Where to start?
Probably the root of all evil is the fact that people get promoted for the wrong reasons. You're reading this a lot here and it's actually absolutely true across all departments and I've seen it so many times in the 2 years I've been here. The most dedicated and talented people almost never get promoted and they end up being pushed away by the ones who get promoted. As I read somewhere, the actual company values as opposed to the 'nice-sounding' values are shown by who gets rewarded, promoted or let go.
They promote the ones who are best at working the system, the champions of sucking up to the right audience. It's never about what you do, how much or how well. It's about how visible you make yourself to the right people and about packaging everything you do in the company's "values". These values sound great but here's the catch: the ones who get promoted don't actually stand by them, they just use them as keywords in their speeches.
In an environment where passion and excellence are valued it's very hard to work under clueless, mediocre people who recite a management recipe from the book every time they need to show some leadership and inspire people.
Next in line: evaluation. They have a horrendous evaluation system where you are assigned to a number and a letter, according to your "potential" and your "performance". The criteria for assessing this is purely subjective, not actually based on performance / achievement and it always boils down to whether your manager likes you or not. With a manager who's limited and mediocre it's never possible to excel in your assessment because they're not able to understand your vision and the importance of what you do.
The positive attitude. If you want to do anything in this company, you need to show the almighty positive attitude. All well there, only they have become so obsessed with this positive attitude that they shut down all critical thinking. It's a very thin line, you never know when your critical thinking is being considered "negativity". You just see it at the end of the quarter when your manager decides not to grant you the bonus despite having overachieved your targets, because of "negativity". You may try explaining the difference between critical thinking and negativity, it will only make it worse. Yes, that happened to me and yes, my manager couldn't actually grasp the concept of 'critical thinking'. :)
The specialist / manager bucket. According to this company's Illuminati, a person can either be 'specialist-material' or 'management-material'. Once you've been thrown in the specialist bucket you will die there. If someone who's important has subjectively passed this judgement on you, no one will ever again consider you for a management role. Seen this happen to at least a dozen people during my time here.
The Booking Blue police. This reminds me a bit of the secret services police in authoritarian societies, where people need to adhere to the propaganda if they want to advance in their career. Your manager forever watches your behavior for signs that you have fallen off the Booking Blue wagon. You used to be very enthusiastic about the company but are showing signs of less enthusiasm these days? Well, this is reason for you not to receive your bonus too, despite of having overachieved your targets.
The truth is Booking.com doesn't give a damn about its people. It's trying to sell another story, but you will feel expandable and replaceable here. They won't invest effort in trying to make employees feel satisfied. You either have to fake it, or leave. Salaries are not negotiable and very small for a company venting such high profits. They make no effort to retain talent, they just replace it if talent asks for a raise, for example.
All this boils down to promoting incapable people with a narrow vision who then get to steer and evaluate all those brilliant people who eventually end up leaving in sheer disillusionment. But hey, let's look at the bright side. Some are off to far better lands where true innovation happens, like Airbnb for instance.
