Do It For a Year and Then Get Out ASAP
Pros
-The salary is favourable compared to other hospitality jobs in the area -You will gain the opportunity to improve skills such as reviewing data, meeting with clients, and maintaining an organised workflow in a high-pressure environment -There is an occasional perk like free lunches/parties but this generally is the bare minimum compared to other tech companies -Some of the local offices have genuinely fantastic people, and you will likely make some lifelong friends -The actual clients (hotels, B&Bs, etc.) are often times a real joy to work with.
Cons
Where to start... -The local management is generally very toxic. Every person who's been in the company for any period of time knows it is all about playing favourites and sucking up. With a few positive exceptions, they have absolutely no interest in people's mental health, goals, challenges, etc. -Speaking of management, the majority of them are completely useless. Some of them can't even use excel or read a basic graph. It's hard to get training when those above you are so deeply incompetent -The growth potential (unless you are in Amsterdam) is near 0. Some people have sat in the same position for 7+ years. New positions almost never open up (probably due to the incompetency point above). It's not a good company to grow with. -Feedback is treated like it's saying Voldemort. People are routinely told by their superiors that any form of productive feedback is not tolerated and will harm their review score/bonus/chance of promotion/etc. -The amount of responsibility you are given will grow every single quarter with absolutely no upper barrier, and no change in pay or title. You will reach a point where hitting your basic targets while juggling 10+ extra responsibilities seems physically impossible. This is why many people work considerable overtime (but again, no extra pay or chance of promotion from this). -The goals are generally set on a global (or regional) level and often fail to translate into actually relevant outcomes. During the peak of COVID-19 we were literally leaving voicemails for deserted guest houses dozens of times a day, just so we could say we are 'building trust with our partners'. You will spend a lot of times working on tasks that clearly have no benefit to either the company or your clients. - As a tech company, Booking is transitioning more and more trust and tasks to AI. This would be great if not for the fact that their internal software is absolute rubbish (tech devs left in droves in recent years and they have had a brain drain). You will be given tools that are critical to daily tasks yet simply do not work. And don't expect management to help (see point above re: clueless) or care (see point above re: toxicity). -Performance-related bonuses are a farce, borderline scam. You can do bare minimum and drag your way to the finish, or go all-out and go insane with calls/visits/reports/extras. Either way you will likely get the same 'meets expectations' score. Don't bother being an overachiever, as it won't get you a promotion or raise. In general, before applying you should be aware that roughly 1 year ago there was a widespread demand from account managers that the management start addressing mental health issues brought upon by the company's culture. I used to think that Covid-19 was the source of my depression and anxiety, but now that I am ~6 months out I've realised that it was the company causing this.