Pros: FlipKey, or TAVR, as it has become, is a fairly decent place to work, offering: * Good pay, relative to the Boston area * Outstanding benefits * High traffic, big data website presents interesting challenges * B2B, B2C, and Internal web interfaces allow varied experience * Lots of very experienced developers who share knowledge freely * Exceptionally intelligent, very friendly people across the organization

Cons: - Execs have little interaction with individual contributors, and don't understand how to motivate them. - Focus is completely on ROI and parity with competitors, not on building great products. - The tech stack is stale, employing lots of old and lesser-used tech (like Prototype.js). - Colleagues are uninspired due to stale tech and boring organizational goals. - There's little positive reinforcement for putting in extra effort. - Due to the above, the codebase has been hacked together, with high technical debt. - There is virtually no career development, in a shrinking team with fixed leadership.

Pros: There is a relaxed dress code, beer, and ping pong. And all of those things seemed great during my initial interview. But these things are standard these days at technical companies. After my first three months, I was no longer wowed.

Cons: Pay raises are minimal at best and provide a lack of future earning ability. Employees seem to get pigeonholed into tasks with little to no opportunity to grow out of them or pursue new interests. This also makes advancement extremely difficult; most employees have to leave to grow in their careers. Lack any sort of mission or vision. It feels like we want to be TripAdvisor, but are far from it.

Pros: Interesting technology stack. Very people oriented. Lots of great social development / team building.

Cons: Insurmountable technical debt. Too many silos: divisions competing internally, not terribly effective. Shallow product roadmaps.