I spent some time at PayPal and, one thing I think is being lost in all of these discussions is exactly what was "fixed."
All your points on introducing new practices to an older, establish (in the company) framework and technology are spot on. I see this as more a way to shake things up and improve things under the guise of new tech.
Also, this is in the top-most bit of their stack. All of the underlying services are the same. That's where the majority of the latency exists and a lot of it comes from old-school PayPal. But you can't shift a company by trying to tackle a deeply integrated bit of architecture first. The easiest place to demonstrate that change is feasible and actually quite beneficial (to a company that has been change-averse in the past) is your app tier. Get them on your side with an easy (easier?) win, then tackle the harder problems.
I spent some time at PayPal and, one thing I think is being lost in all of these discussions is exactly what was "fixed."
All your points on introducing new practices to an older, establish (in the company) framework and technology are spot on. I see this as more a way to shake things up and improve things under the guise of new tech.
Also, this is in the top-most bit of their stack. All of the underlying services are the same. That's where the majority of the latency exists and a lot of it comes from old-school PayPal. But you can't shift a company by trying to tackle a deeply integrated bit of architecture first. The easiest place to demonstrate that change is feasible and actually quite beneficial (to a company that has been change-averse in the past) is your app tier. Get them on your side with an easy (easier?) win, then tackle the harder problems.