Pros
It's a very successful business; growing at 35%/yr, with some parts growing at 60%/yr. That means that your job is usually secure from layoffs due to a business downturn. People feel secure enough to start and grow families; the place feels like a fertility clinic, with people coming and going on maternity and paternity leave. People are treated humanely, for the most part. My coworkers are a very nice bunch, and I feel valued for my contributions to my team. The company recognizes outstanding performance on a quarterly basis in public meetings with substantial cash awards. There is a tremendous amount of information sharing within the business. I could attend weekly presentation by some business unit or another talking about their latest initiative or how a peer group is implementing new standards recently announced. The company is becoming more customer-focused. In 2008, the company began a major program to upgrade its customer service, which has been a neglected area. The CEO is now focused on measures of customer satisfaction as part of the key performance metrics for the company and sr. staff. There are multiple initiatives underway to make it easier for buyers to do business with the company. There are many chances for advancement from entry-level positions to positions one step up, and a fair chance of advancement to the next level. For the most part, work-life balance is encouraged; I and my peers rarely work more than 45 hrs/week. The company knows how to party; there are sponsored events about once/month. I just had an off-site with 100 other people to play golf/learn golf and have a catered lunch at Coyote Creek Golf Club.
Cons
Paypal's priorities are determined largely by its parent company eBay, which is struggling. eBay's core auction business is flat and will probably shrink, both in absolute terms and as a percentage of revenue, in years to come. Its efforts to become an online mall with merchandise sold at slight discounts and fixed prices don't seem to me to give it a distinctive edge in the market, particularly in comparison with the premier mall, Amazon.com. A significant number of business columnists openly wonder what eBay's compelling value proposition will be, given the company's trajectory. In fact, in a recent effort to make eBay a safer place to shop, it is likely to run afoul of anti-trust laws in Australia. Thus far, in my business unit, PayPal doesn't believe in creating thorough business requirements, and it doesn't have dedicated requirements analysts, which means that quality isn't designed into the products it produces or the business development processes. As a result, the company alternates between cycles of putting out new products and fixing them. Efforts to modernize the company's technology infrastructure are taking a long time. As a result, many innovative and creative projects can't be undertaken. For instance, the new, semi-annual "lab rats"/skunkworks competition shows off the creativity of staff, but even winning projects are not usually turned into development projects because of techological constraints (or higher-level corporate priorities). Turnover is high, as many talented people leave to improve their professional skills at more technically modern companies. Average tenure is 2-3 years. Until recently, Sr. mgt. didn't have experience in running a big company, and they still make decisions without realizing the downstream ramifications and without communication channels to get the feedback to know those effects quickly. The new sr. staff brought in to grow the company in certain areas (marketing, creative, sales) seem to be authoritarian and hierarchical in their management style. While work-life balance is generally respected, I have seen some software development groups work 10+ hours/day, 6-7 days a week for a month to meet deadlines, and management has not stepped in to re-evaluate schedules. In addition, there is a curious reluctance to establish a campus near San Francisco, where a large number of employees live. This contributes to the high turnover and the problems that causes. I have heard from colleagues, that people in some specialties, like visual design, are not paid competitively with the market.
