Pros
- Financially, a sound, steady business driven by hotel availability that competition simply cannot match (and senior management cannot ruin); - Therefore, the stock is holding quite well even in these turbulent times, compared to other big companies out there. Among other things it means that if you're looking from the outside, the CEO is doing a stellar job for the investors; - Beautiful offices; - Pay beats that of the vast majority of Dutch companies; - If you're coming from abroad, relocating with Booking.com is easy, they leave you with not much to worry about at all. You can build a life in the Netherlands with Booking which is not a small thing;
Cons
I cannot speak about all departments, only about where I worked (there is a fair chance things are different elsewhere), but here goes. - It's a top-down culture where management makes all technical decisions and engineers (no matter how high up the chain they are) are left to execute or figure out mere details. Reasonable questions are met with hostility. It's an especially painful fact because 5 years ago the culture used to be bottom-up. If you are a senior engineer (or better) looking for autonomy and trust, I advise to look elsewhere. If you're a starting engineer in need of constant direction, this is a good place for you; - A culture of toxic optimism; - One of the values states "do the right thing" which in the day-to-day means: "do what your manager tells you"; - Micromanagement. You can get an email at 09:00 saying that you/your organization needs to fill in a spreadsheet "by lunch time". Needless to say, the sheet will never be spoken of again after you submit it. Status updates are frequent and wasteful since most teams have been understaffed for decades and can be struggling with the extra admin payload for natural reasons; - Current culture's been largely copied off Amazon. You may have heard what that entails; - Senior management doesn't seem to understand simple concepts like resource constraints: e.g. if your whole organization is forced to spend all their capacity to do what your manager told you to do on a tight deadline, for six months, it naturally follows that it de-prioritizes all other things (upon discussion, of course). That can easily be met with "I expect large organization to be able to work on several things at the same time". No data can help change their mind; - Expect surprises. If you do join, have the CV on the ready at all times and watch over both shoulders. One day you can be an Exceeds Expectations, six months after — not meeting expectations by a long shot. - The measures of employee's enthusiasm are taken every now and then but are never followed-up, not in any real way;
