Daniel Golden — Writing

My first 90 days at Stripe

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:27:00 GMT

How I got to Stripe

I spent 2012-2017 working for CURE International (a non-profit network of Christian hospitals that offered life changing surgical care to patients around the world). My role was primarily design and I remember spending lots of time pouring over the details in the latest Stripe landing pages (button design, faux 3d CSS transforms, OG gradient usage, etc). I remember when the redesigned, when they launched their open source page, when I discovered their instagram page, etc.

I didn't really seriously entertain the idea of working for Stripe someday because I viewed myself as an outsider of the industry. I didn't really know designers, let alone web designers and front-end engineers.

So it was basically the stuff of dreams when in 2021, I joined Stripe as a Design Engineer on the Web Presence and Platform team (WPP), the very team responsible for shipping all the cool stuff I loved most about stripe. It was a strange experience being interviewed by people that I knew of, respected, and followed on twitter haha. I was pumped to finally be on the inside and get to know the secret sauce that enabled them to ship so much cool, impressive, thoughtful, well-designed and delightful work.

After a few months of being on the team and getting know and see how we operated, I wrote down my thoughts on that secret sauce and tips I wish I'd known on day 1.

This is what I learned (from the perspective of December, 2023 me):

What I learned in my first 90 months (written by past me to past me)

Stuff I think I know now that I was sure I didn't know 3 months ago. I expect about 2/3 of these to be true and to learn I was wrong about the other 1/3 in the next 90 days.

Advice I'd offer myself on my first day

The greatest boon to your learning and getting onboarded is going to be who you know. Build relationships with folks and prioritize it above being "productive" in your first 60 days.
Find a good way to save valuable learnings that you find in Slack. They'll disappear soon and relying on slack bookmarks is a recipe for pain and disappointment.
Security is a really, really big deal to Stripe (justifiably) and it comes at the cost of convenience and dev workflow efficiency.
There's probably a helpful doc for whatever internal tool you're trying to understand. Whether or not it's up to date and well-written is another matter.
Show up to the Friday Fireside chats, they usually involve feedback sessions from customers that are rich in the kind of context you need as a new Stripe.
We use lots of Jargon and acronyms, not as much as New Relic, but enough that you should have go/lexicon bookmarked.
Stuck? Here's a recipe for success (75% of the time you'll get unstuck before reaching step 2):
1. Keep trying, researching, attempting to get unstuck on your own for a reasonable amount of time (30 min. â€“ 1hr)
2. Reach out to someone who can help (onboarding buddy, other colleagues)
3. Keep trying to get unstuck, on your own until someone else becomes available for help
The classic stuff that Stripe is known for on places like Blind and Glassdoor (poor work/life balance and excessive doc writing) doesn't characterize WPP. That doesn't mean it's not the reality of other Stripes, but it's certainly not company wide.
Helm is a very young design system that doesn't function as a product design system traditionally does. That's a real gift and a curse at the same time.
Don't buy the CalDigit TS4! I know the TS3 is acclaimed as the best USB Hub on the market, but the TS4 has so many problems. Just don't do it.
Jira sucks, but there's value in it. Don't run from the darkness, don't resist it. You will gain real value from learning to use it effectively.
The design org is big, but most know what WPP is so when introducing yourself you can just mention you're a design engineer in WPP.
Get good at gmail filters because a serious chunk of the messages in your inbox are going to be pure noise.
You are learner and you are learning. That's a sign of growth and a badge of honor, not an attribute to shrink from nor a phase to anticipate moving on from.

The special sauce behind Stripe's design quality and engineering reputation

You know that magical and world-class quality of design, animation, and front-end engineering that Stripe's known for? There's no magic. It's the result of some folks just caring a ton about the quality of what they put out. The stack they work on isn't even conducive to the high-quality of stripe.com (it's the opposite).

There's no mystical or precious process that can be attributed with the success and quality of stripe.com. It's not mandated from the top down, and there's no golden guardrail to keep it from vanishing. It's just people who care a lot about doing really great, high-quality work. There's no magic.

There's nothing about joining Stripe or WPP that's going to make anyone suddenly start putting out great work. WPP puts out great work because there are people in WPP who care a stupid amount about great design and engineering. There's no magic.

There's no special Stripe sauce that makes it great, it's just people who care "too" much. It's people who spend more time on a few aspects of a design or animation than anyone else cares to or is willing to. If you're interested in carrying on the legacy of excellence and unreasonably good work that you came to Stripe for then:

Sharpen the saw
Hone your craft
Continue to refine your taste
Learn from the incredibly talented and experienced designers and engineers around you
Maybe above all else, don't be content with "good enough"

Whether or not Stripe continues to be a name synonymous design quality and boundary-pushing design engineering rests largely on the shoulders of the individuals in WPP. Given you're one of those individuals, you have the freedom (and I'd argue, the responsibility) to not only maintain the standard but lift it.

What's happening to baby names?

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 04:58:37 GMT

Another intriguing way to document the cultural shift toward individualism is in the names parents give their children. When parents want their children to fit in, as they do in a collectivistic culture, they are more likely to give them common names that many other people also have. When parents instead want their children to stand out, as they do in an individualistic culture, they are less likely to bestow common names because individualism values uniqueness.

