Sabre Reviews

I have been working at Sabre full-time

Pros – Allows work from home and eco friendly.

Cons – Shallow on culture and not good training.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at Sabre full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Good working environment, flexibility, decent package

Cons – Movement between team difficult.
Politics inside company

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at Sabre full-time for more than a year

Pros – Very Good place to work here.

Cons – I am not sure now.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at Sabre full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Environmentally conscious. Sabre has many company sponsored community events and subsidizes your health benefits if you participate in education/exercise program. There is also plenty of opportunity to change jobs and stay with the same company.

Cons – It is difficult to move up unless your leadership leaves or retires. You are not able to advance career by switching jobs very easily. Those are mostly lateral moves.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I worked at Sabre full-time for less than a year

Pros – Nice campus and cafeteria. Friendly, competent and helpful co-workers. Able to work from home.

Cons – Revolving-door management. Overconfident, overcontrolling, clueless, grandiose and inscrutable in varying proportions. Mindless, unrealistic attempts to reduce knowledge-dependent, ever-changing tasks to checklists for offshore employees without the relevant background. This is a result of the belief that employees are completely interchangable, which derives from both wishful thinking and the desire to use cheap offshore labor. Customer-facing policies in disarray, creating needless thrash and knee-jerk reaction. Way too many useless meetings.

Advice to Senior Management – Try getting lower-level managers who know something about what they are managing, or at least ones willing and able to learn. Try to avoid being given a snow job, unless you are engaged in doing same to your superiors.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at Sabre full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Good place to work, felxible hours

Cons – too much politic, to much focus on details

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I worked at Sabre full-time for more than a year

Pros – If you're a top performer and hyper competitive, you will thrive here. If you are a mediocre talent, you can hide and coast here.

Cons – Silos are not aligned and a lot of senior/executive management has left recently. Flex seating is a joke and not enough places to sit everyone where they can work with their teams.

Advice to Senior Management – Break down the silos and fiefdoms. Too many times good ideas are corrupted and become poorly executed.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I worked at Sabre full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – 1)Work from home policy is exceptional (in most departments) 2) The airline industry is a fascinating and dynamic one 3) Green company with a strong community presence; nice building 4) Easy opportunities to move around (horizontally)

Cons – It is unfortunate to see a company that was once a true leader in innovation relegated to one where buzzwords, marketing, and bureaucracy rule the roost. The CEO has championed a 'good old boys network' where loyalty beats merit and incompetent senior leaders enjoy inexplicable stability. Ideas are killed by bureaucracy and middle management who are too focused on expediency rather than on quality. Marketing team does ZERO reconnaissance learning how difficult it is to build a solution before selling a given product, often resulting in blatant lies to their customers and setting preposterous delivery schedules. 'Innovation' is one of a continuum of buzzwords that get thrown around with no substance backing it up. Sabre *used* to be an innovate organization delivering state-of-the art solutions. The organization does little-to-no R&D today and instead focuses on oscillating fixes from customer-to-customer. As a result, recruiting top talent has struggled, and their best and brightest often leave for better opportunities (usually within a year). I find many technologists have gone to Sabre only because it was a last resort. Most old-timers (of which there are many, at least in the Southlake HQ) have plateaued in their careers and are too risk-averse to accept new ideas. Excessive meetings, corporate fluff, and speaking without substance have become the norm. Some products are stable and serve their customers well; however most are buggy and far too immature to be brought to market, which the shoot first, ask questions later mentality wins out. Overcrowding in the Southlake offices exacerbate the stress experienced by employees. Unless you can afford a $700K-plus mortgage, plan on a minimum commute of 30 minutes on days you have to travel to the office.

In short, this is not the Sabre of old. Might be a wonderful place for an MBA. For others, this is a sinking ship.

