Booking.com reviews

Truly poor leadership. The majority of management across all roles are people who have no life experience outside of Booking (usually in a sales capacity), lack educational credentials you'd expect, etc. In some cases, the leadership teams of entire departments are a group of personal friends with no credentials to have comparable level jobs outside of Booking, but their aligned interest to protect each other and their understanding of ways to manipulate Booking's "data" culture covers their tracks. HR pays lip service to things like this (there is literally a line in our compliance handbook that says managers cannot be involved in hiring or management of personal friends), but nobody actually cares enough to step in and enforce (or even investigate) it. If you come in as a fresh graduate with no experience, this can work in your favor--you will work on interesting projects quickly and advance quickly (unfortunately to be one of those very inexperienced people in a high level leadership position). If you are a mid-career transfer, Booking is a dead-end unless you simply want to live in Amsterdam (my case, as they took care of relocation, etc.) and fly under the radar until you find something more interesting or decide to go back home. I can say that a significant proportion of managers/directors are dependent on personal friendships, ability to manipulate data in front of others who are equally incapable of critical analysis, or both. There is nothing more discouraging than being recruited for your experience and running into directors who are less experienced than the people you used to manage but also unwilling to listen because of the positive-reinforcement they have gotten for so long in this unique culture. When business is good (the Google machine still works to drive business), quite frankly it doesn't really matter--the incompetency and inefficiency throughout management is hidden. If the business environment ever changes (i.e. Google tweaks their business model), chaos will ensue.

Management does not listen to employees. It seeks quick wins where there aren't any to be had, and will selectively pick evidence or listen to those employees that promise those easy wins. When wins are not delivered, the predictable utter failure is proclaimed to be a learning and thus a success. At this point the management will pivot and repeat. This is not an exception, but simply a routine that most teams seem to go through. No one really knows what performance evaluations or promotions are based on. It is definitely not the work (e.g. product features) you deliver. And it seems to mostly correlate with how much noise you make. It doesn't have to be anything profound, new or even meaningful - simply opening your mouth, attending as many meetings as you can (and scheduling some more) will bring you the necessary exposure to exceed expectations in the eyes of the managers. And don't be surprised if a manager gives you a very low performance score just to teach you a lesson (while openly admitting to you that your performance wasn't actually deserving of the low score, and that it's there just to draw you attention to the improvement points). The company says that they want you to #B.Valued and #B.Compensated fairly. The claim to pay for performance (thus justifying the low base salary). But then if you look at internal salary discussions, you may either realize you are either making a lot more than others in your role, or a lot less. Usually it's less. The culture is supposed to be flat and open. So it should not be a problem to ask your manager or the leadership about the strange discrepancies between salaries and claims of fair and competitive pay. And it's not a problem to ask! Just don't expect a direct answer. Tech employees have been complaining about low salaries for years, and never received a straight answer. In general the answers boil down to "you don't understand how lucky you are and how well you are paid". The low salaries are justified by the low Dutch taxes applicable to expats. Most people join Booking.com and wait until they get a Dutch passport, or until their low taxes expire - everyone knows this, but nobody, especially not the management, admits this. While there are some truly talented and hard-working people, to grow fast and cheap the company hired many subpar people. Many of them are now Seniors, Managers and Product Owners. As a result, there is neither a good vision, nor a good execution of that vision, and people switch teams all the time to escape incompetent management.