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PayPal chief reams employees: Use our app or quit

venturebeat.com

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Re: PayPal chief reams employees: Use our app or quit

#21

Post by 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...

[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-12/paypal-said-to-be-c...

Re: PayPal chief reams employees: Use our app or quit

#23

Post by 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!

Re: PayPal chief reams employees: Use our app or quit

#26

Post by 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.

Re: PayPal chief reams employees: Use our app or quit

#27

Post by ItendToDisagree »

chadwickthebold wrote: post #6

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 p…

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?

Re: PayPal chief reams employees: Use our app or quit

#28

Post by raganwald »

jobu wrote: post #11

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 will…

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.

Re: PayPal chief reams employees: Use our app or quit

#29

Post by izzydata »

mynd wrote: post #12
RTigger wrote: post #2

"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 .

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.

Re: PayPal chief reams employees: Use our app or quit

#30

Post by ItendToDisagree »

drakaal wrote: post #25

He's Captain Kirk's abandoned bastard son, he has some anger issues, you would too. http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/David_Marcus

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.
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