Trivago

Trivago offers nothing that you can't find elsewhere at another tech company if you put in some effort, but with more cons than I have ever seen anywhere, to date. But they do have snacks, coffee, beer, video games, and junk.

• I heard more unprofessional and openly hostile gossip from people about their coworkers in my 6 months there than I did in grade school.
• Team leads and heads of department in engineering were largely incompetent (in my experience) and engaging in what I'd call the workplace equivalent of social climbing.
• There was little to no teamwork; more of a "tear other people down so they can't look better than me" attitude among more than 50% of the people I encountered.
• The tech stack is really, really old. Code was ported over to new versions and frameworks seemingly without any real review or rewrite (maybe ever), or actual thought to a logical systems architecture. In 6 months, I don't think I ever heard anyone mention the concept of having a system architecture.
• You will be a code monkey. 99% of the time, you will not have any input into what you are building or why, or maybe never even know what ends up happening to it. It is boring.
• I cannot really say I learned anything of substance or grew as an engineer there, except what to look for as early red flags when interviewing with companies in the future.
• The "core values" they workshop you to death on are not actually embodied in how people conduct themselves or what behavior is tolerated.
• Lots of bureaucracy; it is a "startup culture" only in the sense that they have a Nintendo Wii and snacks, which are actually the least important parts of that whole culture.
• As a collective group (of course, there are always a few exceptions), there were very few people I would describe as talented or hard-working.
• All that considered, there really isn't enough money in the world to make it worth it, especially if you are considering moving to Germany for it. But if you are wondering, the pay is not very competitive. I moved there because I wanted to work there and be in Germany, and I bought their culture advertising, which was false in all the ways that actually matter. The salary thing was mostly just icing on the cake of reasons to leave.

Read this Forbes article (I can't post links):

Search for: "three reasons not to buy into the trivago IPO offering"

Click on the Forbes.com article with that same title.

Also read it if you are considering working there. They put up a nice front, but their financial outlook is kind of scary.