Entry-Level Software Engineer [SE1] at Booking.com

Crux is when you’re learning and digging deeper technically. How do you approach taking ownership and growing your impact on not just the project but across the team and larger axis?

There is a mentorship program at Booking, but I am not currently enrolled. This is because I’m not entirely sure what sort of mentorship I should seek out. How can I figure out the optimal mentor to have?

In terms of what a potential mentor can help me with, I'm currently spending a lot of cycle on a Perl -> Java migration effort across the company's legacy codebase.

How do I find the best mentor for me within my company?

Mid-Level Software Engineer [SE2] at Booking.com

Is this a case of just getting them on board with what you have found or just trying to find time to take the initiative? The PM will generally be the one in charge of what we develop over the upcoming period (in my experience anyway).

If becoming a senior involves expanding scope/finding your own scope at Big Tech, how does this work alongside a product manager?

We are working on a technical product solution which provides APIs in a B2B fashion. We do not have any interface apart from these APIs.
There are some internal tools which replicate this functionality (web dashboard) for us to view the data and some smaller B2B Companies to use, but is outside the scope of our Product / Team as it's just parity that is maintained.

Our PM is not a technical person and sometimes it gets very hard to explain the reasons why something cannot be done. Or their suggestions completely miss the point / question I was asking.

They view it from a visual perspective and suggest things that require a lot of back and forth to explain why it isn't feasible.

I've tried in the beginning to help them get setup with basic Postman collections of our API to see the flow. Our EM is also doing their best to prioritise tech vs product.

I feel some of this is reactive and not proactively helping as I feel a bit frustrated to what seem quite obvious which isn't helpful at all.

What do you suggest one can do to better improve communication or even how to view things from their perspective.

The one con is as a PM their calendar is always full

They recently rolled out the Booking Career Framework, creating itemized lists on the expectations for each level, so I know what it takes to get promoted. I'm 70% - 80% that I'll get it in the next performance review cycle, but I have some concerns.

My main concern is that Booking doesn't have a lot of space to grow, evident by the fact that I spend ~50% of my time on the company's migration effort to move from Perl to Java. The effort for this started in 2014 and is around 30% done. It's not a super high company priority according to my manager, but my team spends a lot of time on it, which worries my prospects about finding scope with better business impact.

On the flip side, I had Java experience coming into Booking, so I am well-equipped for this migration work. For example, I was able to solve a deep image loading issue recently that required a strong understanding of default Perl behavior.

How do I get promoted from Software Engineer 1 to 2?

Most of the decisions are currently pending product roadmap alignment with other teams and senior leadership. There are a few housekeeping items but even those right now aren't worth doing. So what can be done as an Engineer in this situation?
I am connecting with some product folks to help them understand our current flow better. Some of the code has GIT Blame commit of 5 years back, so it's new to me and them as well while we try to document what is happening and where to go.

What to do when you're blocked on almost everything?

Software Engineer 1 (Junior) at Booking.com

I took part in a company-wide hackathon and won! I hacked on a backend API that allowed for a more intuitive UI around hotel policy changes. This feature is now on the roadmap for the company and I’ve been talking to the relevant eng manager on the team to talk about the work in one of their teams. How can I continue the momentum of this hackathon?

How do I take advantage of the success of my hackathon project?

Here are the 2 main options I’m thinking about:
- Build scope here at Booking, particularly with this Perl -> Java migration where I am well-equipped. I've only been here 6 months, but I have a decent amount of good-will here with a supportive team and manager.
- Go to a more prestigious Big Tech company like Meta/Google

Should I be at Booking or look elsewhere?

I have some doubt around my ability to capitalize on my work and opportunities to get the recognition and credit I deserve. How can I make sure that I’m doing this properly, so I’m properly leveled and promoted over time?

Here are some of the things I’m doing to achieve this:
- I have a couple of Google docs that I share with my manager where things are tracked (e.g. accomplishment by month, what’s gone well/poorly, etc).
- I have another doc is what’s required for promotion, split up into sections with objectives.

For additional context, I’m working on a big refactoring effort to move the company’s Perl codebase to Java. Is there anything I can specifically do there to get the maximum amount of points?

How can I make sure that I always get full credit for my work and am properly leveled?

I heard from Tech Career Growth sessions that promotion is a main indicator. Is that the best one or are there other ways to identify if you’re truly becoming a better software engineer?

How do you measure your own career growth?

Booking.com is a Dutch online travel agency for lodging reservations & other travel products, and a subsidiary of Booking Holdings. It is headquartered in Amsterdam. The website has over 28 million listings.

Booking.com

Entry-Level Software Engineer [SE1]

I've been in this scenario *a lot*, and here are my thoughts, split up into 2 categories:
1. How you can fix the problem
2. What you can do in the meantime

**Fixing The Problem**

To be 100% honest, it will be hard for a non-senior engineer to have a serious impact here - Even in companies that are more "blind" towards level (e.g. Meta doesn't show levels publicly), rank matters. So be sure to set your expectations realistically here. All that being said, here's some tactics I recommend:
- **Focus on unblocking just 1 thing** - Focus is almost always good, and this scenario counts as well. Go really deep on 1 big thing that's blocked and figure out why.
- **Aggregate data on blockage** - Let's say 10 people disagree on this project for whatever reason. Talk to those 10 people and see if there's common patterns. Let's say 7 people all are blocking the project for the same reason: You want to "debug" this reason first.
- **Time-box things where possible** - If there's one thing the corporate world understands, it's deadlines. If you can get everyone to commit to a delivery date, you can work backwards from that to pressure people more accordingly.

**What You Can Do In The Meantime**

Obviously you don't just want to be twiddling your thumbs in the meantime, especially as an earlier-in-career engineer where you should be coding quite a lot and building up that technical proficiency. Here are some ideas on "evergreen" but challenging coding work you can do.
- **Fix bugs** - At a big company like Booking, there are always bugs for the codebase of every team, a lot of which have probably been sitting in the backlogs for months, if not years. Go on a fixing spree if you can't find product work to do.
- **Better engineering** - This was the term Meta used to describe projects that improve engineering and not the product. These are the "responsible" things people often procrastinate. This includes writing automated tests, refactoring code, adding more logging, and making internal tools faster. Like the prior point, big companies are always flush with these opportunities.

What to do when you're blocked on almost everything?

Booking.com

Discussion

Booking.com