9 ms·

I remember when I interned for PayPal, one of my first exposures to corporate communication was an all company email from David Marcus, where he mentioned that

I remember when I interned for PayPal, one of my first exposures to corporate communication was an all company email from David Marcus, where he mentioned that he had seen PayPal employees not paying with PayPal at places on the corporate campus that accepted PayPal, and he suggested that they should find other jobs.

dvdhnt 8y ago
Well, that’s not very good leadership. You shouldn’t be pressuring your employees into using your preferred payment provider or financial institution.
- rokhayakebe 8y ago
  Well you would think your employees using a different service tells you more about your product than them. What a lost opportunity to learn.
- mandeepj 8y ago
  > preferred payment provider This was not about a payment provider. It was about their employer. If you can't promote your own product then Marcus was right - go find something else to do
  - lotsofpulp 8y ago
    Or you could try to make a better product.
  - asdsa5325 8y ago
    Using a product is not "promoting" it. If it's easier to use a different payment method, then why use PayPal? Maybe that's a sign they should create a better product, instead of blaming employees
    - hackinthebochs 8y ago
      No, you blame the employees for not suffering their own product and raising ideas and tickets for how to fix it. It would be like John Carmack using the Vive instead of the Oculus Rift at home because its better. When you create the product there's no excuse to not be eating your own dogfood.
      - lovich 8y ago
        John Carmack has the authority and position to actually make changes to the product. In what company beyond the 30+ person range does a random employee have any ability to just go up and suggest changes to a product and have a reasonable expectation to see the change happen? Maybe their reason for not using the product is the lack of some feature that doesn't even make sense for the company to ever implement. Are the employees supposed to suffer forever in their personal lives because of who their employer is?
        chickenfries 8y ago
        Also John Carmack is the CTO, not some lowly admin employee or engineer working on a completely underrated product.
  - SiempreViernes 8y ago
    Was using paypal for buying snacks part of the contract they signed, or is this just demands for loyalty by a company where managment felt no loyalty to the staff?
  - tluyben2 8y ago
    I have never used Paypal to buy physical things on the street, but what would be the comission on that? I would never use Paypal for anything if I did not have to because of the comission and the bad conversion rate. So that could be a reason?
  - PhasmaFelis 8y ago
    > If you can't promote your own product then Marcus was right - go find something else to do As a developer, should I also quit if I don't want to vacuum the carpets or restock the supply cabinet? If you need your product promoted, maybe hire someone with a marketing degree.
    - hackinthebochs 8y ago
      No, but you should quit if you've created a product that you wouldn't even use and have no interest in fixing it.
      - tluyben2 8y ago
        You are not working alone; maybe I love the stuff I make but dislike what my colleague makes? If I would work at Paypal; I see the value of the online product but I definitely see no value at all for offline. So even though I stand behind part of the product why would I use it for the parts I do not like?
      - PhasmaFelis 8y ago
        Why would you assume that any random PayPal employee (a) was directly involved in the point-of-sale payment system, (b) actively dislikes the PoS system (as opposed to simply seeing no advantage over their existing debit card), (c) has the ability and authority to fix whatever they think is wrong? This notion that it should be mandatory to love your company and its products is so fucking Orwellian.
        chickenfries 8y ago
        I don't now why you're being downvoted. The vast majority of PayPal employees had nothing to do with PayPal's POS system. This isn't some start up with one product.
  - DrScump 8y ago
    Should Tesla employees be sanctioned for driving a Honda to work?
    - gaius 8y ago
      If McDonalds made every employee have a Big Mac every lunchtime they would shortly have no employees left...
- culturestate 8y ago
