Laid back with no standards - Software Engineer PayPal Employee Review

3.0
Jul 10, 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Good work/life balance - Ability to work with new technologies (i.e. React and GraphQL) - San Jose campus is beautiful, a very pleasant place to walk around and show up to on a daily basis - Expectations are reasonable (although almost TOO reasonable to the point of being lax)

Cons

- Depending on team, people aren’t always the friendliest - Lots and lots of bureaucracy and layers of middle management that make it extremely tough to navigate - Code and engineering standards are essentially non existent. No one cares about the quality of code you write as long as you ship the feature. Yearly reviews have nothing to do with your engineering ability, promotions are often given out to those who have stuck around long enough to make it their “turn”. - Internal tools often break and don’t work, staging and development environments are incredibly unstable, and a lot of productivity is lost just waiting for things to work properly.

Explore other reviews about PayPal

5.0
May 15, 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Good company to work for, good work life balance

Cons

They should have more developers than other titles.

2.0
Apr 13, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

PayPal has a lot of potential. It has two very strong brands in PayPal and Venmo with significant awareness and user bases that other companies envy. There are pockets of teams that are really pushing the envelop to reimagine what PayPal and Venmo could be—especially the Venmo team—and to move with speed given the company must stay focused and not waste time with Apple Pay, Shop Pay, and so many other competitors nipping at PayPal's heels and aggressively taking market share.

Cons

While some teams are pushing to self-disrupt and are moving fast, too many teams—and I'd argue the majority of the company–are living off of PayPal's laurels from the late 2010s through the pandemic. The culture and mindset have to change for the company to remain competitive. Otherwise, they are the Titanic and they're sinking slowly. The former CEO who only last 2 years tried diversifying the company's revenue, planning for the future. But the board and its former chairman (now new CEO) felt he wasn't moving fast enough to stabilize and marketshare. Instead, the board hired the former chairman who made computers and printers at HP—another sinking ship—to lead the oldest fintech company. The loss of confidence in the leadership team and the strategy are only accelerating.

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