
PayPal chief reams employees: Use our app or quit - Kynlyn
http://venturebeat.com/2014/02/11/paypal-chief-reams-employees-use-our-app-or-quit/
======
mikeryan
This is really one of those things that look, in principal, to be a simple
fix. "Why are our employees not eating our own dog food".

The part he's missing is the question, "Why aren't our employees so passionate
about our product that they use it constantly in an effort to make it
better?".

He's missing a deeper morale issue, and compounding it with his attitude.

~~~
outworlder
It could be that, or they have seen the sausage being made and are steering
clear of it.

~~~
nobodysfool
Well, I give my boss the ability to deposit money into my account. I would not
willingly give my boss the ability to withdraw money from my account. I think
that would explain a lot of the trepidation.

------
panarky
So doing your job isn't enough for PayPal.

Now you have to show loyalty. And enthusiasm. And hack on the product in your
free time. And install your employer's app on your personal devices.

An app that knows your personal financial details, tracks your fine-grained
location, reads your personal contacts and SD storage, and can transmit all of
this to your employer[0].

Will PayPal also go above and beyond the employment relationship for their
employees? Will they show the same loyalty in return[1]?

[0]
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.paypal.her...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.paypal.here&hl=en)

[1] [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-12/paypal-said-to-
be-c...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-12/paypal-said-to-be-cutting-
as-many-as-400-jobs.html)

~~~
jrochkind1
Yep, I understand why a company would want employees who do all those things.
Employees who do all those things is a great signal that you are on the right
track, and some of those things in and of themselves will produce benefits for
your product, sure.

But you can't get those things just by ordering your employees to do them.
Even if you somehow get your employees to pretend to have loyalty and
enthusiasm by ordering them to, that is -not- a signal that you're on the
right path, and won't produce those benefits.

~~~
nobodysfool
Yea, I agree with Marcus's message: Dogfood our products! But I don't agree
with his methodology for achieving it: chiding workers. What he should have
done is require feedback from all workers on why they do or don't use the app
(they can use third party anonymous surveys for that).

------
meritt
Alternatively he could just hold their paychecks hostage like Paypal does with
everyone else's money.

~~~
rmc
That really wouldn't last long in court.

~~~
mgkimsal
Perhaps just like they're not really a "bank", they could try to argue they're
not really an "employer", and are really "paying" their workers, so they're
not subject to normal behaviors.

~~~
rmc
Sure, they can claim that all they want. A judge would look at it for about 5
seconds and say "You're an employer." and that would be that.

~~~
FireBeyond
I don’t feel the parent ever intended his observation to be a sincere
suggestion ...

~~~
mgkimsal
Now you're on the trolley!

------
chadwickthebold
I think it's really disappointing when company heads do this. If you work
there, you should be treated as a professional, not some little kid who gets
overly excited and tries to break open the coke machine because hey - PayPal.
If you want your software devs to go the extra mile either make a product that
they can organically care about, or pay them more and make it part of their
job description to evangelize your product.

Also, that PayPal 'it' thing seems pretty scummy. Do the engineers get some
financial incentive for generating sales leads for the home office?

~~~
ItendToDisagree
The idea of getting vending machines to accept PayPal seems ridiculous. What
are the fees on a 0.65 cent candy bar? Does that leave any profit at all for
the operator/owner of the machine?

Or am I missing something there? I'm interested to know more about that
'hacking' of a Coke machine he is referring to. Anyone have a link?

------
mgkimsal
"some of you refused to install the PayPal app"

They may have some legitimate concerns about what the software actually does,
records about them, etc. I'm not saying it's necessarily right or wrong, but
there may be more at play than just "I hate working here - this sucks".

There are some things I probably _can 't_ install, as my primary device is
still on ios5. Would I penalized for not upgrading my whole device just to
show some company spirit?

Also... if they're testing out "paying with mobile", they're never going to
get 100% acceptance rate. Real world scenarios, not everyone will have your
app or install it just for that transaction. Seems this is actually a good
'real world' test of what it's like on the front lines, and yelling at your
potential customers for not using your app isn't the way to go.

~~~
sophacles
One of the "more at play" things I could imagine: I don't want my employer to
know about how I choose to spend my money. It's not their business, and having
my employer have such a detailed understanding of my personal life is not
remotely desirable. It's like forcing employees to give social media access to
you, but even more invasive.

~~~
mgkimsal
Excellent point - should have been a top-level response. If I worked at a
bank, I might choose to keep my money there, but I might choose to bank
somewhere else for any myriad reasons, and should not be punished for it. If I
worked for Fidelity, I might want to keep an IRA with Vanguard - again, should
not be punished.

For a CEO to not grasp the ramifications of having access to employees'
financial records - or perhaps not caring - shows a disturbing side to this
man. I would strongly suspect he doesn't use paypal for everything he
purchases.

