This is an awful company to work for. It has stagnated, it is in a state of panic devoid of any clear direction and many, many people are in a state varying between numb, angry and sad. The executive leadership team is made of teflon. It’s a mess and while many can see this, few understand how a company that is doing so poorly in both spirit and results can leave these people untouched and blame free.
The supposed innovation hub, the teams who will take Booking.com into its next golden age, sit in an actual ivory tower in a separate building. This is where the true work takes place. Here is where you’ll find the real product geniuses. Unfortunately, their genius is only legend; as of yet many are still waiting to witness it. This org has been set up to never have to interact with people who have actually touched the product before or may have been around a while, or indeed anyone who might challenge them on direction. They play by a different set of rules due to their (secret) product super powers so they don’t have to show progress or talk to anyone outside of their bubble. Due to their arrogance, many prefer this. Their original innovation weapon of choice and one revealed with such pomp and circumstance was based on giving stuff to people for free but they forgot that this involved numbers, math and actual careful thought and because no one had worked that part out it all went horribly wrong. The mess was quietly swept under the carpet without any pomp or circumstance or reflection or talk of learning, and no one spoke of it again. Now it is the constant surveying of tired and fed up customers who just want to book a room for a family of four but don’t understand our website and don’t understand why we can’t stop screaming at them with intrusive messaging. They ask vapid obvious questions and largely ignore what the results say so that they can just execute whatever the so called product VPs running the show want. No one is really sure what success looks like, either in the org or outside of it. Nothing significant has been achieved in over 2.5 years of work in the area nor is it close to being. Although perhaps adding breakfast to the confirmation page was a real high-five, crack-out-the-champagne product win. We could hear the back slapping across town. KPIs, results and any actual progress would surely reveal the sorry state this innovation hub is in so these stay well buried. The strategy, however, is rolled out time and time again in company meetings and events. The audience is numb to it and no longer asks questions but does their bit to keep up the Emperor’s New Clothes charade. Everyone in that room knows it’s all smoke and mirrors and the corridor chatter is harsh.
The leadership team are leaders in name only. They comprise of a group of individuals so out of their depth, so incompetent and so uninspiring it is truly staggering. They ride on the coat-tails of the company’s past success and pat themselves on the back for jobs well done while we stand in awe of how little they have actually achieved and how much damage they are inflicting on their departments. When they do a truly bad job, they often get rewarded with greater responsibility. They think they are doing everyone a service when they come out for yet another redundant All Hands or quarterly business meeting yet these trite appearances are usually met with eye-rolling, mockery or pure anger since they never actually answer a question. Because they don’t want to or can’t simply because they don’t have the EQ to understand the questions being asked of them is up for debate. A real high moment was when the millionaires were sat on the stage and heartily laughed at a question posted about why people are paid so poorly at the company. It’s easy to laugh at anything when you’ve got that much money in the bank.
People are rarely managed or developed and this is widely acknowledged across multiple levels and strata of the company. This is because the senior management team hate…management. They are the worst managers out there and some of them actively avoid contact with their direct reports. It is disgusting. As a result the safe ones who execute their dirty work or the better drinking buddies get further and further up the food chain. Vague sentiments about what they’ve achieved are lorded via company’s biggest time wasting facebook at work platform while fake congratulations are doled out by colleagues who are generally just scratching their heads in utter bemusement.
Performance reviews, when they bother to do them, are painfully awkward because they are based almost entirely on nothing. The employee writes most of it themselves then reads it aloud while a vacant manager mainly just sits there nodding. Self reflection is fine and necessary but a review is a two-way street. Occasionally they will chime in with the most benign and generic advice possible. You gratefully accept either their criticism or praise just to get it over with but inside screaming “how are you paid this much money to have no original insight and no ability to challenge me in any way?” Then it dawns on you that they haven’t seen you in months, they’ve not bothered to speak to anyone else who has been working with you so their one contribution to the review is one (usually biased) data point that has lost all relevance. Plus they just don’t care and are as eager to get it over with as you are. If you challenge them on this you will be seen as ‘difficult’ and unable to reflect so best to keep it to yourself.
Anyone who has woken up to what this company is and has become will be tarred with being too cynical or not being able to keep up with the company’s pace of growth. This is just a further excuse that allows those at the top to sleep a little better at night.
