>

Not particularly surprising.  They over hired during the pandemic because of the spike in online sales.
If NCR or Square announce layoffs, then I will become concerned.
I accidentally divulged my PayPal login to a hacker after receiving a phishing email. I reported it to the company, and they refused to help. I can’t log in to my account anymore, so it’s sitting dormant. I wonder how many others are in this boat. >

I am. Tried multiple times to get access to the account, but to no avail. Only method to reach customer support from Finland is by phone, which they don't answer even after holding for an hour. >


PayPal stock closed up 2% Tuesday.

BUT THINK OF THE STOCKHOLDERS >

I like how people assume that only the typical “tech worker” gets fired during these layoffs. These companies hired a bunch of different types of workers during the pandemic online sales boom and now they’re likely readjusting back to “normal” along with safeguarding themselves over recession concerns. It’s not just the software engineers being cut, it’s also a bunch of HR, finance, CS reps, etc. But anytime you hear about a tech company doing layoffs there’s some narrative about tech in decline or something similar for whatever reason, while completely ignoring the unprecedented COVID “boom” for some of these companies that no longer exists now. >

Because these people are bitter their job sucks and wants tech to fail and try to twist the narrative to be as negative as possible for tech whenever they can.
These are the same people that think everyone at these companies does nothing but goof off all day with massages and coffee etc, but somehow these companies are also making money hand over fist. >

I think a lot of people here are either really young or haven’t worked a corporate job so they don’t realize companies have several departments that offer different roles. It’s like people who think GM only hires people who design and build cars when they have an entire IT department of their own. People on Reddit just generalize based on the industry the company is centered around because the average person here has no clue what they’re talking about. >

You are correct, probably all departments get trimmed proportionally to their structured plan. It is to be said though that engineers probably get the highest salaries, this side of execs. >

How does Paypal even have 28,000 employees in the first place? What do they all do? That seems like an outrageous number for a company with no physical product or meaningful customer service. >

They're a global company.  They have software developers, legal, real estate, infrastructure, customer service, etc.  28000 doesn't seem crazy to me. >

I guess, it still just seems outrageous for how little they actually provide. They certainly don't provide meaningful customer service to individual users. >

As an international company doing financial transactions you typically need expertise in every single country you operate in as you need to be compliant with the laws and regulations in every single country you operate in. You can get in to a ton of problems if you don’t have effective AML and KYC compliance programs. 
Some countries (China) often require on-soil infrastructure as well. 
It’s really hard to appreciate the complexity of international business until you’ve had to deal with it. Customer service is a tiny segment of their business. Mountains of lawyers and compliance professionals are what drive the employee count.
They also certainly have numerous product teams developing different tools for different types of customers. Things like Open Banking are becoming much larger and more prevalent. >


Mountains of lawyers and compliance professionals are what drive the employee count.

You would think you could just contract that out, but maybe there are government rules against that type of thing. >

Contracting out a mountain of lawyers is a terrible value proposition. They charge hundreds an hour and you need hundreds of them at 40-50 hours a week year round. Much cheaper (and effective) to have your own legal dept. 
Compliance can be a mixed bag but generally it’s much cheaper to create your own programs. And as you said, certain compliance functions will be required to be in-house. Depending on the industry, you also have to consider the types of data you’ll be exchanging. Financial data is highly sensitive so you can’t just offshore resources in Vietnam or somewhere else in SE Asia. >

PayPal is crap. My eBay account was hacked and bc my PayPal was linked to it , both accounts got suspended.  Whereas I was able to resolve the issue with eBay and have my account reinstated , PayPal wouldn’t budge.  I even had supervisor level customer service managers from both companies on a conference call so that eBay could corroborate my case. Even after the case manager on PayPal side said that they had all the evidence they needed, they still permanently suspended my account.  Even worse, I had a balance in that account and Paypal makes you wait 180 days before you can even apply to withdraw it.  Lastly, I have zero ways to be able to fully close my paypal account and unlink my banking info, despite writing them multiple times.  Terrible company, I hope the affected workers find new jobs somewhere much better.