On
the third floor, PayPal President David Marcus shows me a sea of
high-walled beige and grey hexagonal cubicles. The kind you stared at
for 16 hours a day if you worked at a Peninsula-based, late-1990s tech
company. They look identical to Yahoo’s except no purple and yellow. The
walls block out most of the natural light in the room and any sign of
coworkers. Even “Cubicle Guy” would have to stretch to prairie dog over
them. Marcus can’t hide his contempt looking at them.
On the fourth floor, you could hold a middle school prom. It’s just a huge, flat empty space. Those same cubicles are there, only they’ve been dismantled and leaning against walls. It’s so flooded with the July San Jose sun, it’s almost blinding. “The carpets are next,” Marcus says, of the ugly beige floors with darker beige squiggles on them.
On the fifth floor, though, I see David Marcus’ vision of the future, what working at PayPal could be like. It’s an open environment with modern white and chrome desks, no walls between them. Along the walls are open collaboration seating areas meant to deemphasize conference rooms. There are still a few conference rooms that you can reserve for meetings, though very few. In their place are several small “focus” rooms that don’t operate on a schedule.The message? If you can actually see your coworkers, you don’t need more meetings,You've probably seen cellphonecases at some point. because you are always working together. Marcus mutters something about PayPal’s “meeting disease,” as we walk past.You must not use the stonecarving without being trained.
The entire company is going to look like this soon. Nearly 3,000 cubes are getting thrown out. Marcus is going to force people to work together via every means necessary, even furniture. Force the company to operate in small teams. Force them to collaborate on everything. Force them to be — groan with me, if you’ve heard every other guy at a has-been large tech company say it — more startup-like.As he’s stripped away worker comforts, many have balked at these changes and others he’s instituted over the the year and five months he’s been in charge. Those people, Marcus says, need to go.
“There are plenty of companies in Silicon Valley that have cubicles,” he says. “They are welcome to go find them. It’s harsh but you have to let people know it’s happened. This is how it is.” He stops just short of saying, If they don’t like it, they can leave. But it’s clearly the message. “You can’t change the culture nice and slow and gently,” he says. “You need a series of electric shocks. The more violent the better.”
Marcus has inherited a turnaround story unlike almost any other playing out in the tech rustbelt today. PayPal is still the market leader in its category. Not just by market cap and number of employees but by transactions, too. PayPal isn’t a fading legacy brand like Yahoo– it’s still growing. PayPal is heralded as one of the best acquisitions in Silicon Valley history. It’s one of the key things that has been pushing eBay forward: Payments have increased from 24 percent of eBay’s revenue in 2006 to 43 percent last year. Its CEOs The term 'plasticmould control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag.have repeatedly said that one day PayPal will be bigger than eBay.
Silicon Valley is obsessed with network effects, or when the benefit of others being on a site makes the experience that much better for everyone – and more valuable to the company. Network effects give you an unfair advantage over newcomers; even a challenger that’s technically better will struggle to pose a threat. (Witness PayPal’s parent company eBay.) Forget building a $1 billion company. Network effects are how you get a $10 billion company.
But PayPal is the cautionary tale of what happens when a network effect works too well. It turns out that solving the many security, fraud, trust, marketing, and chicken-and-egg challenges of building a new system for buying and selling goods around the world creates a moat so wide and deep it can actually be a problem.
Simply put: PayPal got soft. It stopped innovating, because it didn’t have to. PayPal was one of the most ambitious startups of the late 1990s, co-founded by the holy trinity of intense over-performers Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk. As that talent migrated, however, the new team realized no one was chasing PayPal any longer. Its sprint slowed to an amble. It still grew. PayPal took a break, got a snack, and took a nap. It still grew. Pretty soon PayPal’s technical muscles started to atrophy. Pre-Marcus, PayPal was still dominant and growing but was also fat, slow, and out-of-touch.
“I’ve never seen as many things broken, and a company still being successful. It was just kinda bizarre,Choose from the largest selection of turquoisebeads in the world.The ledspotlight is our flagship product.” says Bill Scott previous director of ecommerce UI at Netflix and one of the key new hires Marcus has brought in to transform PayPal’s user experience and make it a more lean, iterative organization.
