PayPal chief reams employees: Use our app or quit
venturebeat.comThis 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.
It could be that, or they have seen the sausage being made and are steering clear of it.
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.
PayPal's mobile payment strategy is incredibly important to PayPal's future.
Here's the quote specific to the "use our own app":
"It’s been brought to my attention that when testing paying with mobile at Cafe 17 last week, some of you refused to install the PayPal app. . . everyone at PayPal should use our products. . . That’s the only way we can make them better, and better."
He's asking employees to use the new app to help beta test on the PayPal campus. (1)
So that he, and the team responsible, can improve the product to win.
He gives a few illustrations of high-morale employees "hacking coke machines" etc.
And then closes by saying "If you are one of the folks that refused . . . go find something that will connect with your heart and mind elsewhere"
I get that the tone is passionate and angry.
But I feel like there's a balance that needs to be struck vs. your comment.
Sometimes "morale" issues can be improved by letting people who are too far checked out go their own way.
(1) Cafe 17 is in the PayPal HQ (1) https://www.facebook.com/events/181056035410307/?ref=22
It’s been brought to my attention that when testing paying with mobile at Cafe 17 last week, some of you refused to install the PayPal app
If that's not an unmissable sign that you're doing something wrong, I don't know what is.
I don't understand how the response of any rational manager to that news could be anything but "Why, and how do we fix it?".
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...
[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-12/paypal-said-to-be-c...
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.
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).
Well said. It's like demanding that someone love you, instead of working to be more loveable.
I agree with you 100% that a company is stepping way over the line when it tells employees what software they should install on their personal devices, how they should pay for their own purchases, etc. (And after treating his employees like he owns them, the CEO will whine about how hard it is to find good developers.)
That said, people who create intrusive software to track the intimate details of their users are hypocrites if they'd object to being tracked by that same software themselves.
Alternatively he could just hold their paychecks hostage like Paypal does with everyone else's money.
That really wouldn't last long in court.
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.
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.
I don’t feel the parent ever intended his observation to be a sincere suggestion ...
Now you're on the trolley!
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?
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?
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
They are mistaking the indicator for the thing indicated.
This is one of the most important (and neglected) insights in business. People often optimize for the indicator at the expense of the thing it is supposed to indicate.
Example: One metric is of customer dissatisfaction is unsubscribes. If you make your unsubscribe process difficult, unsubscribes go down. In reality, dissatisfaction might be climbing through the roof, and a difficult unsubscribe process may actually make it worse, not better.
That being said, there is a difference between: "If you don't care, go work somewhere else so that the only employees left here are the ones that care," and, "Do it even if you don't care or else I'll fire you."
The former might be about getting rid of unmotivated dead wood. Some people are good no matter what, leave them alone. Some are terrible for your company no matter what, fire them or entice them to quit. The remainder are the ones to manage.
But then again... You don't want to fire or push out the people who might be able to tell you that the dogs hate the dogfood because it tastes like shit. Which was the punchline of the joke that the entire "eat your own dog food" expression is based on.
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.
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...
Point still stands, but thanks for the "Well Actually".
I suspect all those employees at paypal who aren't using the paypal mobile app already know their product sucks and/or is useless, they don't need to be educated to know that.
I suspect it's the CEO who doesn't actually realize it, but maybe he does.
Still, I suppose the theory could be that if they are forced to use the shitty product, then they will be more motivated to fix it, that they currently lack motivation to fix it because they are not using it.
I doubt it will work that way, but it's a theory.
What if they have no use for the product rather than 'don't like' said product? It is quite possible to just not need to use PayPal and still work for them.
Pretty similar message, but the title makes him sound like an asshole when the actual text seems more reasonable.
It doesn't make him sound any better. Loyalty is for cults, not multinationals. A job can be just a means to an end, and there is nothing wrong with that. Trying to get your employees emotionally invested is just a way to increase productivity while keeping labor costs down.
If you're not willing to use the products you make, then how can you expect anyone else to use them.
When did being in your products' target market become a precondition to being good at your job? Besides, it's not like the rank and file are even in a position to make the changes to the service that would interest them in using the service.
> A job can be just a means to an end, and there is nothing wrong with that. Trying to get your employees emotionally invested is just a way to increase productivity while keeping labor costs down.
I worked in advertising for over a decade, so I can definitely agree with some jobs being a means to an end, but I disagree about the purpose of getting employees emotionally invested. In my experience people that are emotionally invested do better work than people that don't give a shit about anything more than a paycheck. They suggest improvements and argue with coworkers about how features should work because they understand the product and care that it succeeds.
> When did being in your products' target market become a precondition to being good at your job?
That may be a valid argument for many jobs, but I can't imagine who isn't part of PayPal's target demographic.
> That may be a valid argument for many jobs, but I can't imagine who isn't part of PayPal's target demographic.
Engineers who understand the privacy implications of installing and using the app?
If you're not willing to use the products you make, then how can you expect anyone else to use them.
That's a short-sighted argument. Should a car manufacturer not employ someone who could do a useful job for them, just because that person lives in a big city and uses public transport to get to work? Should medical treatments be created only by people suffering the ailment that they treat?
Sometimes solving someone else's problem is enough.
"Should a car manufacturer not employ someone who could do a useful job for them, just because that person lives in a big city and uses public transport to get to work?"
Should they not? No. Did/do they? Probably. Most people working at Ford own and drive cars, and they're almost all Fords. My understanding is that this has relaxed a bit over the years, but... working at GM and not driving a GM car was considered a mortal sin years ago.
Source: someone who grew up in metro Detroit.
Treating a quality problem as an obedience problem is being an asshole.
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.
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
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.
Ideally people are eating their own dog food because they're excited to do so not because the President is telling them.
Even if you force people to use your product it's not going to have the same effect as organic dog fooding. You won't get the same level of passionate feedback because the employees just don't really care.
The correct solution probably IS to tell people to go elsewhere if they don't care any more (or never cared). I'm sure there are plenty of people who would work at PayPal who would have passion for the product. And I'm not saying that it's a bad thing, everyone needs change. Maybe some fresh blood would be good.
“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.
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.
"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.
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.
"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.
"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.
I got the feeling that it was mostly PR to point out that his card was hacked. He was quoted as saying that had he used Paypal to pay instead of his physical card (which had extra security chip in it) he would have been secure.
I had the same reaction. Unfortunately the general public is ignorant about the different definition of hacking here. The author is likely ignorant about it too and not purposefully trying to deceive people.
Agreed. Someone needs to create a PSA about the term "Hacking" in the 21st century.
I bet there are people who avoid "hacker" news because they think it is about malicious activity.
He's Captain Kirk's abandoned bastard son, he has some anger issues, you would too.
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.
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.
If they didn't use dark patterns (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.
How motivational: “It’s been brought to my attention
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!
"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.
Reminds me of the "Wear 15 pieces of flair" scene from Office Space.
Lovely to see venturebeat sowing more confusion around sensible usage of the word 'hacking'.
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:
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.
Isn't this a wake up call that PayPal juts sucks?
Not everyone makes online payments, some people have no need for PayPal's services. Should they be denied their job just because of that?
"That’s unacceptable to me, and the rest of my team" :)
The product stagnation will continue until morale improves!