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Read this! It might save your career and life

Software Developer
Current Employee
Has worked at Booking.com for 1 year
August 23, 2018
Amsterdam, Netherlands
1.0
Doesn't RecommendNegative OutlookDoesn't Approve of CEO
Pros

Food is not even that good to write home about.

The only pro is that the Booking office is in Amsterdam.

If you just want to sink your career while earning okayish money, welcome to Booking.

Cons

Bear with me for the long list with real examples as well.

  • They live on experiments for everything, which is the reason for not much feature development. You will just end up changing if conditions or so, just small things.

  • They have an obsession with Perl, which is a dinosaur language. If you think, "How bad can it be?" Just Google it, man!

  • This company used to be great and had developed some awesome systems, but that is not the case anymore. Any company, mind you, any company can easily take it down with aggressive marketing and tech development.

  • You come in and run around, talking like stupids to people, and again interviewing and begging them to take you into their teams.

  • They will ramble about open culture, but in fact, people prefer their own team members to be of their own country or race. So much for open culture.

  • About helpful culture and all, "Noooo." You keep pinging people here, and no one replies. Never ever in my past five companies have I seen such a hostile environment.

  • Do yourself a favor and don't ruin your life by coming here. In the end, they don't even pay that well to be able to bear all this nuisance at least. So, run for your life.


Example: Apparently, these guys have an onboarding program which they boast about, but it is actually a complete waste of time, skills, and resources.

The so-called OnBoarding Leads will tell you that they will find you a team, and some even dislike the fact of you going and talking to people for teams.

But apparently, after weeks, they will be like, "What! You didn't find a team? Should I worry?"

So, you have to be able to read people's minds before landing up here.

Don't forget to take a course in psychology and talking gibberish in case you do come.

Advice to Management

See beyond your own little shell and see what this company has become. You guys treat new hires like donkeys who have to run for their lives, asking people to take them into their teams.

Still using millions of years old tech and singing songs about it. Not gonna work for long.

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