<cite>Jean M. Twenge, Generations</cite>

This is one of the best books I've read in the last decade. It's not about baby names, but every time a parent tells me their new baby's name (or mentions that they're not sharing yet — a separate, but related, phenomenon worthy of attention) I can't help but think about this quote from Generations.

What separates someone who names their child "Michael" (something common), for example, from someone who names them "Journi" (something unique)? Jean M. Twenge suggests the answer is culture. I'm fascinated by how it's possible for people, presumably from the same culture, even the same family, to end up on different sides of this.

Do you want your child to stand out or fit in?

Given the prominence of expressive individualism in the US (a term coined by Robert Bellah in his 1985 book, Habits of the Heart), it seems more of us want our children's names to stand out than them to fit in.

Maybe you feel that it's almost an injustice for a parent to desire that their child fit in. Or maybe you feel that the country is going down the drain and non-traditional names are just a symptom. There is no morally upright answer to this question.

Whether you want your kids to stand out or fit in, the temptation to moralize name choice and the value of the individual is strong.

Unique baby names are increasingly common

Flowing Data highlighted the changes in baby name diversity over the years using name data from the Social Security Administration. The upward trend in babies who's names don't yet exist in the database is trending strongly upwards. Wherever you stand on the topic, it's clear that unique baby names are on the rise.

If you're fascinated by this too, you might find these links interesting.

Flowing Data: one of my favorite websites. Period.
NameGrapher: Explore the historical popularity of United States baby names
The epic rise and fall of the name Heather: Nothing against Heathers, but this is fascinating.

Knowing how to google well used to be an unfair advantage

Sun, 15 Mar 2026 10:58:37 GMT

"Let me google that for you" regularly rang in my head when I was asked a vaguely technology related question that I didn't have the answer to but know how to find it. I'd diplomatically explain that it was a good question, but not one that I hold the answer to. "If I were you, I think the best course of action I'd take is googling it", not as a smart-alec to get them to go away, but as a gentle way of pointing out to them that my solution to this problem is an action that you are just as capable of doing: Google it.

It took me years to realize that what I considered "common sense" or basic competency with a computer was actually a practiced and achieved skill won from years of self-initiated learning on the internet. When I was around 15, I saw and heard my cousin (who was not a piano player) playing a beautiful song on the piano. After I cajoled him for a few minutes to reveal his secret to me of how he learned it, he pointed out to I could learn to play piano songs from watching tutorials on YouTube. This absolutely blew my mind and the scope of the kind of thing I thought the web was useful for quadrupled in my mind.

Before that it was photoshop. I'd stay up deep into the night photoshopping a picture of myself onto LIFE magazine, or editing my brother's head onto a photo of Jay-Z and Beyonce. After years of learning graphic design, web design, piano, guitar, html, css, js, spanish, proficiency in my favorite games, etc. I'd refined the ability to demand of a search engine the answer to a question that no one in my life, no one I knew personally could answer for me.

That ability to discern among a sea of ads (admittedly there were fewer search results in my day) a valid, useful answer to my questions helped me learn the skills that I now use to make a living (web development). Even my back-up plan for making a living (music) and hobbies are founded on or enabled by the ability to google proficiently.

That makes it all the more strange to think that google-fu is now obsolete. That you can ask AI a poorly worded question and have it give you a useful answer. It's unclear to me whether this means a transition from "Let me google that for you" to "Let me ChatGPT that for you" or if there's still real value in understanding how to frame your questions.

It's more important than ever to know what kinds of questions you should be placing at the feet of the internet. For example, how to get a grease stain out of silk v.s. whether or not you should break up with your boyfriend 😬. That said, it's also clear that you can ask an LLM a question with much less effort or with having to translate it into language that a search engine understands.

This aspect of the wave of changes being brought on us (with or against our will) is a net positive, I think. I do wonder though, is there an equivalent river dividing those who know how to use AI v.s. those who essentially ask others to use it for them? What is that divide made up of (knowledge of the tool, dominance of the written word, simple practice — hours logged — using AI)?

The merits of youth and the shame of aging

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 13:09:31 GMT

The Macintosh team’s average age was 21. Most researchers at Xerox PARC were under 30.

<cite>Sharif Shameem, Looking foolish is underrated</cite>

At 35, that's kind of uncomfortable to read.

50 year old me, if I make it that far, will laugh at that. In fact, 40 year old me will probably scoff at that, but it's true nonetheless. Our culture directly exalts the beauty, potential, mindset, and raw power of youth in contrast to the spent, outdated, sagging and tame life and thinking of those who've been blessed with many decades.

As an individual contributor in the tech industry, I see and feel myself moving forward relative to the average age of my colleagues (who are stellar and talented folks). Wondering, do I age out at some point and become too expensive to employ unless I become a manager? The temptation to compare my life to those around me is pretty constant in part because youth is beautiful (and hard), but it's easy to look back on it with rose colored glasses or read into the youthful lives of others bliss and fervor that's not necessarily there.

I try to fight back against this idea by reminding myself of what is actually true and the most helpful form of doing so (I've found in my short, 3.5 decades) is regularly renewing my way of thinking by comparing it to what the bible says about youth and old age.

The glory of young men is their strength,
but the splendor of old men is their gray hair.

<cite>Proverbs 20:29 (ESV)</cite>