[anupamsr]

The thing is, PayPal code is a mess. And it is a mess that responds well to resources being thrown at it. For as long as PayPal keeps seeing growth, nobody wants to fix that mess.

Internally it really works like a bank - there are a couple of dev teams that are always under time crunch and rest of the company is basically busy politicking over the pie.

[hinkley]

And when that growth stops, it's too late to fix the problems. If you can keep things teetering along for a couple more years you can get a few bonuses cash out and leave before it all falls over.

It's the same story everywhere. I wish that it weren't.

[anupamsr]

Yes but when would _that_ happen? Growth will slow down when: 1) Either they have captured almost all of the market 2) Or they have a better competitor which washes them away

Iff (1) happens, they will not go under as they will a 'large' bank and will most likely be 'too big to fail'.

And I don't think (2) is happening fast enough.

[hinkley]

When your code is so brittle that you can't widen your target audience, you can't keep growing.

And it's not like there aren't plenty of examples of products that have enough competition that they grow the market but never saturate it.

[newjersey]

2) I imagine this is what the politicking people are supposed to work on to gain an interest in the competition.

[anupamsr]

Like a bank :)