Under PayPal’s previous regime several sources have told me that the company actively tried not to hire the best engineering talent, because great developers are a headstrong, disruptive force. They just wanted competent coders who could get the job done.
On the fourth floor, you could hold a middle school prom. It’s just a huge, flat empty space. Those same cubicles are there, only they’ve been dismantled and leaning against walls. It’s so flooded with the July San Jose sun, it’s almost blinding. “The carpets are next,” Marcus says, of the ugly beige floors with darker beige squiggles on them.
On the fifth floor, though, I see David Marcus’ vision of the future, what working at PayPal could be like. It’s an open environment with modern white and chrome desks, no walls between them. Along the walls are open collaboration seating areas meant to deemphasize conference rooms. There are still a few conference rooms that you can reserve for meetings, though very few. In their place are several small “focus” rooms that don’t operate on a schedule.The message? If you can actually see your coworkers, you don’t need more meetings,You've probably seen cellphonecases at some point. because you are always working together. Marcus mutters something about PayPal’s “meeting disease,” as we walk past.You must not use the stonecarving without being trained.
The entire company is going to look like this soon. Nearly 3,000 cubes are getting thrown out. Marcus is going to force people to work together via every means necessary, even furniture. Force the company to operate in small teams. Force them to collaborate on everything. Force them to be — groan with me, if you’ve heard every other guy at a has-been large tech company say it — more startup-like.As he’s stripped away worker comforts, many have balked at these changes and others he’s instituted over the the year and five months he’s been in charge. Those people, Marcus says, need to go.
“There are plenty of companies in Silicon Valley that have cubicles,” he says. “They are welcome to go find them. It’s harsh but you have to let people know it’s happened. This is how it is.” He stops just short of saying, If they don’t like it, they can leave. But it’s clearly the message. “You can’t change the culture nice and slow and gently,” he says. “You need a series of electric shocks. The more violent the better.”
Marcus has inherited a turnaround story unlike almost any other playing out in the tech rustbelt today. PayPal is still the market leader in its category. Not just by market cap and number of employees but by transactions, too. PayPal isn’t a fading legacy brand like Yahoo– it’s still growing. PayPal is heralded as one of the best acquisitions in Silicon Valley history. It’s one of the key things that has been pushing eBay forward: Payments have increased from 24 percent of eBay’s revenue in 2006 to 43 percent last year. Its CEOs The term 'plasticmould control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag.have repeatedly said that one day PayPal will be bigger than eBay.
Silicon Valley is obsessed with network effects, or when the benefit of others being on a site makes the experience that much better for everyone – and more valuable to the company. Network effects give you an unfair advantage over newcomers; even a challenger that’s technically better will struggle to pose a threat. (Witness PayPal’s parent company eBay.) Forget building a $1 billion company. Network effects are how you get a $10 billion company.
But PayPal is the cautionary tale of what happens when a network effect works too well. It turns out that solving the many security, fraud, trust, marketing, and chicken-and-egg challenges of building a new system for buying and selling goods around the world creates a moat so wide and deep it can actually be a problem.
Simply put: PayPal got soft. It stopped innovating, because it didn’t have to. PayPal was one of the most ambitious startups of the late 1990s, co-founded by the holy trinity of intense over-performers Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk. As that talent migrated, however, the new team realized no one was chasing PayPal any longer. Its sprint slowed to an amble. It still grew. PayPal took a break, got a snack, and took a nap. It still grew. Pretty soon PayPal’s technical muscles started to atrophy. Pre-Marcus, PayPal was still dominant and growing but was also fat, slow, and out-of-touch.
“I’ve never seen as many things broken, and a company still being successful. It was just kinda bizarre,Choose from the largest selection of turquoisebeads in the world.The ledspotlight is our flagship product.” says Bill Scott previous director of ecommerce UI at Netflix and one of the key new hires Marcus has brought in to transform PayPal’s user experience and make it a more lean, iterative organization.
Under PayPal’s previous regime several sources have told me that the company actively tried not to hire the best engineering talent, because great developers are a headstrong, disruptive force. They just wanted competent coders who could get the job done.
Read the full products at http://www.sdktapegroup.com/.
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