PayPal

The values that eBay Inc. strives for are worthy of emulation by any company or individual. It's a place with heart, which is quite amazing given the size of the company.

Huge business in online payments and security differentiation. A simplified product structure recently makes for greater sales focus.

Too many senior-level people, both in management and technical tracks, are "fluffy." These individuals often engage in "hand-waving," demonstrating a lack of understanding of the payments business or payments technology. They seem to believe that PayPal is a web startup or a new programming language that will transform the payments ecosystem. There are also too many very senior programmer-type individuals who do not understand payments. They are rewarded for implementing basic dev environment tooling and custom infrastructure that is slowing down engineering productivity.

Jettison this management and technical fluff at the top levels. They would be mid-level engineers/managers (at best) at any other financial services company.

Stop listening to the management guru of the week and keep your focus long-term.

Not every woman in technology needs to be promoted because someone wrote a book about this.

Know how to tell people reporting on work from people doing work. Too many people are reporting status now.

Finally, communicate a real long-term vision for the customer experience and start from there.

Ditch Agile. Call it a mistake and move on already.