Stripe

The everyday people you interact with at Stripe are world-class. As you go up the management chain, however, this becomes less and less so.

Important decisions are kept hidden but they promote "transparency". They're constantly behind on projects. There's a large hierarchy of managers of managers of managers. Re-orgs happen every few months. Getting up a level is a pain, and it's no longer worth it because RSUs stay the same. New joiner L4s are earning less than L1s. The largest con is that the work weeks are > 70 hours, and everyone's always online but never responding when you need them.

Scale down, cut Muda, focus on core products. Large internal projects keep getting delayed. Think about why.