at large. It really begs the question, can a company such as Google balance this line of being a "Good corporation" particularly when the very structure of "corporations" in this day and age seems antithetical to goodness. I wrote this essay to speak a bit to what I'm seeing here, and I hope to publish a few more essays soon around this topic. It feels really vital for us to look at how we're doing business in the world today, and to also see if there might be a different way forward. #google #layoffs #changingwork

Today is day 5 of my journey at Ramp! I've been following Ramp ever since my time at Stripe and it's been incredible to see the company's explosive growth. A couple of quick takeaways: 1. Every day counts - Ramp writes the days that the company has been in existence at the front of presentations to put things into perspective. What have we done in the last 30 days and how can we ensure the next 30 days get us closer to our goals? 2. Customers love the product - And it's by design, the product and engineering teams are laser focused on what customers care about and collaborate with different teams to deeply understand each persona. 3. Incredible talent - The folks I've spoken to so far embody a rare combination of ownership, curiosity, and humility. The energy at the New York office is contagious and I look forward to learning more in the coming weeks.

Interesting read.

Something interesting about Stripe’s engineering culture: helping (unblocking) other engineers is a big focus. Which sounds… smart? When a company goes beyond a certain size, being blocked by others is the most common time waster in my experience. And at companies that don’t have any incentives for engineers to help others outside their immediate team, things tend to slow down. Not only this: things usually become more siloed. When building your own service to unblock yourself is easier than to make a small change to another team’s one (because they keep ignoring your request): you get an engineering team that keeps reinventing the wheel, thanks to teams and engineers not particularly helping each other. Short-term gain, long-term pain! This is how David Singleton describes their approach in The Pragmatic Engineer: Full article with more details: https://lnkd.in/dPY3RwUa

This topic is exactly the kind of discussion engineering teams have when looking for ways to make Staff+ engineers more impactful. Create impact by unblocking other engineers.