Why I love working at eBay
Posted by: Fidji SIMO in Entrepreneurship, Internet/Technology, eBay
As you may have noticed it if you have taken a look at my Linkedin profile, I am currently doing an internship at eBay finishing at the beginning of July.
On Friday morning I was wondering: why am I so happy to go to work today? Of course people are really cool, I have an amazing manager, eBay is a very dynamic company… but it is not sufficient, there must be something else. Why do I always defend so vigorously my company when somebody highlights its shortcomings?
Then this week-end I read Guy Kawasaki’s book, The Art of Start. He basically says that great companies are created to make meaning, to change the world, to make the world a better place. eBay is exactly that: it has been created on the assumption that people are naturally good and honest, and that they can be trusted.
So when I go to work every morning I have the feeling of doing something good, the feeling of helping create an efficient marketplace, based on people’s honesty, relying on a strong community of passionate people. I have the impression that the development of eBay’s ecosystem is not only right because it generates additional profit but also because it helps people to create a trading activity more easily, giving them access to millions of customers around the world without supporting high fixed costs. And I can’t help feeling proud of what I am doing when I hear from an entrepreneurial success, or people having met great other people (and sometimes the love of their life!) thanks to eBay.
Guy Kawasaki is definitely right: making meaning is key when you create a company.
And you, do you have the impression that your company is making meaning? Why do you like it if it doesn’t?
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I couldn’t understand some parts of this article Why I love working at eBay, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.
Hi Daniel!
Just ask me what you don’t understand and I can try to be clearer. To cut a long story short, I was just saying that really often, in order to like working for a company, you have to think that the purpose of this company is relevant and ambitious, which means that this company can change the world in a good way if it succeeds. It is exactly what I felt when I worked at eBay.
[...] I kept the best part for the end: I just accepted an offer to work as a Business Analyst for the Marketplaces Strategy team of eBay in San Jose, California (headquarters), and I will start working there in January. Obviously I’m delighted, especially since I enjoyed my internship at eBay France, but also because it’s a great opportunity to discover the challenging environment of Silicon Valley, and to work with the best people of the sector, all sharing the same amazing corporate culture. I would have so many great things to say about eBay (the core values, the amazing portfolio, the great challenges to face, the vision, the campus…ok I stop now) but I have decided that it will be the only time I will speak about it. There are a lot of legal aspects involved when blogging about the company you’re working for, and the limit between what you can say or not is often really vague. I will of course share my knowledge of the Internet sector and what I will learn by interacting with bloggers and entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, but I won’t say a word anymore about eBay itself. [...]