How Stripe operates like a civilization

yo @joeheadbuff — long time no talk!

Does Stripe have a system in place for this? An area for people to post/discuss ideas to validate them internally? A decision-making structure for when an idea is validated enough to turn into an experiment? Who decides when an experiment is worth making a real financial bet on?

for sure, stripe has a bunch of cultural norms that amount to a system for turning employees into small entrepreneurial teams. but it's difficult to point to any one or two norms in a way that does them justice.

so rather than thinking of it from a bottom-up perspective, i like thinking of the system from the top down. henrik kniberg, a consultant for spotify, hit the nail on the head in this presentation about agile development:

the top-down goal is to make sure each team knows the org's destination, but allow them the autonomy to figure out how to get there.

now, given these very specific constraints, certain conventions become virtually unavoidable:

• you have to hire incredibly talented people (perhaps at great expense)
• you have to create an "open" workplace — whether physical or digital — that makes collaboration not just convenient, but inevitable (at stripe, almost nothing is private, not even emails)
• you have to encourage small, frequent, and internally public releases. "small" in order to give people the psychological safety to take risks. "frequent" in order to allow people to learn from their own mistakes. and "internally public" in order to allow people to learn from everyone else's mistakes.
• it makes sense for certain teams/people in the org to bounce around from team to team giving support. in stripe's case, this applies to the design team, the marketing team, some people in leadership, etc. you can almost think of them like freelancers within the organization that show up whenever needed.
• etc.