Thread by @sinahab

Joined @stripe on their call about the remote hub - some notes:

Stripe’s had remote engineers since the early days, 7 years ago.

Started investing in engineering hubs beyond SF in 2017: Seattle, Dublin (EMEA), Singapore (Asia-Pacific)

Now opening a remote hub - hiring engineers/managers across teams and the stack.

When setting up a new hub:

• travel there and meet the local community, to understand the working culture. This coffee chat was part of it for remote.

• have a site lead - this is @chimeracoder for remote.

Aditya's goals for the remote hub:

1. Have teams across the org feel like they can hire remote.

2. Have effective remote hiring practices from a candidates pov.

3. Improve the day to day experience of working remote.

Teams have different compositions - some are fully-remote, some are hybrid (e.g. 3/8 engineers are remote)

A common problem with remote: decisions are made at informal hangouts in-person, e.g. during a lunchtime conversation.

Solution: write decisions down, and gather feedback before implementing.

Improve the video conferencing experience:

• teach how to present well online, how to set up audio and light, ..

• pay attention to nuances: e.g. not wearing headphones because it subconsciously makes people feel farther away

Some remote practices:

• daily standup in Slack

• e-mail transparency: in any product discussions, cc anyone who’s relevant so they have context on decisions.

• a writing culture: write architecture/strategy memos and send them to people via email. Potentially have a Zoom call so everyone has a chance to chime in. Everything goes through revision before being implemented.

• when reviewing PRs/design docs, don’t only address the work itself, but help the author develop as a person. Mentor remotely.

• when people are visiting, try to have them overlap in the office. Rotate hosting in-person get-togethers between hubs (not only in SF).

• start all meetings with an ice-breaker - e.g. “what’s your favorite bad movie?”. Helps people build relationships when they’re not in person. Leave time in weekly meetings for this.

• tea-time: a standing 15min meeting where you don’t talk about work. Analogous to water cooler convo. One of the best attended meetings.

• occasionally do meetings where everyone calls in, even people who are in the office, so everyone gets to be on the same page.

• gather questions on Slack for company meetings, live-stream, and record them for later viewing - e.g. the biweekly all hands, or the weekly Q&A.

Stripe has a tradition of bringing everyone at the company together for a week once a year - the “convergence”. Look back at what was achieved in the prev year, and what goals are for the upcoming year.

They’re only hiring remote in the US and Canada right now. Want to setup a good process - e.g. for timezones and team composition so meeting times work, .. before expanding

Compensation adapts to the local market, to provide a comparable standard of living.

Harder to do this for fully nomadic employees. How it’s shaping up: there are separate talent markets in a few expensive cities (e.g. SF, NYC, London, ..) and an overall global talent market.

Some of Stripe's goals going forward:

• build a globally unified payment stack that works everywhere - in Brazil, India, China, Indonesia, ..

• build applications on-top of this payment stack: Billing, Sigma, others (e.g. automated cohort analysis recently)

Thanks @umanagineer, @alexkehayias, @TaraTeich, @dps, @patio11, @chimeracoder, @edwinwee, @patrickc for hosting!