Expedia Group

For some jobs, the work-life balance is very good. There are large numbers of people who work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, maximum. The stress is very low for these people.

Expedia is stable, and the risk of company failure is very, very low. Layoffs are also not likely, outside of very specific instances involving handfuls of people.

Management avoids terminating FTEs, to the point of keeping low performers.

There are many benefits not found at many other companies.

Management and senior ICs get to travel internationally a lot.

Expedia is not a technology company. It says it wants to be, but it is a travel company first, controlled by the product organization.

Conversion, and related KPIs, are more important than anything else.

Expedia's technical management, from first-line managers to VPs, are often not technical and have no programming experience. No one at that level talks about "Big O", algorithms, data structures, or other CS concepts.

Monolithic thinking permeates architect and management thinking.

Most ideas and all decisions are top-down. People are told what to do. Problems are solved at the executive level and dictated into the organizations.

Expedia Group is really many separate businesses, each with a separate and different culture, tech stack, standards, and processes. Silos, and the walls they create, are everywhere.

Social justice programs are promoted by everyone in management, and speaking out against them is just not done by anyone. There is no debate or discussion.

Strong technical leaders are not embraced by the leadership community and leave. Most strong developers leave for more challenging and fast-paced companies. If you want to learn from great technologists, Expedia is not the place.

Keep an office in Bellevue after the move to Seattle.

Set a technical bar for technical leaders (EM to VP), hold people to it, and remove those that don't meet it.

Tenure should not be a criterion in promotions. Tenure should not influence a yearly performance review, rating, raise, or bonus.

Those with no experience outside Expedia are at risk of not having the experience necessary to accomplish the "Transformation" Expedia is attempting.

Stop letting past personal relationships determine who gets promoted into VP-level roles and base it instead on performance.

Identify "yes" people, and challenge yourself to accurately assess their value to the company.