They are probably hired to do front-end work to make things look nice and be creative at the same time.

I personally think that Stripe is on point with design. Which attracts more customers.

You don’t need elite programmers to only do the “important stuff”. Visuals are important too.

Stripe isn't "giant" but it does seem to do a lot of this. They have job postings for their Ruby type checker...

Meanwhile my company is giant by any stretch of the imagination but I've never seen projects like this. It's a cultural thing borne out of the elite circles Stripe folks come from.

That's basically how the phone company gave us Unix.