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PayPal President David Marcus is known for being kind of a dick. In fact, you have to be kind of a dick to rise to power in one of the biggest tech companies in the world, so stop criticizing him, peasants.
PayPal recently launched an app and it was not a big hit among PayPal employees. Marcus doesn’t specify how many employees actually didn’t download the app, but just says “some of you.” He then tells them to just quit if they don’t want to bother downloading their employer’s app.
Here’s the email in full:
—–Original Message—–
From: Marcus, David
Sent: Monday, February 10, 2014 10:16 AM
Subject: San Jose PayPals: need your help!
Importance: HighTo San Jose PayPals,
I need your help. As you know, I travel to our offices around the world quite a bit. In many of the places I go I have been struck by the commitment of our PayPal teams and their determination to make the world a better place.
But here are two brutal facts that clearly show our San Jose employees lag behind our colleagues in other locations.
PayPal It, our program enabling you to refer businesses that don’t accept PayPal has seen the least amount of leads in *absolute* and relative terms vis-a-vis ALL other locations. Offices with under 100 employees beat us by an order of magnitude (total PayPal it leads to date: 126,862, San Jose leads: 984…).
Product usage data is similar. Employees in other offices hack into Coke machines to make them accept PayPalbecause they feel passionately about using PayPal everywhere. I don’t see these behaviors here in San Jose. As a matter of fact, it’s been brought to my attention that when testing paying with mobile at Cafe 17 last week, some of you refused to install the PayPal app (!!?!?!!), and others didn’t even remember their PayPal password. That’s unacceptable to me, and the rest of my team, everyone at PayPal should use our products where available. That’s the only way we can make them better, and better.
I know there are people on our campus in San Jose who are here to make a difference every day. So I’m turning to you passionate PayPals who are here for purpose more than paycheck. We need your help. I need you to make it clear to colleagues, who display these types of behaviors that we won’t tolerate these anymore. My intention is to make San Jose (and every location) a place that retains, and attracts talent that’s passionate, and engaged. We can do it together. By demanding more of each other.
We all have a lot of different opportunities out there, and many of them would require less sacrifices to our personal lives. My team and I are here because we believe we have the opportunity of a lifetime to build something that will transcend us, and will impact hundreds of millions of lives around the world in a meaningful, lasting way.
We have much work to do to reach greatness. We’re not perfect by any stretch of imagination. But passion, and purpose will help us get there faster.
In closing, if you are one of the folks who refused to install the PayPal app or if you can’t remember your PayPalpassword, do yourself a favor, go find something that will connect with your heart and mind elsewhere. A life devoid of purpose, and passion in what you do everyday is a waste of the precious time you have on this earth to make it better.
Onward with passion, purpose, and gusto!
David
“Passion, purpose and gusto.” I’d follow this man into battle. These are the kind of power moves you’d expect out of your head honcho. Download the damn app.
[via VentureBeat]
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Brian McGannon
What do I love? I love happy hour, a good golf tan, and getting moderately drunk during dinner.
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“purpose more than paycheck” – Classic line from an executive. Most people have to work to pay bills and do the things they actually enjoy, whether it is happy hours or after work volunteering at a shelter. If you said “ok, everyone’s bills are paid so don’t worry about checks anymore, keep working if you feel this is your purpose” I bet most people would get up and leave immediately
But in fairness, you have to keep your job to get that check you need, so don’t be dumb, download the damn app and fall in line
Wow, actually that is a great letter. I totally agree with his last paragraph, if you don’t love what you’re doing then move on. Sounds like he just wants his employees and company to thrive.