I’m writing about a full year at Stripe this weekend. Anything you particularly want to know/hear about? Spoiler alert: I rather enjoy it here; we’re hiring; please feel free to chat me up if you’re interested in a new adventure.
All companies need intermediate engineers with deep amounts of understanding of their problem domains and internal systems, to build things. The easiest way to get them is to develop them yourselves, generally out of junior engineers, otherwise "buying" them is extra expensive.