Constant Change, Underwhelming Leadership
Pros
There are plenty of wonderful people working at Expedia. They care about their work, and they treat each other well. And (at least in 2021) the work-life-balance is still prioritized to keep people motivated. There is a lot of ownership of work here, at least if you have a manager that empowers it. That means you get to decide what you do and how you do it, without constant micromanagement. The benefits are fabulous, and all the perks of working for a travel company are excellent (when it's not a pandemic).
Cons
Looking at some recent reviews, I'm very surprised the company is being scored so highly. There are some major issues within the business as a whole, and forums like Blind have our scores far lower than other tech brands. It's interesting to me that Glassdoor scores have been so high, as it doesn't reflect what I've seen or heard in other forums. Expedia deals with so much tech debt, which is compounded (perhaps caused?) by middle managers who've been allowed to sit over fiefdoms for years. It makes forward momentum so difficult, and it's present in nearly every team across the business. Credit where it's due - leaders who've been entrenched at Expedia for 15+ years are being removed left and right, and are being replaced with external candidates. But that brings culture shift issues with it, and all the problems that come when people are thrust into changing professional environments. Perhaps most frustrating of all is the business's inability to evolve for the future. Expedia will always be something of a middle-man between hotels and customers, but the company built a better mousetrap decades ago that allowed it to thrive as a premier OTA (at least domestically). I'm not sure there's been any innovation here since the inception of the company, and the business feels like a dinosaur that's surviving because it's so big... not because they offer anything technically compelling for the end user. Leadership's latest "innovation" is to consolidate all of Expedia's brands. But that's just a reshuffle. This company desperately needs true reinvention to thrive this decade, and personally I don't see it happening.
