Booking.com reviews

4.1

80% would recommend to a friend

(7,594 total reviews)
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Glenn Fogel

70% approve of CEO

67% positive business outlook

Booking.com has an employee rating of 4.1 out of 5 stars, based on 7,594 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The Booking.com employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Tecnologías de la información industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

8K reviews
2.0
Oct 21, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Potlucks and small onsite gym. They take you to Amsterdam at least once/ year, but you have to work. Great benefits.

Cons

They post your productivity, so if you're not the best, they make sure that everyone knows. Their call handling time is very unrealistic. This is a high stress job, a lot of people that call in are stupid and don't read the Policies BEFORE they make a reservation. Your breaks are very short and scheduled. The Team Leads do not want to help, they want you to de-escalate a call so that they don't have to take it. Everything is constantly changing and not all of management can agree upon the correct procedure. No cell phones are allowed, but you see management on them all of the time. Do NOT be 1 minute late, literally, they will give you points. They care about how many calls you take and not the quality of handling the call. This job is micro managed and definitely not worth the stress. Forget having a life, or trying to get time off. The morale is like being in a factory all day, except you are at a desk.

2.0
Oct 14, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

In honesty, the Booking IT department has a couple of things in its favor. The job is not demanding, most team leaders are reasonable (and you can put in for a transfer) and the relocation perks to Amsterdam are noteworthy. In other words: Booking.com is an excellent way to immigrate to Europe, and get a foothold in the job market here. For that, it gets the one star.

Cons

The lack of vision in general is easily attributable to the company being unchallenged on its existence for over a decade. In the absence of a vision, everybody is just maintaining the status quo, not coming up with new ideas and not doing anything to improve upon things. Because why would they? This applies to everything. Management is becoming less and less connected to what happens on the floor, and technical reasoning is virtually absent. While the people are generally reasonably skilled, the 80% expat staff composition means that nobody has a safety net to complain... and even if you do say no, some new guy will step up and (naively) say yes. Voilá, structurally ensured bad decision-making. The CIO is keen on repeating (and you can even see that dogmatism leak into the positive IT reviews here?) that Booking is "not a technology company." Considering that this is from the Chief Information Officer, it's not entirely unfair to conclude that it fails even at being even an Information Technology company -- it only has the offices, perks and explosive growth of one. Underneath the hood, it's looking a bit like a stock market adventure, or a perl hacker's playground, depending on job title. Some people are really caught up in this, and can't discern factoid from fact anymore. Tragicomically, the one thing Booking would benefit most from would be exactly that: being a technology company. Booking is troubled with problems on a daily basis that you wouldn't believe could exist in a space between 750 capable programmers, and still, it refuses to modernize what is, essentially, an engorged LAMP stack tracing back to its company beginnings. For anyone considering applying there, and for that matter for the cleverer heads who haven't jumped ship yet, I have to pose the question of whether you think that Booking is good for your career as an IT professional. Nobody else wants perl. Nobody else wants a shell cowboy. How long will the illusion last?

5.0
Aug 3, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- A real big-scale internet company - Awesome and talented collegues - Startup feeling (even if nowadays it's a bit fading out) - Freedom/responsibility entrepreneurship-like culture - Good bonuses if you succeed being relevant - If you are smart and engaged, you can be very relevant quickly

Cons

- Growth has brought more structure - Unexperienced and inconsistent mid-management - Engagement from employees is decreasing - No real career advancement on the technical track - Too much showing off, the principle "workhorses, not show-ponys" doesn't apply anymore - Too much perl-centric culture

Viewing 283 - 285 of 7,594 Reviews

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