My PayPal Update: PayPal Rocks.

The last three months have been a blur. The last blog I posted was right before joining PayPal. So I thought it would be good to give an update on my honest impressions about PayPal.

Here are my take-aways.

#1 PayPal is positioned like no other company to change the way people use money. 
I am really excited to be part of changing something that is so fundamental to the way the world works. I sensed that PayPal was at an inflection point. And now seeing the products we are working on has convinced me we can do this and we welcome the competition. At Netflix we changed the way people view movies. At PayPal we change the way people use money :-) I am totally stoked about our business future.

#2 The wisdom is in the crowds! 
I interviewed over 100 different people in the organization in my first 6-8 weeks. My theory was the "smarts" was already in the organization. My interviews confirmed this. In many ways my job is collecting the intelligence, distilling it, and connecting the right people and information together and ensuring that we remove friction, indecision and instead multiply the ability of our makers to make.

#3. Innovation is blooming all around the organization
I think this surprises colleagues of mine when I tell them that innovation is alive & well at PayPal. At PayPal's quarterly Leader's day they have a great tradition of every new leader (director & above) standing up and telling about where they came from, what's unique about them and what they will be doing. At the November meeting it took us over an hour to get through all the new people. I would estimate that 15-25% of the leaders were new. Either through acquisition or new hire. All this new blood brings in change with it. Couple the sparks from the new blood with the kindling of the wisdom in the crowds (to mix a few metaphors) and you have a roaring fire. I can assure you the PayPal you see on the site today and on merchant sites around the world will not be the same paypal you see in the future.

And the competition from our friends at Google, Square and many others is awesome. Thank God for good competitors. This is energizing and refines a company and makes it lean.

In fact I am in the middle of hiring for my head of UIE Innovation. This is a kick-butt role that partners directly with UED & Product in a lean & mean & collaborative manner to burn through as many ideas as possible and marry technology & innovation.

#4 The Technology Platform is being Re-Invented
Prior technology choices on the front-end have hindered productivity. Using XML/XSLT is a HORRIBLE choice. It is a curse that thankfully is being rooted out. We are migrating all of the products to a simpler architecture that supports true client side development. I am happy to report that my team and the infrastructure team are building strong alliances and we have a shared vision that is about making UI development as nimble as possible. We are building towards a rapid experimentation platform.

#5 My Leadership Team Rocks
Ok, so you might say "well you would say this because some of your leaders will read your blog." Regardless, it is true. I have never been as challenged by my leaders to be bold, make quick decisions, lead, allow no excuses to paralyze us as I have been here at PayPal.

I can't speak for the past at PayPal. And we certainly are not where we need to be yet. But I can assure you that we are unified on empowering an army of change agents. And we have the right vision, the right story that defines where we will be.

We are Hiring
How about it? Want to join me in this grand adventure? I am on the lookout for talented user interface engineers. I need strong developers. Strong computer science skills. JavaScript rock stars. HTML5/CSS3 aficionados. If you have the chops contact me at billwscott over on gmail.

Shared Understanding Resource: Head First HTML5

I am constantly talking about creating a "shared understanding" between design and engineering. And I love it when I find a book or resource that creates more bridges across these two worlds.

Eric Freeman & Elisabeth Robson have done the community a great favor with the addition of Head First HTML5 Programming. If you are a designer or product manager or backend engineer (though as the latter you will have to get past the less serious tone you may be accustomed to) then this book is for you.

As with all of the books in the Head First series they aren't meant for mid to advanced level developers. Where they shine is as a first introduction to a set of technologies. In this case they do an delightful job of introducing the HTML5 family of technologies.

The first thing to understand is what they mean by "HTML5". They aren't restricting the discussion to just HTML5 markup and the technologies that are strictly part of the current HTML5 spec. Instead they take a looser, more popular perspective on what HTML5 is. I actually like this approach. I like it because it is just too confusing to constantly explain to the public what is in and what is out of the spec at any given time. And I really need an easy way to talk about this collection of technologies. So using the term "HTML5" in this sense becomes more expressive. I don't even mind when CSS3 gets lumped into the bucket. I know call me a heretic.

Ok, back to the review...

The book ends up covering a lot more than I expected: markup (of course), JavaScript, DOM manipulation, geo-location (complete with a google maps/geo-location integration), AJAX, Canvas, Video,  web storage and web workers. There is also some discussion of CSS3 and styling and selection.

Overall, I really liked the examples and was pleasantly surprised at how real world they were. Another great touch was the Bullet Points section which summarized each chapter in a single page.

Its really hard to write a book for the complete newbie yet remain technically accurate. The authors have done this and more. Let the shared understanding grow. Highly recommended.

Full Disclosure: I received a free copy for review. However, if I didn't like it I wouldn't have bothered to write anything. The review above would have been the same even if I had bought it.

Excited About My New Role - Sr. Director, Web Development @ PayPal

Elsewhere I have updated my bio to reflect my new job as head of web development for PayPal (which starts on 10/24). The 'elsewheres' being on my twitter profile, facebook profile, blogger profile, linkedin profile, etc. I also tweeted it and updated my status that I had taken this new role. However, those formats are shorter so I thought I would discuss what I am up to and why I am making this change.

As many of you know, I returned to Netflix after a short stint away and have just wrapped up being back a year. Altogether I spent about 4 years at Netflix and had some wonderful experiences and especially wonderful folks that I got to work with (in particular I am partial to those who worked for me).

