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:
PayPal chief reams employees: Use our app or quit
41–50 of 69 posts
Re: PayPal chief reams employees: Use our app or quit
#42The 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…
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.
Re: PayPal chief reams employees: Use our app or quit
#43Puck FayPal. I refuse to use their garbage monopoly.
Re: PayPal chief reams employees: Use our app or quit
#44Seems 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.
Re: PayPal chief reams employees: Use our app or quit
#45This 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.
Re: PayPal chief reams employees: Use our app or quit
#46The 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…
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.
Re: PayPal chief reams employees: Use our app or quit
#47So 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 orderi…
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).
Re: PayPal chief reams employees: Use our app or quit
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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.
Re: PayPal chief reams employees: Use our app or quit
#49The product stagnation will continue until morale improves!
Re: PayPal chief reams employees: Use our app or quit
#50I 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.