  As long as the policy extends only to on-campus spending, I don't necessarily see a problem with this. I might do the same thing if I ran a payments company that wanted to go brick-and-mortar; what better way to collect feedback and build empathy in the people responsible for the service?
  - greenyoda 8y ago
    A PayPal employee who buys snacks on campus wouldn't be likely to have the same kinds of experiences that a vendor using PayPal has, or even the same experience as someone buying from an unknown vendor - it would always be a smooth and risk-free transaction. And if an employee ever has a problem with their PayPal account, it can probably be promptly resolved by talking to the right people, unlike the horror stories one constantly reads about vendors losing access to all their funds for weeks because PayPal thinks their legitimate transactions are suspicious. So this doesn't seem to me like a useful case of "eating one's own dogfood". I think that corporations already try to exert way too much control over their employees' lives. Forcing them to use a particular payment service or a particular brand of personal phone seems a bit too intrusive to me. Employees should be able to exercise autonomy over their private lives, even when they're at work.
    - culturestate 8y ago
      > A PayPal employee who buys snacks on campus wouldn't be likely to have the same kinds of experiences that a vendor using PayPal has, or even the same experience as someone buying from an unknown vendor - it would always be a smooth and risk-free transaction. This might be true - or it might not, we have no way to know. Even if it were, how does it make sense (from a business perspective) to allow the people you've charged with building your product to avoid using it? That's a recipe for disaster. > Employees should be able to exercise autonomy over their private lives, even when they're at work. If I were running a marketing team, I probably wouldn't care what brand of phone my team members use. If I were running the iPhone division at Apple, I would very much care whether they were using iPhones for work. I wouldn't mind if you were using a Pixel as your personal phone, but if you're building an iPhone you better have some kind of empathy for the people who're going to buy it. We can also look at this through a different lens: if you (as an employee) can't be bothered to use the product you're building, why did you accept a job building that product? It's clearly not something that motivates you.
- WisNorCan 8y ago
  It strikes me as hypocritical that David wanted people to demonstrate their loyalty to PayPal, only to quit PayPal and go to Facebook shortly thereafter.
  - PhasmaFelis 8y ago
    Upper managers often wax pious about underlings' loyalty to corporate. Not so much the other way around.
- JimmyAustin 8y ago
  It's encouraging dog fooding. If you are forced to use the product, you'll learn its strengths and weaknesses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food
  - acdha 8y ago
    Part of that would be treating this as an opportunity to learn rather than punish. Imagine how much better PayPal would be if they’d asked why their own employees preferred not to use it?
Gustomaximus 8y ago
I've seen a similar attitude with Apple employees some years back if someone had an Android phone. It seems ridiculous. They should really be trying to understand why, and encourage occasional compeitor product use to see what they like about the others for their own product improvement.
sanderjd 8y ago
When I was a kid, every once in awhile we'd be invited for a drink with the owner of the biggest employer in my town, which happened to be a Pepsi bottling plant. We were always told in fairly strong terms to make sure not to ask for Coca-Cola products when offered a drink. I always thought that was very silly and weak. It seems to me that if you want kids who come over to your house to ask for your product instead of your competitor's, the way to do that is to have a better product, such that they don't want your competitor's. If they do ask for your competitor's product, you should politely give it to them and then ask them why they prefer it. All of this is to say: I'm sure the reason those employees weren't using PayPal was because it was a pain in the ass to use. Maybe if, instead of suggesting their employees find other jobs they had focused on making their product work better, we would have had a better digital payments processor before competitors like Square came along and ate their lunch.

