This document discusses how Stripe has scaled its engineering team while maintaining its culture. It emphasizes having a global long-term vision, transparency, trust, rigorous recruitment, and customer focus. As the team grows larger than Dunbar's number of 100-250 people, processes are needed to facilitate information sharing and decision making across the organization, while avoiding bureaucracy that could undermine the startup culture. The key lessons are that culture must come from the founders and be constantly reinforced, scaling requires maintaining the long term vision through actions, and culture requires awareness as the organization grows in size.

1. SCALING A TOP-TIER ENGINEERING
TEAM: THE STRIPE EXPERIENCE
#TFWORKSHOP
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2. TheFamily
code: lamifasisi
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4. #TFWORKSHOP
STANISLAS POLU
SOFTWARE ENGINEER AT STRIPE
@SPOLU
HOW TO SCALE AN ENGINEERING TEAM BOTH FROM A
CULTURAL AND A TECHNICAL POINT OF VIEW?

5. Scaling culture @Stripe
Guillaume Princen
Head of France & Southern Europe @Stripe
Startup DreamTeam @TheFamily
May 19, 2015

6. Have a global long term vision (and apply it!)
Source: MIT Technology Review (January 26, 2015)

7. Stand by your vision… whatever the risks

8. Transparency
Source: Wired (12.19.14)

9. Transparency
Transparency

10. Transparency

11. Transparency
Fear
Uncertainties
Doubts
All
The
Hands

12. Trust & risk-free environment

13. Recruitment – take it seriously
My recruitment process
• 1 skype with recruiter in SF
• 1 skype with Head of International
• 1 written project (“My plan for Stripe in France”)
• 1 visit to London:
– Interview with UK Country Lead
– Interview with Head of International
– Lunch with the 2 above + an Account Support + an Engineer
• 1 skype with COO
• 1 trip to San Francisco, and interviews with
– Patrick (co-founder)
– John (co-founder)
– COO
– Head of Risk
– Head of Global Operations
– Head of BizOps
– Lunch with Legal officer, Data engineer, Product engineer
– Coffee with Recruiter

14. Recruitment – take it seriously
My recruitment process
• 1 skype with recruiter in SF
• 1 skype with Head of International
• 1 written project (“My plan for Stripe in France”)
• 1 visit to London:
– Interview with UK Country Lead
– Interview with Head of International
– Lunch with the 2 above + an Account Support + an Engineer
• 1 skype with COO
• 1 trip to San Francisco, and interviews with
– Patrick (co-founder)
– John (co-founder)
– COO
– Head of Risk
– Head of Global Operations
– Head of BizOps
– Lunch with Legal officer, Data engineer, Product engineer
– Coffee with Recruiter
• 2 references to provide
11"“formal”"interviews"
+"1"wri3en"project"
+"2"lunches"
+"1"coffee"
+"1"Eurostar"trip"
+"1"American"Airlines"flight"to"SF"
+"2"references"

15. Recruitment – take it seriously
My recruitment process
• 1 skype with recruiter in SF
• 1 skype with Head of International
• 1 written project (“My plan for Stripe in France”)
• 1 visit to London:
– Interview with UK Country Lead
– Interview with Head of International
– Lunch with the 2 above + an Account Support + an Engineer
• 1 skype with COO
• 1 trip to San Francisco, and interviews with
– Patrick (co-founder)
– John (co-founder)
– COO
– Head of Risk
– Head of Global Operations
– Head of BizOps
– Lunch with Legal officer, Data engineer, Product engineer
– Coffee with Recruiter
– 2 references to provide
Sunday"
aCernoon"test"

16. Customer-centric

17. Rituals & folklore
• Twin Peaks jog (Tuesday)
• Board games night (Wed)
• Hacktrips
• ATH

18. Beware when you scale!
• Dunbar’s number: somewhere between
100 and 250 employees
• Social relationships between people are
not enough anymore to get things done:
you need more processes…
• …but processes can kill your (startup)
culture

19. Beware when you scale!
• Email transparency can become a little chaotic with 250
people…
• …we created notes@ and decisions@ mailing lists to make
the most critical information available to all in a frictionless
manner
• E.g., for France, now we have:
– france@stripe.com
– France-archive@stripe.com
– France-notes@stripe.com (new)
– France-decisions@stripe.com (new)

20. 3 things to take-away
• Culture is a Founder topic, and the Founders
have to embrace them everyday
• Long term vision and actions are key to
maintain culture
• Beware of culture as you scale!

21. Thanks!

22. SEE YOU SOON!
LOVE.
THEFAMILY.CO
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