Booking.com reviews

This place has been running with an obsolete technology stack since forever (mid 2000's, since the company started in 1996?), but at least when the former CTO and CEO were there, there was a coherent strategy. Now the place has been taken over by several mafias that promote amongst them, it's a highly toxic environment where tech skills don't matter at all, only who you know, which egos you stroke and how good you are at personal marketing. All the processes devised to reduce political biases are now reinforcing them, while mid and senior management hold "Ask me Anything" sessions just to shrug it off and reassure everyone that everything is fine. It's impossible to learn any new skills which are transferable nor to build anything which is relevant. Spend too much time here and you'll get rusty and lose your employability. The only thing you'll learn or get good at is their own internal game. You might get a good run if you play it well, but forget doing it anywhere else unless you want to become a politician. It's a classic giant who became obsessed with himself and forgot about the outside world: customers, partners or similar companies. Failures pile one after another across new initiatives but there is no accountability; if you are part of the in-group everything is considered learning. If you are out though, don't even think about trying to speak some sense. The better you can do is try to get in. Graduate developers which join right after college are the best fit, as they don't know much about the broader market and quickly adapt to the ongoing craziness. If you had experience developing anything before at any average-to-good company, best to avoid.

• High degree of favoritism within a team, excessive office politics between teams, and HR has zero confidentiality • Management lacks transparency & constantly changes direction while hiding behind the pretense "Booking loves A/B testing: fail fast, fail often" • Pay is below market rate and other benefits (e.g. travel credit) are heavily taxed • Management sets ambiguous KPI and cannot commit nor provide the metrics used for performance review (how can employees meet/exceed expectation without knowing the benchmarks) • Bonus is "discretionary" - meaning management will find excuses to prevent full payout even if employees exceed target • Work flexibility (start/end time, ability to work from home, duration of breaks) depends on personal relationship with the manager, not business needs • Employees are often on PIP with little time to demonstrate improvement before they are terminated