You guys are on the highway to hell. And that’s why:
1) All the company’s real actions are about short term. There is no strategy behind actions in US, EU, APAC except “close the Quarter on target at any cost”. Sometimes it is really funny to see how company tries to hack the top-line numbers burning LOT OF CASH on incentives and subsidies right here right now instead of thinking of how to get healthy long-term growth.
2) Most of initiatives got killed in politics and bureaucracy. Lot of good ideas appear in different teams but most of VPs/Directors play their career game and want to make a name, bonuses, become more powerful and only after this do something good for sellers, buyers, partners. When they implement something, most of time they ignore end-users and results of their projects are creepy. Most of product development works same way: they release bad product that nobody is happy with and ask marketing to promote it hard, ignoring most of user complaints. And everybody is DAMN BUSY and not reachable for fixing their mistakes.
3)Bureaucracy become bigger and bigger in company every year. Over a HALF of calendar is about reporting meeting or presentations for these meeting. Nobody cares about if you do right things for users, they are worried only about traction of your activity and targets. Real strategic discussions are very long and often end up with no decision. Most of time you do tactical things, then report, then repeat. This process appears on almost all functions, especially finance. Last Ariba implementation caused MONTHS of delays in contract signing and payments. Problem is still not resolved-eBay can not pay in time. Everybody knows, very few cares.
4)Zero acceptance of critics. Over couple of years many people became “so senior” that you have very limited chances to hear the reply to your asks, feedback, questions. Even organization dedicated to employees feedback is ignoring questions.
The most disappointing that all these signs of eBay’y eclipse can be carried and changed, but instead of it company tries to make the retouch and keep talking about “we are doing great new eBay, very very soon everything will change, just deliver!”
