Sreejith GS’ Post

When you want to improve developer experience and productivity, your first step should be to make it really easy for software engineers to complain about the things that are getting in their way. This may look different for companies with a dozen vs. thousands of developers. At Stripe, the solution was a “bad day button” that allowed engineers to tell the developer productivity team what was going wrong with a click of a button. Get the whole story here 👇

We’ve been quietly building over the past year and I’m excited to share more today with my broader LinkedIn network. Introducing, Dev-docs. Andrew van Beek and I have been building the future of how engineering and documentation teams manage content that goes into their technical docs. We know that developers like to read docs but not everyone likes writing them. When diving into this we found out that there is often a disconnect between the teams managing the docs and the devs shipping code. One level deeper, these documentation teams are often under resourced and need help. So, we set out to solve this problem. How did I get here? While at Stripe it was evident that Stripe’s documentation and culture were second to none. Every day, users would tell me how much they love Stripe’s docs. It quickly became clear to me that strong documentation is a differentiator for a business. When I met Andrew and he told me he was building software to enable every developer to automatically generate and maintain their technical docs, I was all in. We set out on a mission to ensure that documentation is something teams just get instead of having to work for. We wouldn’t be here today without our early advocates, mentors, investors and supporters. Too many to list here but you know who you are, so thank you all! To our customers and early users, you have been with us throughout the journey and have instilled confidence in us. It’s because of you that we continue to work so hard. We have a lot to do, and to build, but you’re the reason Dev-Docs exists. We’ve learned so much from you so please, keep the feedback coming. We’re here for it. Stay tuned for more updates but for now, feel free to check us out at the link in the comments. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you’re curious to learn more. This is just the beginning…

Just because it works doesn’t mean it’s secure. We’ve seen many Stripe implementations exposing secret on the client side — seemingly flawless to non-technical founders. Ensure you’re not dancing on the edge. An overview of Stripe's full stack flow.👇

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝗮𝘆 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝘆 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁𝘀? From Stripe docs 👇 Dev tool companies over time grow from one product to suite of products to platforms with products built on top of the core one. The result is that it is harder to communicate without going full-on fluff mode (my fav "built better software faster"). But for most companies, there is this core capability/product where people start.  The entry product. Why not use that? 👉 I really liked what Stripe did on their docs page here: • They have maaaany products: billing, tax, radar, identity etc. • But all of them are built on top of their core payments product • So they focus on getting folks to start with the payments • And make it clear that there are many other products Even though this is docs, the same applies to homepages and other dev comms. 🥡If you have many products, figure out what is the most important one, the one where most people enter. Focus on that. "Upsell" to other products later. #developermarketing #devrel #developerexperience #saasmarketing -- 🍐ps. Subscribe to my weekly developer marketing newsletter and get access to a Notion library with 400+ resources: https://lnkd.in/dvsVBTTf

The buy vs build debate is timeless and exhausting. My default perspective is to buy unless you are somehow creating a competitive advantage by building. Software development is expensive and risky. Depending on the size of your organization, you may not be able to afford developing it yourself, especially when you calculate the total cost of ownership and not just this week's sprint. Make sure you are aiming your finite bucket of cash at whatever can bring your organization the most value. Building commodity capabilities yourself will never be cheaper and less risky in the long run. But my perspective aside, my advice is just make sure to do your homework first - options analysis, options analysis, options analysis. Let facts and analysis guide you. If there is any place you need to ensure the right debates and thinking are going into a decision, it is this one! #solutionarchitecture #enterprisearchitecture

