Not patio11 but if he would be so kind as to allow me to hazard a guess I’d say intellectual curiosity and tenacity. Don’t stop asking why and keep digging. You’ll want to mix in emotional intelligence so when you communicate with stakeholders, you do so in a way that they feel a desire to assist you in your endeavor, perhaps finding ways to align everyone’s incentives for success.
I think you are spot on. I think a specific amount of hubris to go along with the intellectual curiosity and tenacity is important. It is the amount of confidence to say, "Hey, I can take this on. I'm not familiar with it directly but I understand enough of the context to help." You do have to be careful to not have too much confidence because then you will alienate your peers/management and be viewed as a know-it-all. It is a fine line that depends a lot on company culture. It sounds like Stripe really welcomes it, where other corporations are very "stay in your lane."
I wear an insane amount of hats at my company because 1) I'm confident/stupid enough to believe I can handle it [see the part above about hubris] and 2) I actually have a track record of being able to tackle whatever has been thrown at me. My curiosity helps me from getting bored because I'm fine jumping from researching DC EV chargers to file permissions issues to tax law to.... anything.
This is exactly true. Any tips how to identify companies that welcome this during interviews? (Or companies that don't.)
I wouldn't have considered myself as having "hubris" but I have a kind of semi-wild enthusiasm for being able to do things that people have reacted badly to before for exactly the reason you said. I'm not sure how to signal to companies "my deal is I want to do things; I will more or less literally jump off my seat to assist anyone and no job is beneath me and I will stay up and work 16 hours straight if I screw something up; but I'm not really good at hearing no".
> I'm not sure how to signal to companies "my deal is I want to do things; I will more or less literally jump off my seat to assist anyone and no job is beneath me and I will stay up and work 16 hours straight if I screw something up; but I'm not really good at hearing no".
"I have a proven track record of executing relentlessly, rapidly delivering value, and moving between internal roles effortlessly. What challenges are you facing I could contribute to in a meaningful way?"
Be more comfortable hearing "No". Trust takes time to build.
I'm very much like you, and I think startups/small companies with a flat management structure (i.e. level obfuscation as another commenter phrased it) or where most managers have engineering backgrounds.
In my experience at large companies, on teams that were technical and heavily collaborated with engineering, but were not overseen by engineering managers. Middle management was entirely focused on optimizing for metrics that were either assigned to them, or would result in career progress; instead of what was best for the company. Regardless of whether the companies claimed to have a "nothing is someone else's problem" culture. As a result, any embodiment of that principle, was either punished or perceived as creating problems by non-technical managers. Even if direct praise was often received from engineers and their managers for those actions. In that workplace dynamic, it inherently carries a lot of risk and easily puts a target on your back.
Besides posts like this that give first-hand accounts from employees. It's quite hard to identify what would be an honest signal of true dedication to that principle. Especially in interviews where you're a very qualified candidate, it's difficult to tell if interviewer is trying to selling you the idea of working there.
I don't think it's hubris that you need. Hubris often inflates and becomes the problem that you have in the next statement of being a "know it all".
Instead, I think the core of it is perpetuating "beginner's mind" - that is, you approach every problem with the enthusiasm of a beginner, not with conviction that something can or cannot be done. It's not necessarily pride or self-confidence as much as it is a belief that the thing can be done by someone, and it's just the knowledge you don't have that keeps you from accomplishing it.
I could be entirely wrong though.