Building a Product-Minded Engineering Culture at Stripe | Key Practices & Strategy

Introduction

In this article, we dive into the key practices and strategies that helped Stripe in building a product-minded engineering culture. From co-creating products with users to embracing AI, Stripe’s approach to product development is insightful and impactful.

Building a Product-Minded Engineering Culture at Stripe

• Stripe focused on finding the correct set of early users to co-create the product with, emphasizing the importance of product-minded approach in development.

• They co-created the product with existing users like Figma and Slack, who were already using Stripe for payments, and only launched to a broader audience after receiving positive feedback from the alpha group.

• The culture at Stripe emphasized a singular mission of increasing the GDP of the internet, which attracted individuals passionate about making a meaningful impact on businesses at scale.

• The hiring process at Stripe involved structured loops for evaluating talent, including coding exercises for engineers and written exercises for product managers.

• Stripe initially built a product-minded engineering culture with an emphasis on understanding user needs and a collaborative, problem-solving mindset.

• The first product managers were hired around the 200th employee mark, but prior to that, the original engineering team also had a product-minded approach, effectively acting as product managers.

• Product managers at Stripe now play a significant role in collaborating with engineers and driving the product development process with a focus on solving real user problems.

Developing Products with a User-Focused Approach

• The company maintains a strong developer focus at the core of its product development approach.

• The best PMS for developer-focused products are usually very technical and are led by former or current Engineers who provide deep user insights and strategy.

• Every early member of the team at the company needed to deeply understand the users and incorporate personal insights into product development.

• The company’s approach to product development involves finding the correct set of early users to co-create the product with, as seen with the example of Strike billing product.

• For Strike billing, the team co-created the product with existing users like Figma and Slack, getting to know the individuals operating those systems to understand their challenges and future needs.

• The product development process at the company is cross-functionally collaborative, involving not only Engineers, engineering managers, and product managers, but also other functions such as financial partnerships, legal, risk, and compliance.

• Product Managers (PMs) at the company play a crucial role in synthesizing insights from users and bringing together cross-functional collaboration, while also contributing to product strategy.

• The company has operational principles that emphasize being meticulous with the product craft, with a focus on solving user needs rapidly and with great attention to detail. Friction logging is a widely used practice across product teams to identify areas where meticulous attention is required.

• Friction logging involves putting oneself in the user’s shoes, meticulously noting the areas of friction in the product experience, and recognizing and addressing both good and challenging aspects of the product.

• Senior leaders, executives, and PMs regularly engage in friction logging to ensure cohesive product experiences and maintain high-quality standards.

• The company’s culture is aligned with its operating principles, allowing teams the space and time to invest in improving the user experience and product quality, even in the face of multiple goals and timelines.

Analyzing Strategy and Practices at Stripe

• At Stripe, they prioritize identifying instant remediations to address issues and prioritize them carefully. This ensures that operational issues are taken care of efficiently and effectively.

• They encourage every team to set aside the right amount of time for activities such as friction logging and operational maintenance to ensure high product quality and user experience.

• The UX reviews at Stripe involve meticulous examinations of the product, often done asynchronously and together with cross-functional partners. This collaborative approach aims to identify issues, discuss them openly, and address them collectively.

• Stripe also organizes a process called ‘Walk the Store’ where the whole company comes together to examine critical product flows. This serves the purpose of creating a shared language for discussing product features and user experience.

• One of the unique practices at Stripe is the concept of ‘engineer occasions’ where leaders clear their schedules for several days to work directly with a team, pick up a small task, and gain firsthand experience. Additionally, they emphasize the importance of maintaining a feedback loop with real users to ensure continuous improvement.

• To achieve high reliability and availability, Stripe deploys changes to its core API multiple times a day while maintaining exceptional uptime. This is made possible through a strong focus on user feedback, continuous improvement, and a duty to provide reliable and critical services to their users.

Improving Productivity and Embracing AI at Stripe

• At Stripe, the focus is on building a comprehensive and efficient development process, with a strong emphasis on automated testing to ensure high test coverage for every change before it goes into production. The company uses staging environments and gradually exposes changes to realistic and broad environments before full production deployment, enabling the detection of problems early on.

• The company places a significant emphasis on addressing issues systematically, with a strong focus on incident response and continuous learning. It prioritizes working on preventing future issues over other roadmap initiatives, highlighting a proactive approach to maintaining system reliability.

• Stripe has made significant strides in reducing the time it takes for code to go into production, with automated tests running in parallel to the code review process, contributing to a faster feedback loop with users and enabling quick issue resolution.

• Stripe has also been actively exploring the integration of AI and machine learning techniques into its products, particularly in areas such as payment fraud detection and financial operations. The company has leveraged large language models to improve its documentation, automate SQL queries, and enhance internal processes.

• The introduction of co-pilot, an AI-powered tool for code generation, has shown promise in accelerating tasks related to test case generation and boilerplate code, allowing engineers to focus on higher-level problem-solving. The company is closely monitoring and evaluating the impact to gauge the productivity gains for different types of engineers.

• As Stripe’s engineering team continues to expand, the company emphasizes the importance of hiring the right people and trusting them with autonomy. References play a crucial role in the hiring process, providing valuable insights into candidates based on their past experiences. Stripe places a strong emphasis on giving trust generously at the beginning and holding individuals accountable to prove their capabilities.

Key Points for Effective Time and Energy Management

• Delegate tasks to others, even if it feels uncomfortable, in order to operate at a significant scale.

• Take a conscious approach to managing personal time and energy, rather than allowing external factors to dictate where time is spent.

• Establish a weekly routine for reviewing past events and setting goals for the upcoming week, focusing on impactful tasks.

• Emphasize the importance of personal and organizational operating principles in setting the desired culture.

• Manage personal energy by engaging in tasks that bring joy and positivity, ultimately contributing to overall productivity.

Conclusion

The journey of building a product-minded engineering culture at Stripe is an inspiring example of how collaborative, user-focused, and AI-driven approaches can shape the success of a tech company. By prioritizing user insights, empowering engineers, and embracing continuous improvement, Stripe has set high standards for product development.

undefined