More Travel company than Technology company
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.
