PayPal CTO Resigns • Hacker News Board

Re: PayPal CTO Resigns

#11

Post by kevin_thibedeau » Tue, Feb 09, 2016, 12:10 AM UTC

paulftw wrote: post #10

minimaxir wrote: post #4

PayPal had good earnings last quarter ( http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/27/paypal-shares-up-on-earning... ), so bad performance may not be the reason.

He was CTO, why would infrastructure guy ever be held responsible for poor overall performance? It's not rocket science, nor F1 team

Shit flows downhill and they needed a scapegoat to make the board happy. The general public doesn't know what a CTO does so problem solved nice and neat.

Re: PayPal CTO Resigns

#12

Post by tyingq » Tue, Feb 09, 2016, 12:14 AM UTC

paulftw wrote: post #10

minimaxir wrote: post #4

PayPal had good earnings last quarter ( http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/27/paypal-shares-up-on-earning... ), so bad performance may not be the reason.

He was CTO, why would infrastructure guy ever be held responsible for poor overall performance? It's not rocket science, nor F1 team

From his bio page:

"In 2011, James moved over to PayPal, first as vice president of global product development and, beginning in 2012, as chief technology officer. In 2015, he expanded his role to also lead the Payment Services business in PayPal, a global team that powers the efficient movement of money and rewards into, out of, and within the PayPal network."

So, he was CTO/Infrastructure Guy, then they added on SVP Payment Services some time last year, which sounds like it has a lot to do with overall performance.

Re: PayPal CTO Resigns

#13

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Feb 09, 2016, 12:16 AM UTC

paulftw wrote: post #10

minimaxir wrote: post #4

PayPal had good earnings last quarter ( http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/27/paypal-shares-up-on-earning... ), so bad performance may not be the reason.

He was CTO, why would infrastructure guy ever be held responsible for poor overall performance? It's not rocket science, nor F1 team

> He was CTO

...and Senior VP Payment Services.

> why would infrastructure guy ever be held responsible for poor overall performance?

Payment Services is a pretty central business function for PayPal.

Re: PayPal CTO Resigns

#14

Post by meritt » Tue, Feb 09, 2016, 12:22 AM UTC

Zenefits just canned their CEO (ironically, over a benefits dispute), while their COO steps up to take over that role. Maybe James is leaving Paypal to become COO of Zenefits?

Re: PayPal CTO Resigns

#15

Post by pizzasynthesis » Tue, Feb 09, 2016, 12:56 AM UTC

Adopters of the 'new' PayPal interface can probably attest to the poor quality, redirects and unexplained errors that have been popping up. After talking on the phone with two service reps, one of whom refused to let me talk to a technical expert as to why my email confirmation token wouldn't work and another who had to enable automated billing on my account manually (because it's totally broken in the client interface) I can only conclude the problems are widespread and currently still at large. I'm not surprised they have made a high-profile canning.

Re: PayPal CTO Resigns

#16

Post by Pxtl » Tue, Feb 09, 2016, 12:58 AM UTC

pizzasynthesis wrote: post #15

Adopters of the 'new' PayPal interface can probably attest to the poor quality, redirects and unexplained errors that have been popping up. After talking on the phone with two service reps, one of whom refused to let me talk to a technical expert as to why my email confirmation token wouldn't work and another who had to enable automated billing on my account manually (because it's totally broken in the client interfa…

Yeah, PayPal works nice for the simple case, but it seems like any minimally complex payment structure, even simple recurrences, are a complete train wreck.

Re: PayPal CTO Resigns

#17

Post by coderdude » Tue, Feb 09, 2016, 1:09 AM UTC

pizzasynthesis wrote: post #15

Adopters of the 'new' PayPal interface can probably attest to the poor quality, redirects and unexplained errors that have been popping up. After talking on the phone with two service reps, one of whom refused to let me talk to a technical expert as to why my email confirmation token wouldn't work and another who had to enable automated billing on my account manually (because it's totally broken in the client interfa…

I transitioned back to the old interface almost immediately. The search interface for past orders is less powerful because you now need to know when an order was placed in addition to having the transaction ID. The old interface can pull up an order without having the approximate order date as long as you can provide either your own txnid or the customer's txnid. Additionally, I was no longer able to pull up orders using the customer's txnid. So, that was a bummer.

Re: PayPal CTO Resigns

#18

Post by dangrossman » Tue, Feb 09, 2016, 1:10 AM UTC

PayPal's redesigned their UI two or three times in the past decade or so. None of those redesigns have made it to business accounts yet. I still log in and see the same site I did in the early 2000s. I really, really understand that their business is enormously complex, operating in hundreds of different markets, but... you'd think some of the improvements would trickle down eventually. It's a real challenge for their support staff that has to figure out which of several completely different interfaces a customer is seeing before they can provide any help with it.

http://i.imgur.com/a1pYK8a.png

Re: PayPal CTO Resigns

#19

Post by metasean » Tue, Feb 09, 2016, 1:12 AM UTC

meritt wrote: post #14

Zenefits just canned their CEO (ironically, over a benefits dispute), while their COO steps up to take over that role. Maybe James is leaving Paypal to become COO of Zenefits?

>Also today, Zenefits announced that venture capitalist and PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel has joined the startup’s board of directors. In addition to relinquishing his role as chief executive, Conrad has also given up his board seat.

Re: PayPal CTO Resigns

#20

Post by jorgecurio » Tue, Feb 09, 2016, 1:16 AM UTC

Is this coincidence or what? Yelp CFO also resigned. Two executives from two different sinking ships.

Paypal is getting murdered by Stripe. Yelp thought it could raise stock prices by buying traffic. Something had to give, someone has to take the blame.