The first stint at Netflix was a strategic role in which I had the opportunity to define & build the UI engineering organization there as well as guide the architecture and build the talent. I also helped build out the UX design team and especially worked closely with that team. The second stint had some of the same elements as I focused on the ECommerce side and we built out a UI architecture using Mustache (the java version -- thanks Sam Pullara!). And as a team we rewrote the whole code base back to front, internationalized and localized it in just 7-8 months and launched in 43 more countries. In addition, we were able to simplify the device UI code base to handle multiple devices, resolutions and input handling. Even with those good things it was one of the more exhausting experiences I have had in my career. And once the dust settle I quickly realized the role was becoming way too tactical and too focused on one aspect of a single product.

So I popped my head up and decided I would start looking for an opportunity (thinking I would make the move in 6 months or so). But within just a few days this awesome opportunity at PayPal showed up.

Why PayPal?
PayPal continues to be the world leader in online payment. And with the formation of x.commerce the position of PayPal as the payment provider and more importantly the payment identity for online transactions around the globe, I could see the huge upside to the business. Couple this with what is to come in offline payments (POS, mobile, tablet, etc.) and the huge resources of eBay as the parent company and I was sold on PayPal as the company.

Why this role?
While PayPal has all this goodness, they felt strongly that one thing they needed was a strong Web UI leader who could help define a nimble, open source based UI architecture, who could help bring design & engineering together, who could help simplify the process of getting design to life and who could attract top UI talent to the organization. That is a tall order. But as we talked about this role and my background we felt it was the right match. And just 2 weeks after the initial conversations I accepted the role as Sr. Director of Web Development.

Looking back at my career the most successful & enjoyable times for me have been when I am in the role of influencer or change agent. Back at Sabre I was able to found the common web & desktop UI engineering teams as well as the UX design team and influence many of the core products. At Yahoo! as evangelist I was able to influence dozens of their sites and evangelize great engineering & design internally & externally. And as I mentioned, the same for my time at Netflix. So this seems the most logical next step for me.

I will have a lot to learn as I join PayPal. There are many people there I look forward to learning from. I certainly don't have all the answers, but I do have the confidence that I will be able to join forces with other smart people there and at the right time know what is the next best step to take. It's a little like improv. I can tell you a lot of stuff I might try, but until I get there and get a deeper understanding of the needs & the assets I won't know what will make the most sense to try.

It takes a Team
If you work at PayPal, be sure to reach out to me and let me know who you are. I need others like you in order to make the right impact. Or if you don't work there but would like to join me somehow in this opportunity please reach out also. And while I don't know yet what my open positions will be, don't hesitate to reach out in an exploratory manner.

Contact Me
You can always find me at billwscott on all social networks and on gmail. Look forward to talking with as each of you that reach out to me.

Join Me in Boston for User Interface 16!

I am excited to be part of UI Engineering's upcoming User Interface 16 Conference in Boston. The full event is November 7-9th and will be held at the beautiful Renaissance Boston Waterfront Hotel.

I will be giving a full day workshop Monday, November 7, on "Designing Rich Interactive Experiences." You can check out & signup for my workshop here.

Additionally on Tuesday, November 8, I will be presenting a talk on "Designing for Mice & Men" which focuses on experiences across mobile, tablet, TV & Web.

There are a host of other great speakers as well: Kevin Hoffman, Luke Wroblewski, Jared Spool, Hagan, Brandon Schauer, Kim Goodwin, Steve Portigal, Stephanie (Sullivan) Rewis and Greg Rewis.

Join us in Boston for an awesome lineup of topics & speakers.

Looking for a User Interface Engineer for our Account UI team

How about it? Want to work at Netflix? If you have strong user interface engineering skills coupled with solid computer science skills then my latest opening may be just the fit for you.

The ECommerce Team at Netflix is responsible for all member account & profile experiences (including help). It's time to grow the team so I am looking for a talented, passionate engineer who will take on the following responsibilities:

• In concert with design and product management, deliver multiple simultaneous experiences in an A/B test environment
• Develop the full stack from data marshaling in Java, to JSP, Mustache, HTML5, CSS and JavaScript to create these experiences
• Work in close concert with backend web development team, be able to understand the impact on the whole product, and suggest and plan the best solution with backend to UI in mind
• Take full ownership of a feature set from first discussion to bringing it live on the site
• Turn requirements into simple, elegant, optimal solutions that balance the needs of the health of the technology stack but always guided by our business needs

If you are interested or know someone interested, please email at bscott -- over at netflix dot com.

Full description here (or apply here):

Senior User Interface Engineer - ECommerce

Check out the new Netflix Tech Blog

Lots of interesting technical stuff happening to get movies to your living room, mobile devices & browser. You can read about the technical side at techblog.netflix.com.

New - Social Systems Engineering Team at Netflix

Michael Hart is now leading a new Social Systems Engineering Team here at Netflix. He has a couple of immediate openings. Here is a partial from the job description:

Netflix is the leading online movie and TV service, reaching almost 17 million households in the US and Canada and growing over 50% in the last year. Many of the other fastest growing companies today have achieved that growth in part by leveraging Facebook's social graph. As a founding member of the new Social Systems engineering team at Netflix, you'll be challenged with helping us leverage the social graph to propel Netflix's growth even higher.

I am really excited to see what Michael and his team will accomplish with this new dimension of the Netflix experience. Wouldn't it be a blast to be a part of this team? If you are interested apply for the job here.