Toxic developer culture of non-cooperation - Senior Software Engineer PayPal Employee Review

1.0
Dec 16, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The pay and benefits are good, vacation time is untracked, and you're unlikely to ever get heat for anything because there's very little accountability

Cons

All I can say is that PayPal suffers from an intransigent culture of non-cooperation among development groups. Every piece of vital development, deployment, and project nanagement infrastructure is (GitHub, Jira, Jenkins, Slack, Node.js, and on and on) is completely siloed, and the team running within that silo is far more interested in keeping everyone else out of that silo than they are in cooperating for the common good of development teams. If you ever have a suggestion or a request for a change to one of these infrastructure items, whether it's a direct necessity for one of your project requirements or just something you thought of that would benefit the development experience of everyone using it, the team running that silo will put a truly impressive amount of time and energy into preventing it from happening. They generally go down this ladder of stonewalling tactics: - Make it as difficult as possible to find out what team is managing the item in question - Make it as difficult as possible to contact anyone on that team - When contacted, avoid responding to the inquiry - When forced to respond by upper management or public pressure, explain how team policy makes it impossible to implement the request (and hope they don't remember that your team policy is self-imposed) - Perpetually claim to be understaffed. Luckily, it doesn't matter how many dedicated team members you actually have, because nobody will ever call you out for not really being understaffed. - When some new VP of something or other joins the company and decides to implement a major change and it's all hands on deck, claim you are currently dedicating all resources to that VP's new pet project, regardless of whether your team actually has any connection to the project. - If all of the above still fails to deter other teams from making requests or suggestions, then just stop responding to them. There is no escalation procedure for interteam conflicts that reaches anyone with any actual authority, so no team is ever held accountable for refusal to cooperate with other teams.

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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