Negative Culture, Almost No Opportunities For Growth - Senior Engineering Manager PayPal Employee Review

I unfortunately experienced many critical issues working at PayPal. The biggest issue I faced was around promotions and raises. They give each department so few allocated promotions, that most teams aren’t given even a single promotion for years. This creates a serious problem, because so many people are under leveled and under compensated, that most just decide to leave as soon as their stocks vest after the first or second year, causing a huge drain of knowledge and experience, and a never ending cycle of recruiting. Then, our yearly budget for raises is incredibly small. As a manager, it was disheartening to tell my direct reports that I couldn’t give them a raise more than approx. 2%, even though they deserved it, because of PayPal’s allocated budget. It really felt like mixed signals when they keep bragging about their highest profit levels ever in their earnings calls, but then tell us their isn’t enough budget for raises to keep up with inflation. Additionally, compensation packages for new hires is reasonable, but lower than most of their competitors, which made it extremely difficult to get candidates to accept offers. I also unfortunately experienced an issue with diversity and inclusion. When I was affected by something that at most companies would be considered a serious offense, where private personal information was leaked without my consent, I was basically told that “this is the way it is and there’s nothing we can do about it.” I felt so alone, and cried for days, and felt like all of PayPal’s messaging about diversity and inclusion and caring about minorities was all talk and no action. All of this made it very difficult as a manager to keep our talented engineers at the company, and to have optimism when telling new candidates about the role.