The worst career choice I've ever made - BEWARE of this place
Pros
I like tropical weather, and Bangkok is a great city
Cons
Agoda is claiming to be lean and agile - what a joke! That's just for marketing purposes and to attract talents. In fact, Agoda is loosing a lot of good and talented Backend people (and booking) every month. Why? This is hell wrapped up in a shiny cellophane. The working environment is just pathetic - huge technical debt, no collaboration between teams, no visibility what-so-ever of what's going on, daily production escalations, bureaucracy and bad management practices. Everyone's little interests are their own KPIs. Product management is basically owning Backend team and development, while Backend management is weak and almost dis-functional. Guess who made sure the current and previous technical management is so weak? Dev management is absent, as they sit all day in meetings and are occupied with sending emails. That means it's all about product, features and micro management. So boring! Nobody makes any architectural decisions and there's a huge technical debt that slows development and created a LOT of frustration. Developers don't really have access to technologies (kafka, cassandra, ...) - if you need something, just send an email and wait... Things that should take days takes weeks. Does any of those sound like lean?! This code-monkeysism approach is a long tradition here. Developers are at the bottom of the food chain, and are being replaced yearly - others make sure they get the yearly bonuses at time! Developers - beware!
