Expedia Group

Overall work-life balance is great with flexible work hours and schedules, but this can be team dependent.

Generally very friendly and nice people with a mostly relaxed and laid-back work environment.

Decent benefits including:

• Travel and wellness reimbursement
• Travel discounts
• Standard 401k matching
• Good vacation policy
• Healthcare
• Matching charitable donations

A "Test and Learn" culture makes data the main driving force for product decisions.

Generally poor middle management and heavy politics at management levels.

Some engineering teams have bad ratios of technical product managers/engineering managers to developers, which creates too much overhead and slows initiatives down.

Very unclear promotion paths and requirements. This causes a clash between diversity initiatives and the meritocracy that the company preaches, and can lead to a sentiment of unfairness during promotion cycles.

Overall average engineering quality, with some exceptions. Unable to maintain solid talent, as they leave for other companies in the area (seems like Amazon is becoming a top destination).

Expedia advertises itself as a tech company, but the culture of average compensation makes the company lag behind tech companies in the area.

Constantly playing catch-up to competitors, which creates fewer opportunities to pursue features that innovate or distinguish Expedia in the market.

Some product decisions feel short-sighted. Just because conversion numbers are good does not mean it is good in the long run.

Keep pushing initiatives to look into employee happiness and make adjustments or improvements. This is preached at the top but needs to trickle down to middle management. The Glassdoor rating for Expedia has been dropping for a reason.

Keep fostering transparency and openness. Take all feedback seriously. Some questions asked may seem ridiculous, but if they are being asked, that means there is not enough transparency into the matter.

Push harder on initiatives to modernize the technology stack and performance. There should be no excuses as to why the website is as slow as it is right now.

Don't be afraid to try to improve or remove poor performers and management.

The management stack can be much leaner.