eBay reviews

Shareholders dictate the company's actions, so any negative change in stock performance or stockholder opinion will immediately have consequences for employees. These can range from travel bans and perk cuts to massive reorganizations and layoffs. As previous reviewers pointed out, eBay loves reorganizations as they provide the perfect get out of jail free card for incompetent managers. Another such device is acquisition. They prefer to spend huge sums on buying technology start-ups instead of investing internally. Note that the company sees itself as a commerce company that acts like a retailer internally, not a technology or internet company, in spite of what they may state publicly. As such, the main focus of its core business is on marketing, not on technology, and developers therefore generally fare worse than their marketing colleagues. The latter also can rely on third parties doing much of their work and thereby get promoted and receive raises much faster. For eBay management, business expediency is everything, so if your desires cannot be subordinated to any pure market based measure or you do not speak MBA, you will rarely find long term happiness here.

Although the company claims to support good work-life balance, my experience was the opposite. My manager threatened to "let me go" if I decided to take family leave to have a baby. I was able to take my family leave after talking to HR, but my manager made life difficult for me after I returned.