After nearly a decade at Stripe, I recently left the company. I watched Stripe grow from a small startup to a company with 8k employees moving trillions of dollars around the world. I still remember the weeks before I joined – I was hesitant to leave investment banking for a job selling APIs at a startup few had heard of. But when I set foot inside the Pioneer Building, I felt something magical brewing. Everyone I met was kind, optimistic, smart, and a bit quirky. My doubts were put to rest. Since then, I’ve worn almost every hat in the company – sales, operations, corporate development, product, and engineering management. Stripe has been the rare gem filled with constant learning and colleagues pushing the bounds of what’s possible. As I reflect on the journey, I wanted to share a few lessons from Stripe that I will take with me: * Elevate ambition. After launching Stripe’s consumer product, we shared with leadership that we had 20M sign-ups and were targeting 40M by year’s end. We thought that was pretty good. Patrick’s first question: “What do you need to make it 100M?” * Make beautiful things. Whether it be a playful animation, seamless autofill, interactive website, or glistening book cover, Stripe injected delight into every experience. Life's too short not to. * Writing clarifies. My first meeting at Stripe began with 15 mins of silence. A conference room full of people were staring at a Google doc, commenting in the margins. This ritual would commence every meeting. Writing forces clear thinking. Clear thinking enables productive meetings. * Experience doesn’t matter. Stripe’s first engineer had never written a line of code. Stripe’s first product managers were sales people (myself included!). Prioritize curiosity and hunger over experience. * Work backwards. When sitting down to write the product strategy for Stripe Checkout, we began with a mock press release: “Businesses transitioning to Checkout increase revenue by 15%.” Good strategy starts with setting the goal – customer value created. How you get there is secondary. * Transparency transforms. After sending sales emails, I’d often receive replies from random Stripes not on the thread. They’d read my note and wanted to offer feedback. At Stripe, every employee could read all customer facing emails - and many did!  In fact it was advised to CC topic-specific company-wide mailing lists every time you sent an email. Transparency ensures the best ideas are surfaced. * We haven’t won yet. Like many companies, Stripe leaders would review metrics at All Hands. Unlike most companies, whenever we were ahead of target the presenter would, in the same breath, remind everyone of how much there was left to do. Continued success is not preordained. Fight complacency with humility and hunger. I am beyond grateful for my time at Stripe and the many lessons learned building with so many wonderful people. My next chapter is with Anthropic – I couldn’t be more excited for the road ahead!

"Fight complacency with humility and hunger." Whether you're at the peak of success or just starting out, staying humble and hungry is key to continued growth. As I reflect on my own journey, I'm committed to bringing this mindset to everything I do at Avenue7Media. There’s always more to achieve, and I’m here for the long haul. Keep pushing boundaries and striving for excellence! #GrowthMindset #StayHumble #KeepPushing #Leadership #ContinualImprovement #ExcellenceInAction #TeamWork #Avenue7Media #TenacityTuesday #ProfessionalGrowth

"Stripe ... employs thousands of software engineers, and processed $817B of payments in 2022. That’s around $1.5M processed per minute, on average." >> “Our API reliability is now consistently in excess of 99.999%..." >> “The biggest distributed system at Stripe is our testing system ... more than 50 million lines of code ... automated tests detect and prevent problems much better than humans ever could. In 2022, we deployed our core payments APIs 5,978 times, 16.4 times a day, on average. Of this, 1,100 deploys failed to meet our acceptance criteria, and were rolled back automatically.” https://lnkd.in/e2zZhqcW

New Tutorial: Stripe onboarding for enterprises 🔔 3️⃣ with Mr Bell https://lnkd.in/dFEXc8Ns

There’s something magical about building a new product that customers actually pay for. I’ve been an early employee at a pre-launch stage for 2 companies (and pre $1m rev at 4) and have had the pleasure of navigating bringing a product to market… …but never as a founder. Until launching Deal Sheet 6 weeks ago. Bringing a product to market (as a founder), and the one who co-created the product, it just hits WAY DIFFERENT than previously for me as an employee. The dopamine I get from a Stripe notification that someone has purchased our product is amazing. I don't really know exactly how to explain. Clearly for us, and many others there’s years of figuring out a model before there is even a product. Then the idea lands but you still need to figure out how to make every part work for each party involved. Most idea’s fail. I’ve tried a bunch that have failed. It sucks. You take the L and move on to try and build something better. No real point to this post, just sharing what’s on my mind right now. And cheers to the dopamine hit when you get a paid customer notification 🙂