Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

Building a culture of excellence | David Singleton (CTO of Stripe)

May 4, 2023

David Singleton, CTO of Stripe, shares his extensive experience leading engineering teams. He reveals Stripe's unique hiring practices that foster a culture of collaboration and product focus. Singleton discusses the innovative 'friction logging' practice for enhancing user experience and details how AI is revolutionizing engineering workflows. He emphasizes the importance of continuous learning and strategic planning at scale, particularly how user feedback shapes product development. Singleton's insights provide a glimpse into building a high-performing tech organization.

01:29:59

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Episode guests

David Singleton

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Episode notes

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Quick takeaways

Stripe prioritizes co-creating products with early users to gather feedback and ensure satisfaction before broader releases.

At Stripe, engineers take on product management skills, collaborate closely with users, and prioritize user needs.

Meticulous attention to detail is operationalized at Stripe through friction logging, helping drive user-centric improvements.

David Singleton practices engineering occasions to deeply understand challenges and achievements within his team.

Deep dives

Co-creating Products with Early Users

At Stripe, they believe in finding the correct set of early users to co-create their products with. An example is Stripe billing, where they worked closely with existing users like Figma and Slack to understand their needs and gather feedback. Only when this alpha group was satisfied, did they consider a broader release.

The Importance of Practice To Make Values Embedded

01:46

Importance of Getting in the Weeds for Stripe Engineering Managers - engineerication

01:28

Alpha users

01:20

Friction Logging

01:39

Intro

4min

Cultivating Talent and User-Centric Innovation at Stripe

28min

Enhancing User Experience at Stripe

10min

The Power of User Feedback and Immersion in Product Development

6min

Cultivating Continuous Learning at Stripe

26min

Strategic Planning at Stripe

8min

Lightning Insights: Books, Interviews, and AI Creativity

8min

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David Singleton is Chief Technology Officer at Stripe, where he oversees engineering and design teams. Since joining Stripe, David has helped grow the technology org across the U.S. and developed new engineering hubs in Singapore and Dublin as well as Stripe’s fifth hub, remote engineering, across the globe. Before Stripe, he spent 11 years at Google, where he was VP of Engineering, leading product development and coordinating more than 15 different hardware partnerships. In today’s episode, we cover:

• Hiring secrets that set Stripe employees apart

• How to build a product-minded engineering team

• How to operationalize meticulousness

• Strategies for maintaining developer productivity at scale

• The process of “friction logging” used to make better products

• How AI is changing the way engineers work

• Insights for planning and prioritizing at scale

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Find the full transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/building-a-culture-of-excellence

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Where to find David Singleton:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/dps