Advice to Senior Management – Your turnover rate amongst your brightest new hires is at a staggering level. Find a way to retain them; most can get jobs elsewhere at the blink of an eye. Find a way to encourage collaboration across groups, and make sure marketing folks steak with technologists before making promises they cannot possibly deliver. Cut out several unnecessary layers of middle management (and several senior managers if possible). Get back to doing some R&D, and take a risk or two. Reduce overcrowding on campus, and just be more honest with your employees and customers alike.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

I worked at Sabre full-time for more than 8 years

Pros – *The company is big enough to move around (laterally with no salary increase, NOT promotion) to gain various experiences in numerous product areas, technical platforms
*People with deep experience in the industry have been with the company for many years - there are people who have been with the company 10, 15, 20, 25, 30+ years; you don't find that in many companies today. There is deep industry and technical knowledge in many teams. You can learn so much from those who have such deep knowledge. Most are more than willing to share and teach.
*Many smart, talented people who are a pleasure to work with and work for
*Very fast pace environment, always opportunity to learn new things
*Many departments allow very flexible working arrangements (partially due to the space problem, see below).
*Many teams develop software using some flavor of Agile/SCRUM methodology
*When the senior leaders involved in the day to day management are very focused on specific initiatives (not micro managing, which is a delicate balance), teams thrive and are successful
*It's a good company brand to have on your resume (especially Travelocity) due to very positive brand recognition in the travel industry and technology
*Casual Dress Code (including jeans)
*Southlake Campus is very nice and modern

Cons – *More and more corporate bureaucracy, politics, and "rules" you must follow, especially in Technology from budgeting to what type of training you are "permitted" to take to how technology resources should charge time/each hour of their day. It's becoming more and more run like the "military" with rules, rules, and more rules.
*Southlake Campus is busting at the seams - there is a space problem (2-3 people in a cube, limited telephones, lines in the rest rooms, even for men) and parking problems (wanna walk a half a mile in the Texas heat or during a heavy spring rain storm to get to campus) that gets a lot of talk from senior management but limited action.
*Borderline (or over the line) intense, abusive behaviors consistently demonstrated by certain managers/directors/VPs/SVPs is ignored by HR. This seems to be a growing issue as more leaders are adapting this style. It's acceptable behavior where teams are managed by fear and intimidation.
*Some leaders are trying to build empires driving unnecessary reorgs
*Useless reorgs that happen at least once a year. Last year between layoffs and reorgs I had 6 managers within 12 months.
*HR is trying to "raise the bar" on performance and performance reviews but they are alienating more and more people. The new feedback approach is "you were just doing your job that you are paid for". This is the new talking point so we don't have to reward people for going above and beyond - instead we now have to tell them they were just doing their job. That's what expected of them. That statement is hard to define AHEAD of time and even harder to try to defend/debate when is it made. As managers, we have to communicate this message to our teams, which is not well received at all. It is even more difficult to motivate teams in a high pressure environment.
*Performance reviews use the system/bell curve grading approach, just like high school. The majority of people (over 75%) are graded "successful/average". Small teams, where it is nearly impossible to apply the ratios, cannot rate people as highly successful or outstanding (significantly higher bonus is awarded to these rankings) due to the quotas, even though that person earned it. Trying to lobby for an exception is nearly impossible. As a manager I recruit good people and then I lose them. If reviews are important to an individual, it forces that individual to leave your group to a larger one in order to have a better shot of getting a higher ranking next year (which leads to a higher bonus). The system forces good people to leave to another group or to walk out the door.
* Work life balance - mixed. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's 7 days a week for weeks or months (and rarely get a thank you, rarely does working those hours do any good during performance review time, just the pressure to continue with the death march)
*High Turnover/attrition due to not paying market rates, people use the company as a stepping stone in their career - it's a good name/brand to have on your resume, especially Travelocity.

Advice to Senior Management – Address the cons above with meaningful action, not corporate fluff and positioning.
Stop the useless reorgs
Fix the performance review problem - more and more of the "troops" are talking about this and not happy with the new direction of "you're doing your job" feedback
Focus on a few things - not a laundry list where employees are spread so thin - performance review goals focus on too many things to do any of them well.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at Sabre full-time for more than a year

Pros – advanced business domain, distributed teams, great atmosphere, flexible working hours, good practices in the code, trainings, voucher on conferences, certifications, own laptop, possibility to change team inside the Company, great technology

Cons – chaotic management - like a child in the fog, low raise which makes experienced people to leave, process over individuals, Agile is a joke, cutting cost in wired areas (like boarding games), constant changes to the process from Dallas' managers, hard to get promotion with appropriate raise. The company doesn't have power, motivation, willingness to keep popular, famous IT people in the Sabre

Advice to Senior Management – Use only one tool to live meeting (don't call via ms livemeeting and soft phone - it is silly), don't resolve problem in the short term. Don't spend so many time on the calls, don't make so many incomprehensive changes to the process which is not important in Agile methodology. Don't justify yourself that this is corporation and it has to be like that. It is great potential which is wasting.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company