On building of All Trades

Very, very many people at Stripe today are doing a quite different job to the one that they join for. In order to do that they've often had to learn a lot and stretch themselves into new areas.

A century-long vision allows you to build something that mostly ignores short-lived fluctuations in public perception or personal feelings. With a vision of that duration, you can think outside of yourself. If you couple that with a hum-drum process of Google Sheets and brain-trust meetings, you can build something meaningful.

There is something... See more

Most projects have a right size and technology and communication networks have changed the best ‘right size’ for many organizations. If you’re struggling, it might be because you’re fighting the laws of organizational physics. Radically transforming the size of an organization changes more than we would think. We can begin to right size by asking... See more

Everyone wants to be connected

But we hesitate to be the connector.

Everyone wants to be trusted, but we hesitate to trust.

And everyone wants to be respected, but we often fail to offer our respect.

What an opportunity.

Self-promotion makes me uncomfortable.

Maybe because I (read: most women) am not really great at it?

Or because I never want to sound sales-y.

“The majority of companies don’t work in the way we do, which leads to fewer people with these kinds of skills. A conventional interview process, often modeled by large companies, doesn’t account for this. It’s challenging to assess in interviews if someone is truly a builder, has good taste and judgment, can take initiative, and approaches... See more

Conventional hiring processes are designed to recruit the most skilled people to fill a specific role at the right price. The experience can feel dehumanizing — it’s laden with unwritten rules, negotiation, posturing, and indirect communication (if you’re lucky) through recruiters.

The process, at its core, is a transaction of resources. It’s not... See more

And maybe that’s part of the problem, trying to be legible to everyone. The tug of war of wanting to water things down for mass adoption versus building something I want for myself and trusting the others will come.