Terrible manager ruined experience - Senior Software Engineer eBay Employee Review

2.0
May 24, 2013
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Some friendly and collaborative co-workers

Cons

- Like something out of a Dilbert cartoon - Poor, depressing culture - Long hours - Terrible middle managers - Heavy butt covering, me me me, command and control attitude of managers - Managers watch your time like you are an hourly worker - No arrival/departure time flexibility - Pay 10-15% below market at the time (2008-2010) - Co-workers not that smart. Couldn't learn anything from them. - Very outdated software stack - No room for innovation - Product Managers ruled, and they weren't very good I suffocated in this work environment (I was a new grad), dealt with jealousy of co-workers and managers, was constantly micro-managed and boxed-in, and was never given any real room to try new things, learn new things, do new things, or implement things differently. Every attempt to do something new was met with talk that I didn't know what I was doing, or was squashed for some other reason. The managers constantly insisted that I didn't know how to do A and that I didn't know how to do B even though I clearly new, and they went to great lengths to ensure that I would never get an opportunity to do them to "prove myself." The managers were obsessed with knowing and commenting on the time I got into work and the time I left and would harass me about this (and any random thing they could find), rather than leave me to do my work.

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.

See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All