More Travel company than Technology company - Director of Technology Expedia Group Employee Review

3.0
2 Mar 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

For some jobs the work life balance is very good. There are large numbers of people who work 8hours a day 5 days a week, maximum. The stress is very low for these people. Expedia is stable and the risk of company failure is very, very low. Layoffs are also not likely outside of very specific instances involving handfulls of people. Management avoids terminating FTEs, to the point of keeping low performers. There are many benefits not found at many other companies. Management and senior ICs get to travel internationally a lot.

Cons

Expedia is not a Technology company. It says it wants to be, but it is a Travel company first, controlled by the Product organization. Conversion, and related KPI's, are more important than anything else. Expedia's technical management, from fist line managers to VPs, are often not technical and have no programming experience. No one at that level talks about "Big O", Algorithms, Data Structures or other CS concepts. Monolithic thinking permeates architect and management thinking. Most ideas and all decisions are top-down. People are told what to do. Problems are solved at the executive level and dictated into the organizations. Expedia Group is really many separate businesses, each with a separate and different culture, tech stack, standards and processes. Silos, and the walls they create, are everywhere. Social Justice programs are promoted by everyone in management, and speaking out against them is just not done by anyone. There is no debate or discussion. Strong technical leaders are not embraced by the leadership community, and leave. Most strong developers leave for more challenging and fast paced companies. If you want to learn from great technologists, Expedia is not the place.

Explore other reviews about Expedia Group

5.0
8 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Good leadership and culture, good WLB

Cons

Large organization means structured, slow moving processes

2.0
29 Mar 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Constant state of transformation is ripe environment for new hires and functional experts from big name tech companies

Cons

Pre-covid the culture was really special. Collaborative, engaging, people-centric, with a unifying mission to enable travel for the world. Since covid there has been a revolving door of executive leadership, and with each round, they throw out the current strategy to try something "new" without building from the current or past successes. Constant change, but no clear vision or strategy of what they are trying to change to. Lack of strategy and low risk tolerance leads to too many priorities with not enough investment to move the needle in anything. Quarterly layoffs, but executed quietly team by team so as not to make news. No psychological safety. Talent strategy since covid is to hire externally over internal promotions to gain "functional expertise" therefore difficult to grow your career. Siloed divisions not working towards common goal. Lacks operating model maturity needed for a company of this size likely do to revolving door of execs and priorities. A cash cow company with an identity crisis trying to be an AI innovator. Build vs buy mentality slows them down. Too many exec pet projects that aren't vetted with proper business cases.

4
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