------
jobu
The title of the article seems like linkbait. What Marcus said was: _" In
closing, if you are one of the folks who refused to install the PayPal app or
if you can’t remember your PayPal password, do yourself a favor, go find
something that will connect with your heart and mind elsewhere."_

Pretty similar message, but the title makes him sound like an asshole when the
actual text seems more reasonable. If you're not willing to use the products
you make, then how can you expect anyone else to use them.

~~~
raganwald
I agree, let's flip this around and think like customers. We go out to choose
a vendor for some important service.

Vendors A and B have roughly equal parity on features and services, but vendor
A's employees eat their own dogfood and vendor B's don't.

Now in one sense, who cares? Eating your own dogfood is a means to an end, not
the end itself, so it's like finding out that McDonalds employees don't eat
McDonalds food. As long as they wash their hands, who cares what they eat
themselves?

But on the other hand, I'm a human being, and I'm personally a lot more
comfortable doing business with a company that seems to care about its product
from top to bottom, and isn't staffed with people who don't like their own
product enough to use it.

~~~
jrochkind1
Yes, employees that use their own product generally a great and encouraging
sign.

But what if you find out that the employees at company A use their own product
only because the CEO ordered them to do it or get fired, and they actually
hate the product themselves too?

No longer quite so encouraging.

They are mistaking the indicator for the thing indicated. Dogfooding is an
indicator of quality and commitment when it happens naturally; when you
artificially compel the indicator, it's no longer a good indicator.

~~~
bigtunacan
I think you are missing the point of the "eat your own dog food" mantra that
originated from Joel Spolsky. No one wants to literally eat dog food as we all
imagine it would taste terrible. The same holds true for your product. That
product you have been working on for your company, whoever it may be, is
total, utter, garbage, and if you have to eat it everyday you will realize it
tastes terrible.

The more you use the product, the more aware you become that your product is
bad, and this is necessary to make it less bad. And this is true of every
product out there; even products, services, etc... that people hold up as
"good", they still have room for improvement. If the people responsible for
creating that product can't put in the time to use the product so they can
feel their customers' pain and improve the product, then they should just move
on.

~~~
greenyoda
It didn't originate with Joel Spolsky. "Eating your own dogfood" was already a
meme at Microsoft when Spolsky arrived there (1991), and that's where he
probably picked it up from. Wikipedia attributes it to Paul Maritz:

 _" In 1988, Microsoft manager Paul Maritz sent Brian Valentine, test manager
for Microsoft LAN Manager, an email titled 'Eating our own Dogfood',
challenging him to increase internal usage of the company's product. From
there, the usage of the term spread through the company."_

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food#Origi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food#Origin_of_the_term)

~~~
bigtunacan
Point still stands, but thanks for the "Well Actually".

[http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Feb-17.html](http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Feb-17.html)

------
x0054
I have been using PayPal for 10 years or so. I use my iPhone all the time, in
fact I am typing this on it right now. I shop on eBay all the time on my
phone. I pay for a bunch of things online using PayPal. And I DO NOT have the
Paypal app installed on my phone. Why? Because its unnecessary. PayPal, the
service, works just fine without PayPal, the app.

If PayPal truly wants to grow their business, they should improve
significantly their merchant relations, not their app.

------
hardwaresofton
I don't know how to feel about this. I feel like the sentiment is right (eat
your own dog food -- if that's the saying)... But everything about the
delivery seems to be wrong

~~~
avenger123
I like the delivery. There is little "corporate speak" and a lot of frankness.
He's not calling out a particular person but a whole office.

I don't see this as a "reams employees" type of email. He's making his case
for why everyone should be using PayPal's apps.

His telling employees to go elsewhere if their heart isn't into it is also
refreshing.

This is exactly the type of email I would expect from someone at his level
that isn't trying to play the "everyone please like me" game and is actually
trying to move things forward.

------
vitd
“We’re getting back to our technology and innovation roots, and we really want
to be driving the best customer experiences that are possible,” the spokesman
told VentureBeat.

Yeah, maybe if you took the customer experience seriously by, you know,
responding to people's emails, having a human being customers can talk to, and
not holding their money hostage, you'd be doing better? Just a thought.

------
watwut
How companies alienate their employees. Chapter: David Marcus, PayPal.

Somehow, I doubt you can make people enthusiastic by threatening them or
yelling at them (figuratively). Then again, I'm not a CEO.

------
mgkimsal
"And part of that is having every employee be the customer and utilize our
services wherever you can, and if you see a problem, highlight it and tell
people to get it fixed. And that’s something we do a lot."

If it really worked, that'd be great. Instead of yelling at people who don't
use the tools and programs, I'd suggest a review of those tools and processes,
and a public rundown of the findings and improvements to those services. If
people are spotting problems, reporting those to be fixed, and _nothing gets
done_ , or perhaps they're told to go pound sand, people will quit reporting
problems. That very well may be the case (I've seen it happen at companies),
and the CEO/President needs to get in to that part of the company and root out
if in fact there is a problem in that part of operations.

