I left Stripe last week. It was fun working security for the mafia (just kidding) for three and a half years. I learned a lot and made some really good friends (thanks to any of you reading!)

I helped ship a lot of things. The easiest to see is the Stripe Dashboard’s login page. There were a number of interesting internal libraries that I helped develop, learning a lot about web security and cryptography on the way.

If I was to compare before-Stripe Param and after-Stripe Param, I think there’s a huge difference in engineering skills and general ability to get things done. Before Stripe, I didn’t realize how much of a software engineer’s job is simply making sure that your project doesn’t get derailed by external factors.

A popular image of a software engineer is the hacker sitting in a basement, creating a miraculous thing overnight. There are moments when you feel like that, but for the majority of the time, it’s less glamorous. There is a lot of other work to do. You have to talk to users throughout the development cycle, making sure that the project does solve the problem it’s supposed to. You have to provide support, write documentation, figure out which metrics you’re tracking to measure the project’s success.

The other thing that I really cherish is the team that I worked with. In 2020, when COVID happened, we were essentially a pack going through it together. I feel grateful that I was able to work with such amazing people for such a long time.

In summary, it was a very fun experience where I grew quite a lot and made a lot of friends.