

PayPal to lay off 325 employees and 120 contractors - techinsidr
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20121029005442/en/eBay-Plans-Q4-Restructuring-Charge-Related-PayPal

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Osiris
What exactly were all those people doing? I've been using PayPal for years and
it looks, feels, and works exactly the same now as it did five years ago. The
process to setup Buy Now buttons hasn't changed. The complexity of setting up
the advanced payment system hasn't changed.

So what exactly were those guys working on to actually improve the business
for their customers?

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timjahn
My thoughts as well.

Other than the recent front end redesign, PayPal's interface and overall
product has not changed since I started using it 5 or 6 years ago.

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thornofmight
Has that made it any less usable?

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timjahn
In my opinion (and experience), it was barely usable the first day I started
using it. I'd think by now they'd have thought about making it any amount of
slightly more usable.

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pkteison
Serious question: How does laying off 325 product and technology employees get
presented as speeding up how products are developed? Is there a kernel of
truth hiding there, or is that just a polite complete lie?

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georgemcbay
Cutting back on bloated tech staff could absolutely help speed up new product
development for all the usual Mythical Man Month reasons.... in theory.

I've never seen it work in practice. In practice, in my experience, layoffs
never target exactly the right set of dead weight. Company politics always
come into play and you end up with a situation where some of the right people
got axed, but not enough and worse sometimes the layoffs hit people who are
actually great producers but who weren't visible enough to upper management to
be spared. And once this event occurs it tends to have a ripple effect among
the survivors -- nobody really feels safe and so everyone starts considering
other opportunities and naturally your best talent has the easiest time of
landing new jobs so they're among the first out the door, and now you're on a
downward spiral of fucked.

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almost_usual
I experienced this exact situation a few weeks ago. Fortunately, I wasn't laid
off but it did spark incentive for me to find a new employer. I landed a great
position at a new company a couple weeks later and feel much happier now. I've
heard through the grapevine that the megacorp I worked for is now in the
downward spiral of 'fucked'.

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josephjrobison
Yea I did a similar thing, but once I got the new job with an awesome raise,
it made me think - "should I have applied and interviewed at a lot more places
if it was that easy?"

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zegmas
another anonymous video yet to be published?

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mratzloff
My first reaction: PayPal employed more than 450 people?

Apparently, yes. According to Wikipedia in 2007 they employed 2000 people.

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pashakym
I think not 450 it is about 10% of the company. Don`t forget that they employ
worldwide and it is interesting where they will lay off in the US or abroad.

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pashakym
dear PayPal, please improve the UI design of your site. :)

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zupreme
I believe (although I have no inside info to support the theory) that this is
part of a push at Paypal to respond to the challenges presented by smaller,
younger, more agile competitors like those at Stripe and Square.

Add to the fray Apple's Passbook and I think that Paypal is scrambling to
secure their ecommerce throne.

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gambiting
Nothing against these employees, but PayPal is a bad company and needs to die

