TL;DR: Thanks for the phenomenal 14 years, PayPal! After 14 years (to the day!), I made the incredibly difficult decision to leave PayPal. All I have to say is….what a fantastic ride! I had the amazing fortune of working with thousands of talented people over the course of this time, and I have learned so much about leadership, technology, and most importantly, people. Before PayPal, I spent 15 years as software developer, and as such, I always saw myself becoming a leader in product development. When I walked in the door at PayPal, things were a bit chaotic….and if you had told me that 14 years later I’d be running infrastructure, SRE, operations, data centers, and cloud, I would have told you that you were crazy (and I might have even said, “cloud?”) However, I was drawn to all of these, as they had unique and challenging engineering problems at massive scale. When I started, PayPal was processing about $60B a year. Last year, PayPal processed $1.25T. To be a part of that huge growth was such a fantastic experience. The engineering problems were interesting, complex, and fun, but what ultimately made this such a great journey was the people. Big shout out to my SRCE team, our partner organizations, our key stakeholders, and our internal and external customers. You have made this such a memorable time for me, and PayPal will always be such an important part of my life. I had the great opportunity to build the SRCE team from the ground up at PayPal and establish a culture and direction for the organization. I now want to drive the culture and direction of a company and will be looking for my next role to be in the C suite. PayPal team – thank you so much….please keep in touch! #paypal #sre #srce #people #grateful
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Dan Schulman
2y
Will miss you Wes, and can’t wait to see all you will accomplish in your next chapter!
Guru Bhat
2y
Wes - I'm not usually lost for words, but today, I am. You are one of the finest human beings I've had the pleasure of knowing and PayPal will miss a piece of its soul with you bidding adieu. I know all good things have to come to an end, but one can't help wanting to postpone moments like these indefinitely. I will be one among many thousands of friends of yours at PayPal who will eagerly look forward to seeing you in the C-Suite somewhere. Here's to a life of boundless impact and deep contentment ahead. All the best!
Back in 2011 when i was part of the Checkout MAX team, I really wondered how Live support can sustain with all the talks around me. When you came along with the GPS team and started with the program to unify the Live support across the organisation by integrating system support, Credit and Risk Live support i was still skeptical as to how far we would go. with this Though i was skeptical, you definitely made me believe that with perseverance, commitment and extreme ownership you can transform it into a great program called Site Reliability Engineering. Later when you included the Infrastructure into the fold, I was again thinking how are we going to sustain as it was moving out of our core. But then understood the Devops synergies you wanted to bring into the organization and were successful at providing the vision for some amazing programs like Infra as a code, Public Cloud Journey, etc.. Again proving that if you believe the good in any change, no matter what, you tend to gain the best of it. Thanks for being OUR LEADER and keeping people culture at your core always. I definitely hope to be associated with you in the future!! Thanks and all the very best Wes!
Karthik M.
2y
Hi Wes - I was one among those fortunate few that were lucky to be part of your epic journey with PayPal Inc. I wanted to thank you for providing an opportunity to join with SRE and grow in my career both technically and personally through your great mentoring and leadership qualities. By far I consider you the best leader that I have worked with in my career and owe lot of success to you ,Tony and PayPal. Though your move is a great loss for PayPal Inc, I am excited for your next chapter. Whoever that is going to hire you will benefit immensely from your no non-sense mindset, great diverse team building abilities and a phenomenal leadership. I wish you good luck and immense health . Best, Karthik
Peter Kashou
2y
Wes - Working with you these past years has been more rewarding than I could have ever imagined. Thank you for being a mentor, teacher, student, and friend through it all. Congratulations on an amazing 14 year run at PayPal! Your impact will be long lasting on this company and every person you touched. As if anyone needed more evidence of how much you care, simply look at the thoughtful and personal responses you are giving to each and every one of the over 200 (as of now) comments here. Best wishes!
I've had the pleasure of working with you in many different roles through the past 10 years and every interaction with you as been impactful, insightful, and more importantly fun...thank you for all of that. Decisions like this are never easy and I look forward to catching up soon on what is yet to come. Onward!!!
Ken Wolf
2y
Wes, this has been a crazy ride! Thanks for bringing measured and data driven leadership to a group that sorely needed it. The years have flown by and you have always been there for us not only guiding through the tough situations, but helping us to see the bigger picture and our roles in making it a reality. I will always value the mentorship and sanity you injected into our conversations when issues seemed too big to be tackled. Thank you for everything and good luck on the next big thing!
CPTO @ MX
2yAdding one of my favorite pics with John Donahoe and Dan Schulman