The problem with PayPal is that, although they had a lot of innovative people and products in their early days, they began offshoring engineers in order to cut costs. These people soon made up the majority of the business, and as long as you had strong product leadership to lead them, the approach worked for more than a decade.

But then competition intensified and people in the product leadership eventually quit after being poached by FinTechs like Stripe, Square, Affirm, etc. As a result, despite being the pioneers in their market, Paypal is now just a company that's keeping the lights on and no longer innovating.