Political environment - Manager eBay Employee Review

2.0
Apr 6, 2012
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Opportunity to grow if you're willing to step over others..Good pay specially at upper management level.

Cons

- be careful to not mess with upper management, else they will demote you. - bit of a suck-up culture specially in middle management. Many new managers hired because they are friends with Directors/VPs. Passed over other more deserving people who have spent a lot of time/energy building teams. - As a result, core teams are disintegrating..Upper management seems oblivious to it though. Core backend teams bleeding talent at alarming rate. - 3-4 layers of middle management - Too many Directors/VPs..microsoft culture being brought in. - Most projects running very late and delayed. - The show being run by a few senior engineers who don't listen to any other opinions. - Ratio of engineers to management seriously screwed, almost more managers than engineers! - Was running as a nimble organization a few years ago, but suddenly more process has been added in the name of agile! Half the time is spent in planning, status checks, scrum reviews. - New technology stack not working out, too many issues and delays. - Too much focus on machine learning(lead by people fired from yahoo). However, no returns in investment. On the other hand, areas like social commerce totally ignored.

Explore other reviews about eBay

5.0
Jul 14, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Really good company you will go out as a leader

Cons

Frequent org changes , layoffs

5.0
Jul 9, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Challenging work, great company culture. There is something genuinely motivating about building for a brand that everyone knows and uses: the scale and real-world stakes make the work feel meaningful. The AI work specifically is at the frontier of applied AI: production systems, hard problems in agentic workflows and evaluation, and real customer impact. Good work-life balance. Leadership is more engaged and technically credible than I expected from a company this size — when I built a prototype, senior stakeholders engaged substantively and supported continued investment quickly. Competitive compensation, sharp colleagues, and a well-sized Austin office with a focused, collaborative feel.

Cons

Like any tech company, there is some legacy code to deal with which can cause friction. That said, eBay has made meaningful progress on modernizing the tech stack and has genuinely embraced the latest tools: AI development here uses current frameworks and infrastructure, not decade-old patterns. Large company coordination processes (security reviews, cross-team alignment) can slow things that could move faster, and vendor partnerships add some communication overhead. But the reach of what you build makes it worth the extra overhead.

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