5y
Thank you for taking the time to share your candid feedback and highlighting our benefits and work life balance. Similar to other large companies, change is inevitable. We are working together across all areas of the business to create a strategy and act in the best interest of our travelers, employees, and organization.
In regards to the “hostile environment” mentioned, we are very sorry to hear that this was your experience. The company holds itself to a high standard in regards to ethics and work practices. We are also very open to the ideas and process improvements suggestions of employees. Any concerns that are flagged to management and/or HR are looked into thoroughly as transparency is one of our core values. If you are willing to share your experience, please feel free to contact us.
Regarding our approach to tech debt, we agree we have a lot of old technology, and we’re also frustrated by it. Tripadvisor built a successful business on top of high scale user-generated content before there were commodity, off-the-shelf solutions to these things, and for a long time afterwards it was always easier to modify what we had rather than replace it. However, over time, it’s become increasingly clear that we need to do better, which is why we have invested a lot of time and effort this year in establishing a new, modern, easy-to-use reference architecture. There are a large number of engineers working on migrating our technical footprint into our new, modern architecture with a goal of allowing most engineers to work completely legacy-free as quickly as possible.
That said, with the new front end stack and major efforts pushing a new backend stack, a continuing embrace of the various clouds, and a much more “do it right while you do it fast” focus than has at times been used in the past, Engineering vision is now leading a lot of what we’re doing as a company, so that we will emerge from the Covid-19 crisis in a much stronger shape, technically, than we entered it.
Finally, during this period of transition, all of our leaders, including Steve, are doing their best to remain transparent. They’re working together across all areas of the business to create a strategy that considers the needs of the business as well as the needs of our employees. The steps we’ve taken years ago to invest in our assets areas, global scale and growth areas are continuing to help the business counter challenges we face today.
- Carolyn Churcher, Vice President Global Talent Acquisition
