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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

#31

Post by mgkimsal »

vidoc wrote: post #23

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 t…

"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.

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

#32

Post by 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.

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

#33

Post by outworlder »

mikeryan wrote: post #9

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.

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

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

#34

Post by 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.

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

#35

Post by yarrel »

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…

Treating a quality problem as an obedience problem is being an asshole.

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

#36

Post by ItendToDisagree »

raganwald wrote: post #28
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 foo…

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.

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

#37

Post by sophacles »

mgkimsal wrote: post #34

"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 t…

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.

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

#38

Post by jrochkind1 »

panarky wrote: post #21

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 employme…

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.

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

#39

Post by jrochkind1 »

raganwald wrote: post #28
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 foo…

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.

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