• A culture that seems very good on the surface in terms apparent care for employees welfare, with assistance programs and strong awareness and encouragement to seek help "from your manager" or the "employee assistance program"... but a working culture that breeds mental health issues: For example... 1. Constant reshuffling of departments/teams/tracks/objectives.
2. Rarely a feeling of completion ... things get buzzed about, implemented badly and then dropped for the next shiny thing. It's like being a spoiled toddler, except less fun.
3. Obsession with 'objectives' ( Company/department/track/design-track/team) you have to ritualistically set each half, and then be held accountable to if you did not meet all of them... so you need to predict ( in a so called agile environment ) exactly what you will be able to do in advanced.
4. An insanely complex and conflicting environment... bewildering amount of information on a daily basis (via internal Facebook and 4 other chat systems), and as UX Designers it can feel you need to keep up with it. You need to be ultra disciplined to not be bogged down by it all. Or just stop caring.
4. A top down culture... but without top down help. Leaders and even leads / managers tell you you need to do... and "it's up to you" how to do it. Think waterfall in an agile mountain stream with loads of dead sheep in it.
5. Showpony culture. They rightly removed one of their values which was 'no show ponies'. Now, you will not be recognized or rewarded or get good feedback from outside your team, unless you do a LOT of promotional work... slides, posts, presentations... you can spend majority of your time doing this.
6. Mind shattering inefficiency... the end does not justify the means on so many things. Things that in other companies take a few weeks can literally take years at Booking because .... tech stack / politics / 'prove it with data before you've implemented' / 'small steps' can equal: build it badly and wonder why it failed' / Chaotic tech stack and insane team and depts organising etc.
• You can certainly end up on a great team ( on the other hand you can end up on a team where everyone is burning out and/or leaving and/or coasting and you feel powerless to change anything. Having a good PM changes everything. Opposite is also true, and the standard varies. Whereas designers tend to be good/really good/really technical/unicorn.
• A dizzying amount of meetings. Fine if you are a PM or TL, but if you produce deliverable work as well, this is truly testing.