If there is a problem, fix _that_ and promote it. If there is no problem, they
need to do a better job of promoting the case studies of things that were
reported/fixed/improved. This will send a bigger message than public berating
for not using stuff that may be broken. Those workers still have jobs to do,
and if using the PP tools doesn't get the job done, and they're now expected
to do bug reports as well as use broken/poor tools, you've just made
everyone's job a lot worse.

------
justin66
If you can remember your password - for PayPal or whatever else - you are
probably doing it wrong. Use a password manager, so you only have to remember
one password, and can have distinct, strong passwords for everything.

I have to admit that I wondered when I read that CEO tirade (and not knowing
what the hell Cafe 17 is) if his employees couldn't remember their PayPal
passwords in a testing situation for a fairly legitimate reason, being away
from their computers and therefore their password managers.

------
outworlder
"Offices with under 100 employees beat us by an order of magnitude "

Hmm. I sense a connection here. But I'm not a CEO, so what do I know.

------
RTigger
"It’s a bit ironic considering that yesterday Marcus took to Twitter to say
his credit card was hacked. So clearly not all hacking is acceptable in
Marcus’ book — only hacking that supports the company’s business objectives."

 _sigh_.

~~~
mynd
Agreed. Someone needs to create a PSA about the term "Hacking" in the 21st
century.

~~~
RTigger
[http://rtigger.com/blog/2012/11/19/redefining-
hacker](http://rtigger.com/blog/2012/11/19/redefining-hacker)

------
drakaal
He's Captain Kirk's abandoned bastard son, he has some anger issues, you would
too.

[http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/David_Marcus](http://en.memory-
alpha.org/wiki/David_Marcus)

~~~
ItendToDisagree
Wow. I hadn't seen him before and his picture screamed Gaius Baltar
(Battlestar Galactica) / Julian Bashir (Deep Space 9) to me. The Sci-Fi is
strong with this one.

------
dcpdx
I closed my PayPal account a few months ago and will never use them again. I
had transferred $300 from my bank account to my PayPal account to pay for a
weekend outing I was attending, and once the money was in my PP balance I
transferred it to my buddy along with the $10 fee. So far, so good.

A few weeks later, I started getting emails and calls almost daily about past
due payments for my PayPal balance, which I was confused about since I used my
own funds and thought that was the end of it. Turns out, PayPal charged that
$300 to my credit account with them instead of taking it out of my balance, so
now I owed an extra $300 and had to pay interest and late payment fees. When I
called in to customer service to ask what was going on, it took me almost an
hour to finally reach someone and they told me there was nothing they could
do.

After that, I paid my remaining balance, closed my account and never looked
back. I've since used Venmo, Square, bank transfers, and good ol cash to
accept payments from friends, but I will NEVER use PayPal again in my life.
Fuck them.

------
runamok
If they didn't use dark patterns
([http://darkpatterns.org/](http://darkpatterns.org/)) such as always
defaulting to your bank account instead of your credit card (which
inconveniences me but makes them more money) maybe more of their people would
use paypal.

This regards the web payment flow experience and not necessarily the app.

------
puppetmaster3
How motivational: “It’s been brought to my attention

------
vidoc
That's pretty funny!

Reminds me when I worked for Yahoo couple of years ago, I was not even working
for the search team, but one day I got busted by a product manager of that
team who saw me googling. That chick sermonized me and said that engineers
were people with great technical influence and if I wanted yahoo search to be
successful, people around me _had_ to see me use it. I tried to make the point
that the path to success for a product is to make it better in the first
place, but that didn't fly for her.

It was also pretty funny to see all those hypocrites use Yahoo Mail while on
the campus only to switch back to Gmail in the company shuttle :)

I love capitalism!

~~~
mgkimsal
"engineers were people with great technical influence and if I wanted yahoo
search to be successful, people around me had to see me use it."

Insane. If anything your time might be more valuable than someone else's, and
if you can get your job done faster with google or bing, get the job done as
efficiently as possible. Using Yahoo on campus, then using google off campus
is even _worse_ , because it gives the impression that it's solving your needs
when it's clearly not.

------
dman
Reminds me of the "Wear 15 pieces of flair" scene from Office Space.

------
bronsoja
Lovely to see venturebeat sowing more confusion around sensible usage of the
word 'hacking'.

------
sneak
Square, on the other hand, lets their own employees work in their own cafe
using their own product in exactly the way their customers do:

[http://sprudge.com/secret-square-cafe.html](http://sprudge.com/secret-square-
cafe.html)

------
joesmo
Seems like Paypal employees are all too aware of Paypal's draconian polices
and don't want to lose their money. I don't blame them.

------
nayefc
Isn't this a wake up call that PayPal juts sucks?

------
sdegutis
Not everyone makes online payments, some people have no need for PayPal's
services. Should they be denied their job just because of that?

------
alimoeeny
"That’s unacceptable to me, and the rest of my team" :)

------
carsongross
The product stagnation will continue until morale improves!

