Pros: Extremely talented and passionate people, who you'll be working with at the company. Perks such as free lunch every day of the week and an office gym are fantastic too.

Cons: In my opinion, there is a high degree of power distance at the company that management should address.

Pros: --Development-- For engineers who are just entering the workforce, TripAdvisor is an awesome place to start a career. The mandate of full-stack development allows engineers to gain crucial experience on many common, though somewhat antiquated, coding frameworks. At TripAdvisor, there are plenty of examples of winning strategies and failing strategies. Observant engineers will learn as much about what not to do in software development as they will about what to do, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Experience in both frontend and backend development, along with guidance from talented fellow engineers, will set engineers up well for their next employment jump. --Benefits-- TripAdvisor employees get a $250 once per year personal travel bonus to help compensate a hotel stay or plane ride. The medical package is good for single employees and decent for employees with families. There is free lunch on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. --Culture-- There are a lot of very smart people, engineering and otherwise, who are social, friendly, and inviting of newcomers.

Cons: --Environment -- TripAdvisor prides itself on moving quickly; our motto is "Speed Wins". Sadly, that motto is more often used to justify making poor design decisions to quickly finish small projects than on identifying new trends within the industry and acting on them. As a result, many sections of the codebase are in disrepair. Poor code from previous projects often hinders developers' ability to achieve the goals of their current projects and is frustrating to encounter on a deadline. Upper management is also reluctant to spend money and man-power fixing problems that slow down development. --Compensation-- TripAdvisor is a good place to start a career, but it is not a good place to continue one. Hard work is rarely rewarded, and pay raises are relatively flat. Last year's bonus cycle brought modest pay raises that were about on-par with cost-of-living increases. The realization that new hires are compensated on par with or better than employees who have been around and know the codebase creates morale problems. Many engineers here take this as a signal from management that unseasoned engineers are worth as much as current engineers and that career advancement is limited. --Benefits-- Although the company has offices around the world, engineers are discouraged from visiting them. It isn't that the benefits here are bad; it's that there is nothing that really stands out.

Pros: Good benefits and a strong salary, even for entry-level positions. The free lunch 3-4 times a week is good, plus the unlimited snacks and drinks. A nitpick here is that they tend to restock the drinks nobody likes and cycle out the ones that I like and are gone. Developing is fast-paced, and changes can be shown to others very quickly after completion. This is full-stack development, which allows all engineers to make their own design decisions for the implementation. There is good communication with the product managers, which allows the engineer to give a fair amount of input. The people at the company are awesome. The culture tends to be laid-back in the teams, and the environment promotes asking other engineers for help on difficult sections. There are a bunch of training classes for spoken languages and other trainings. However, they are not easily accessible, or I never felt that they were easy to seek out. It would be better if fewer were offered at a time and had a visible place to access and sign up. There is some support for this, but it could be better. There are plenty of things to do at the office, including video games, board games, and a foosball table. But aside from the foosball table, these get rarely used, if at all.

Cons: Mobility within the company is difficult. In order to switch teams or offices, you need to be excellent at your current position. The culture for this is one of blame. Bugs you introduce are tracked and remembered indefinitely. These all detract from the excellent rating. This is a serious problem: if you are placed on a product that doesn't interest you, it is difficult to excel and switch to another part. Work-life balance is not the greatest. Engineers are advised that 40 hours is the minimum, and working beyond that is a good way to show their exceptional work. The codebase is not in the best state. Code is often copied and pasted, which leads to errors or outdated code permeating the entire website. Encapsulation is not very well achieved because of this. Similarly, the opposite can occur, where several different ways of doing the same thing are implemented as part of different projects, which introduces inconsistencies. Code is rarely cleaned up; however, there seems to be a push to do more cleanup projects.