If so I could not disagree more.
Please click through to their article and read for yourself, but I will try to summarize here before expressing my thoughts.
VentureBeat got hold of an email that Mr. Marcus sent out on Monday February 10th in which he expresses unhappiness with employees at the San Jose, CA headquarters. A recent test of mobile payments at a cafe at HQ indicated that some employees did not want to install the PayPal app on their device, and many did not know their PayPal account login information.
Mr. Marcus indicated that "everyone at PayPal should use our products where available. That’s the only way we can make them better, and better."
He goes on to say that the HQ office lagged other offices in a recent lead generation program, and bemoaned that HQ does not in general show the kind of enthusiasm for the products that other offices do. Mr. Marcus apparently cited an example of engineers hacking a vending machine to accept PayPal payments as the kind of interest he does not see in San Jose.
VentureBeat seized on that in particular, attempting to contrast it with Mr. Marcus's recent personal experience with a stolen credit card number. Novet writes: "So clearly not all hacking is acceptable in Marcus’ book — only hacking that supports the company’s business objectives."
This is ignorant at best, and I suspect completely disingenuous. As a writer for a publication discussing matters of technology and finance, certainly Mr. Novet can distinguish between connotations of the word "hacking". Mr. Marcus suffered from security hacking intended to profit - a malicious criminal act. PayPal engineers were hacking in the sense of reverse engineering and extending a piece of technology for proof of concept purposes - a practice long established and accepted in the world of tech. Yes, in one case PayPal's business objectives are advanced. But that is not the salient difference between those two acts and Mr. Novet should know that.
That point aside, however, what is it that Mr. Marcus said in the email that is so offensive? Let's try to summarize:
- Some employees at HQ were reluctant to install a PayPal app
- Some employees (the implication from alleged quotes in the article is more) did not know their PayPal login credentials
- HQ lagged in a recent lead generation effort despite an advantage in number of employees
- Other offices show the kind of enthusiasm for a product that Mr. Marcus would like to see in San Jose
At a B2C company like PayPal, it should be common practice to expect everyone to use, or at least be familiar with, the product. And management should want to use it internally wherever possible. Again, more long accepted practices in the world of tech, known colloquially as "eating your own dog food".
A digital marketing platform is not something you expect everyday consumers to use. But at ExactTarget every employee had to use the platform to send out their own "bio email" when joining the company. CEO Scott Dorsey was proud of that program, and I was glad to see he also participated by regularly using our own tool to send out weekly company-wide communications.
That's really the heart of it. If you believe in the company, then use the products. There is merit in saying that if employees do not embrace a product that may just be symptomatic of the product's broader competitiveness. Fine. That is no reason not to at least have the app installed, to tinker with it, to find where it is lacking.
At the very least, as Mr. Marcus says "that's the only way we can make them better."
The other points are illustrate what the boss thought of as a lack of enthusiasm. But even that I have no problem with.
Everyone sells. And engineers should play, be creative, and extend.
Did Mr. Marcus "ream" PayPal employees at HQ? From the sound of it, no. But if he did, it also sounds like they deserved it.
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