Micromanagement - some individuals at the senior management have a tendency to manage by treating employees as robots, and dictating how they should do technical aspects of their job - an area that they know very little or nothing about. Senior management needs to understand when and why employees become unhappy, and how this leads to lower work efficiency. Nobody will think lesser of you if you understand your competencies and stick to them instead of preaching to others how they should be doing work and managing their time.
No real direction - During my time at FlipKey, the ideas used to improve the website all had a neutral outlook at best (if not bad for the business). Seems like most of the changes made are either through trial and error or by copying competitors. If the business stays reactive to the market, then there is really no reason that the firm should grow. The only reason the firm is still doing alright is because they are riding the "Vacation Rental" market wave. Once this space becomes saturated, I do hope that good innovations have been made so that they can still command a share in the market - for the sake of its employees.
Not caring about the end customers - most of the 'impactful' decisions made were to nickel-and-dime the home owners and the travelers. If this is the best that the firm can think of to improve revenue, then there is a serious problem with long term planning or understanding of value and what customers appreciate. Its tough to work for a company when you have little to no faith in the value of the product or its potential to grow anymore.
Employee attrition - most of the employees that understood the business well (founders, people who were very close to the Vaction Home Rental industry) have left, and many other employees left the company in hordes because of senior management. Everyone who has left felt unappreciated, which is somewhat of an understatement. This is primarily due to the employees that have populated the ranks since the TripAdvisor takeover. The company still has a flat structure from its startup days, but is anything but startup-like anymore.
