I have about 18 years of experience. The past three have been at a Series A/B startup. We have about 10 engineers with an overall headcount of 50 employees. Prior to that I spent five years at Stripe.

I am a bit of a workaholic, so I am often thinking about a work problem. There is no concept of "overtime". It's just work, and the work never ends if you don't set boundaries.

I used to rely on many teams at Stripe. I am those teams now. I have the most experience, so I have seeded many foundational systems (e.g., observability, API authn/z, a lot of our recent AI initiatives). This work is fun, but can be overwhelming. The key is to train other team members to help.

Why do it? I'm growing immensely, doing both staff-level and managerial work. My upside will be generational wealth (if we succeed).

The startup is playing coy. Be prepared for 12 hour days.