dvdhnt 8y ago

Well, that’s not very good leadership. You shouldn’t be pressuring your employees into using your preferred payment provider or financial institution.

rokhayakebe 8y ago
Well you would think your employees using a different service tells you more about your product than them. What a lost opportunity to learn.
mandeepj 8y ago
> preferred payment provider This was not about a payment provider. It was about their employer. If you can't promote your own product then Marcus was right - go find something else to do
- lotsofpulp 8y ago
  Or you could try to make a better product.
- asdsa5325 8y ago
  Using a product is not "promoting" it. If it's easier to use a different payment method, then why use PayPal? Maybe that's a sign they should create a better product, instead of blaming employees
  - hackinthebochs 8y ago
    No, you blame the employees for not suffering their own product and raising ideas and tickets for how to fix it. It would be like John Carmack using the Vive instead of the Oculus Rift at home because its better. When you create the product there's no excuse to not be eating your own dogfood.
    - lovich 8y ago
      John Carmack has the authority and position to actually make changes to the product. In what company beyond the 30+ person range does a random employee have any ability to just go up and suggest changes to a product and have a reasonable expectation to see the change happen? Maybe their reason for not using the product is the lack of some feature that doesn't even make sense for the company to ever implement. Are the employees supposed to suffer forever in their personal lives because of who their employer is?
      - chickenfries 8y ago
        Also John Carmack is the CTO, not some lowly admin employee or engineer working on a completely underrated product.
- SiempreViernes 8y ago
  Was using paypal for buying snacks part of the contract they signed, or is this just demands for loyalty by a company where managment felt no loyalty to the staff?
- tluyben2 8y ago
  I have never used Paypal to buy physical things on the street, but what would be the comission on that? I would never use Paypal for anything if I did not have to because of the comission and the bad conversion rate. So that could be a reason?
- PhasmaFelis 8y ago
  > If you can't promote your own product then Marcus was right - go find something else to do As a developer, should I also quit if I don't want to vacuum the carpets or restock the supply cabinet? If you need your product promoted, maybe hire someone with a marketing degree.
  - hackinthebochs 8y ago
    No, but you should quit if you've created a product that you wouldn't even use and have no interest in fixing it.
    - tluyben2 8y ago
      You are not working alone; maybe I love the stuff I make but dislike what my colleague makes? If I would work at Paypal; I see the value of the online product but I definitely see no value at all for offline. So even though I stand behind part of the product why would I use it for the parts I do not like?
    - PhasmaFelis 8y ago
      Why would you assume that any random PayPal employee (a) was directly involved in the point-of-sale payment system, (b) actively dislikes the PoS system (as opposed to simply seeing no advantage over their existing debit card), (c) has the ability and authority to fix whatever they think is wrong? This notion that it should be mandatory to love your company and its products is so fucking Orwellian.
      - chickenfries 8y ago
        I don't now why you're being downvoted. The vast majority of PayPal employees had nothing to do with PayPal's POS system. This isn't some start up with one product.
- DrScump 8y ago
  Should Tesla employees be sanctioned for driving a Honda to work?
  - gaius 8y ago
    If McDonalds made every employee have a Big Mac every lunchtime they would shortly have no employees left...
culturestate 8y ago
As long as the policy extends only to on-campus spending, I don't necessarily see a problem with this. I might do the same thing if I ran a payments company that wanted to go brick-and-mortar; what better way to collect feedback and build empathy in the people responsible for the service?
- greenyoda 8y ago
  A PayPal employee who buys snacks on campus wouldn't be likely to have the same kinds of experiences that a vendor using PayPal has, or even the same experience as someone buying from an unknown vendor - it would always be a smooth and risk-free transaction. And if an employee ever has a problem with their PayPal account, it can probably be promptly resolved by talking to the right people, unlike the horror stories one constantly reads about vendors losing access to all their funds for weeks because PayPal thinks their legitimate transactions are suspicious. So this doesn't seem to me like a useful case of "eating one's own dogfood". I think that corporations already try to exert way too much control over their employees' lives. Forcing them to use a particular payment service or a particular brand of personal phone seems a bit too intrusive to me. Employees should be able to exercise autonomy over their private lives, even when they're at work.
  - culturestate 8y ago
    > A PayPal employee who buys snacks on campus wouldn't be likely to have the same kinds of experiences that a vendor using PayPal has, or even the same experience as someone buying from an unknown vendor - it would always be a smooth and risk-free transaction. This might be true - or it might not, we have no way to know. Even if it were, how does it make sense (from a business perspective) to allow the people you've charged with building your product to avoid using it? That's a recipe for disaster. > Employees should be able to exercise autonomy over their private lives, even when they're at work. If I were running a marketing team, I probably wouldn't care what brand of phone my team members use. If I were running the iPhone division at Apple, I would very much care whether they were using iPhones for work. I wouldn't mind if you were using a Pixel as your personal phone, but if you're building an iPhone you better have some kind of empathy for the people who're going to buy it. We can also look at this through a different lens: if you (as an employee) can't be bothered to use the product you're building, why did you accept a job building that product? It's clearly not something that motivates you.
WisNorCan 8y ago
It strikes me as hypocritical that David wanted people to demonstrate their loyalty to PayPal, only to quit PayPal and go to Facebook shortly thereafter.
- PhasmaFelis 8y ago
  Upper managers often wax pious about underlings' loyalty to corporate. Not so much the other way around.
JimmyAustin 8y ago
It's encouraging dog fooding. If you are forced to use the product, you'll learn its strengths and weaknesses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food
- acdha 8y ago
  Part of that would be treating this as an opportunity to learn rather than punish. Imagine how much better PayPal would be if they’d asked why their own employees preferred not to use it?

Gustomaximus 8y ago

I've seen a similar attitude with Apple employees some years back if someone had an Android phone. It seems ridiculous. They should really be trying to understand why, and encourage occasional compeitor product use to see what they like about the others for their own product improvement.

sanderjd 8y ago

When I was a kid, every once in awhile we'd be invited for a drink with the owner of the biggest employer in my town, which happened to be a Pepsi bottling plant. We were always told in fairly strong terms to make sure not to ask for Coca-Cola products when offered a drink. I always thought that was very silly and weak. It seems to me that if you want kids who come over to your house to ask for your product instead of your competitor's, the way to do that is to have a better product, such that they don't want your competitor's. If they do ask for your competitor's product, you should politely give it to them and then ask them why they prefer it. All of this is to say: I'm sure the reason those employees weren't using PayPal was because it was a pain in the ass to use. Maybe if, instead of suggesting their employees find other jobs they had focused on making their product work better, we would have had a better digital payments processor before competitors like Square came along and ate their lunch.