Pros
Good office environment, (mostly) friendly people, opportunity to migrate to EU if you're from overseas.
Cons
Booking has a business model that works, for now, and they follow it to a "t". You either fall in line like a lemming, building alliances with and kissing up to the people "above" you, or you leave. To Booking's credit, they do frequently (copy) and introduce best practices from other tech companies. But when contexts are not exactly the same, nobody knows what to do. Booking doesn't hire for independent thinkers or intelligence, they hire for "loyalty" and people who won't ruffle too many feathers. When someone is a challenging type, they are typically "show ponies" who just state the obvious in overly confident terms and unnecessary decks. The "humble" culture that Booking likes to advertise based on it's data-driven decision making is rather the opposite--I found a certain arrogance in always following data in a bubble without considering long-term consequences or contexts. In all, I saw far too much nepotism, friends-hiring-friends, and stating of the obvious to really consider Booking a serious tech company with a straight face. Their founder made a business model that worked, they optimize the hell out of it and have more money to spend than anyone else. So it works, for now, almost in spite of many of the people it hires rather than because of them. If you're a fresh graduate, it's a great place. You'll do rotation programs, and most likely be given a leadership position within a few years (so long as you brainwash yourself into the lingo). If you are a mid-career hire, you will likely end up reporting to one of those inexperienced former fresh graduates, who have no real-world business skills or experiences outside of Booking, and suffer for it.
