The kind of person I would like to become

For a long time I was thinking about what I wanted to write about my internship @ Stripe this summer. Should it be about how I got in? The work I did? The conversations I had? Then I realised that all these didn’t matter. I started this blog to inspire others, and also a way to say thank you. So I decided that it will be none of the temporaries. Everything I share here was highly dependent on my experience there which may not translate to your own.

What Stripe meant to me

Stripe was my very first company, the biggest one I’ve ever joined whose core business was off its technology built. I consider it the first MNC that took a chance on a small fry like me. I’m not gonna discredit my efforts but I think that how I got in was part luck part skill. Stripe exposed me to a lot of the way engineers work on larger products, showed me a glimpse of how careers are grown, and how to maintain my humanity along the way.

I used to think that culture was piss if you paid me enough

One of the biggest things I realised was how much my courage grew. I am like by no means a quiet person, I have too many words, speak too much of my mind most of the time and have an incessant series of questions about everything and anything. But one thing I absolutely feared doing was speaking to people 1-1 and holding eye contact. So when I learned that at work there is the culture of having “coffee chats” I had to internalise talking to people for many days before I had enough courage to put something on their calendar. This was so hard, I don’t think you understand how much character growth I received from this invisible pressure I felt.

This was the culture and I’m sure at many companies. Though, the people made all the difference, with every conversation I learned more about my colleagues which revealed more of their humanity to me (wow I speak like im studying aliens but Im actually the alien studying humans). With each conversation I got inspired more, they gave me so much perspective to the life I wanted to live and the person I wanted to be. Truly this was the biggest mark left on me.

Stripe hires great engineers but greater people

The culture of collaboration is huge at Stripe and encompassed my whole experience there. From work to daily things or even me hanging out at the 3D printer, I kept meeting people who were warm and kind. I started my work there making huge prs that were ugly, disorganised and genuinely disgusting but the people there were beyond patient with my inexperience and their personal standards made me hold myself to a higher bar everyday. Their heart spoke infinitely through their work that I’m not even sure how to describe it. But maybe I should tell you more about the conversations I had during the chats I scheduled for you to understand.

A heart knows no bounds

I’m not sure how everyone did their coffee chats and what people normally talk about but I enjoy knowing people for who they are, so before every cc I scheduled I would have a list of targeted questions that usually revolved around their experiences in life, past present and future. Usually my curiosity wanders based on their responses and I never stay on script lol but I asked about everything under the sun especially with my closest mentors and one thing I asked was : how are you the engineer that you are today? I talked to many about this, over 5 people and they all said things that revolved around the theme: kindness and empathy. That was something I never expected.

I thought that I would receive responses that were more practical, but almost every engineer I talked to mentioned about empathizing with the colleague who would be reviewing my PR, for person that would be stamping my work and before that I never thought about it that way. I always felt like it was a professional standard that everyone holds themselves to and less like a moral duty. It genuinely made me remember the part of me that has forgotten that we are all… human.

…is someone who remains genuine and kind.

I know that not everyone sees their work that way and everyone has a rationale to their own standards. But the people there have helped me to find my own which I hope to carry with me for a long time, the way that people made me see engineering in such light, the kindness I was shown there and that they walk by. To me, a lot of Stripe was more than an internship and if you are reading this and have worked with me I am grateful to have met you this summer, the conversations exchanged, stories shared and the lessons parted.

Thank you to my mentors, everyone in my team of APAC & EMEA Cards Online, my intern colleagues and also my recruiters. See yall again?