-Hopper has no long-term strategy. Leadership occasionally comes up with a short-term (6mos at most) strategy, but abandons it on a whim for something shiny and new. Scrum teams/verticals are expected to come up with their own strategies, which is fine, but there's no overall app strategy. Because of this, Hopper will always look hacked together and haphazard. -Extremely siloed "single threaded ownership" culture makes the app ridiculously disorganized. Teams don't communicate with each other - period - and teams regularly overwrite each others' work because they come up with some idea they want to test and DON'T COMMUNICATE ABOUT IT. -Leadership is completely MIA. I worked there for 2 years and during my time at Hopper there was one all-hands meeting. Strategies are shared out in multi-page documents that people are expected to read, but because we never see Fred (CEO) or Dakota's (President) faces, there is little to no buy-in. How can you expect your employees to care when you so clearly don't? -Rampant favoritism, as evidenced by who was kept vs. laid off in the most recent layoff - which was 30% of the company - in October. -Fred is a loose cannon and says stupid sh*t. He was quoted in an article saying that he loves when travelers have anxiety because it makes them buy Hopper's products. Expedia ran with that which caused a tidal wave of hotel chains and airlines to threaten to and/or completely pull out of the app. -The app is full of dark patterns, like auto toggling on a tip and VIP support at checkout. Leadership doesn't care until there's enough media backlash to warrant changing it. They do not care about users. -The app has tons of stupid pop-ups and random gimmicky ads, referrals, and sales. Users complain about these. No one cares. -Because the culture is work from anywhere, people get their work done but they are socially/culturally disengaged. It's like pulling teeth to get people together for a "team bonding" event. Also, people work in lots of different time zones and use it as an excuse to avoid meetings. I don't love meetings, but working at Hopper made me realize that they're important if you want to bond with your coworkers. -Cold culture overall; people are not very warm/welcoming. -Doesn't feel like there's much opportunity for career advancement. From my understanding, there's just regular and senior roles for PMs, Designers, Engineers. Once you're a senior, there isn't much of an upward trajectory.
