Booking.com reviews

4.1

80% would recommend to a friend

(7,584 total reviews)
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Glenn Fogel

71% approve of CEO

68% positive business outlook

Booking.com has an employee rating of 4.1 out of 5 stars, based on 7,584 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The Booking.com employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Informationstechnologie industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

8K reviews
1.0
Jun 21, 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- You can coast if you want to and the results will be the same as if you work hard - Overtime is not common in the NL - There are nice people from all over the world

Cons

This place has been running with an obsolete technology stack since forever (mid 2000's, since the company started in 1996?), but at least when the former CTO and CEO were there, there was a coherent strategy. Now the place has been taken over by several mafias that promote amongst them, it's a highly toxic environment where tech skills don't matter at all, only who you know, which egos you stroke and how good you are at personal marketing. All the processes devised to reduce political biases are now reinforcing them, while mid and senior management hold "Ask me Anything" sessions just to shrug it off and reassure everyone that everything is fine. It's impossible to learn any new skills which are transferable nor to build anything which is relevant. Spend too much time here and you'll get rusty and lose your employability. The only thing you'll learn or get good at is their own internal game. You might get a good run if you play it well, but forget doing it anywhere else unless you want to become a politician. It's a classic giant who became obsessed with himself and forgot about the outside world: customers, partners or similar companies. Failures pile one after another across new initiatives but there is no accountability; if you are part of the in-group everything is considered learning. If you are out though, don't even think about trying to speak some sense. The better you can do is try to get in. Graduate developers which join right after college are the best fit, as they don't know much about the broader market and quickly adapt to the ongoing craziness. If you had experience developing anything before at any average-to-good company, best to avoid.

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Booking.com Response
7y
Thank you for sharing your feedback and thoughts with us. We’re sorry to hear about some of your frustrations with technology. As we look towards the future, we want to assure you that we’re constantly evaluating technology options that will better suit our needs and goals as a business. We are fully committed to innovation and leveraging technology to ensure our product and services remain the best in the space. We’re sorry to hear about some of your experiences with development. We pride ourself on being a workplace where development and learning is celebrated, and we’ve recently hired a new Learning and Development Director who will be rejuvenating our current processes to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to grow. We want you to enjoy working here and think it would be beneficial to speak directly with your HR Business Partner. Many thanks, The People Team at Booking.com
1.0
Feb 17, 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Fitness reimbursement, commuter benefit, HRA/HSA health insurance. Annual HQ conference in Amsterdam after 1 year of service, contingent on manager's approval.

Cons

• High degree of favoritism within a team, excessive office politics between teams, and HR has zero confidentiality • Management lacks transparency & constantly changes direction while hiding behind the pretense "Booking loves A/B testing: fail fast, fail often" • Pay is below market rate and other benefits (e.g. travel credit) are heavily taxed • Management sets ambiguous KPI and cannot commit nor provide the metrics used for performance review (how can employees meet/exceed expectation without knowing the benchmarks) • Bonus is "discretionary" - meaning management will find excuses to prevent full payout even if employees exceed target • Work flexibility (start/end time, ability to work from home, duration of breaks) depends on personal relationship with the manager, not business needs • Employees are often on PIP with little time to demonstrate improvement before they are terminated

1.0
Nov 20, 2016

Beware

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Nice offices, downtown location.

Cons

Even if you're desperate, do not apply to work here. Firstly they will work you to death. As an account manager, you will have 500+ accounts compared to around 150 on Expedia. The pay is much lower than the industry as well. Do not fill out any surveys that are anonymous. There is no anonymity here, they will track it back to you if they ever ask for your feedback which is rare. They ask a lot of their employees but give back very little in return. Do not be honest with them or it will come back to bite you. They don't appreciate honesty here. The company has very poor ethics and does a lot of unethical things. They have a toothless ethics officer so don't waste your time. If you don't have any ethics, feel free to apply here. Very stressful work environment. Too many KPIs and extreme micromanaging by the managers. The West coast office is being infiltrated by brazilians, so brush up on your portuguese. It would help if you were to suck up to the Area manager and the Regional manager. Poor job growth as well.

Viewing 49 - 51 of 7,584 Reviews

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