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Glassdoor is your free inside look at eBay reviews and ratings — including employee satisfaction and approval rating for eBay CEO John J. Donahoe. All 319 reviews posted anonymously by eBay employees.

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319 Reviews* in

CEO Approval

Company Rating

* Posted anonymously by eBay employees (updated Nov 5, 2009)

eBay President and CEO John J. Donahoe

John J. Donahoe

President and CEO

20% Approve

Details

“Neutral”

2.8
1 - 10 of 319 eBay Reviews Sort by  

Nov 1, 2009

1.0

eBay Content Manager in San Jose, CA:   (Past Employee - 2009)

2 of 2 people found this helpful

Pros

Posh exercise facilities and two cafeterias.

Cons

Bureaucracy, politics and nepotism interfere with productivity and expediency. Each day feels like a riding a slow boat to China, kind of like driving over multiple speed bumps in a shopping mall parking lot. This company is a typical American corporatocracy.

Advice to Senior Management

Explain please why American companies are considered as 'money receptacles' for the benefit of top executives, and why employees are underpaid peasants?


Oct 25, 2009

2.0

eBay Staff Software Engineer in San Jose, CA:   (Current Employee)

2 of 2 people found this helpful

Pros

* Nice gym, though crowded at times
* Free coffee.
* Competitive, though not compelling, benefits
* There are some interesting projects going on

Cons

* Sub-par management. Knee jerk reactions are par for the course.
* Poor vision and leadership from executives
* Work life balance is poor for engineers; due to unreasonable schedules, management that doesn't fight for their employees, offshoring of key functions, and a sweatshop culture
* Very inefficient development processes

Advice to Senior Management

* Fight for your employees
* Provide more vision instead of low-level decisions
* Realize that your employees may have more important concerns outside of work.
* Support initiatives to gain efficiency; That's more important long term than delivering features.


Nov 5, 2009

4.0

eBay Customer Support in Burnaby, BC (Canada):   (Past Employee - 2007)

Pros

- People there are nice, friendly and young.
- Fun and relaxed environment to be in.
- Free drinks!
- Pay is decent for the type of work that you do.
- Great inside look of people wanting to buy or sell on eBay

Cons

- Hours are not set, shift work.
- May get very busy at times handling multiple customers.
- No free parking on premise

Advice to Senior Management

Employees need more feedback in regards to how well they are doing. Need more room for advancements within the company.


Oct 14, 2009

2.0

eBay Operations Manager in Berlin, Berlin (Germany):   (Current Employee)

3 of 3 people found this helpful

Pros

Enormous financial upside
Unique purpose with an engaged customer base
Very flexible with work times

Cons

No Accountability
Huge disconnect between the communicated company culture and the way it is in reality
Leaders seek to protect their fiefdoms rather than seeking Truth
Incompetence dressed in artful language is rewarded

Advice to Senior Management

Embrace dissenting voices - there is a reason they exist
Resolve conflict openly - you're not protecting anyone by making things quietly go away
Keep making the tough decision and get better communicating 'why'.
MBA doublespeak does not grow trust among the community or employees


Oct 24, 2009

1.0

eBay Anonymous:   (Current Employee)

1 of 2 people found this helpful

Pros

The compensation and the atmosphere are excellent with this company! Some of the lower level management are very good. The overall nature of this business is unique and one of a kind!

Cons

TERRIBLE upper management.
A CEO that runs his business based on some poor experience he must have had buying on ebay.
No vision is present in this company. They look to the future and prey. Business does not work that way!
To much outsourcing sending good American jobs overseas while customer service suffers.
This company has a very long history of ignoring the needs of their customers.
The CEO is intentionally making changes to the core business to reduce the customer base. To put more focus on it paypal payment service.

Advice to Senior Management

Go back to your roots and get rid of the entire upper management. Listen to the advice of your customers, who know best! The sad truth is that the only way this company can rebound is to remove John Donahoe from his position. He has done irreversible damage to the company and will continue to do so until someone steps in to stop him. For the sake of the customers, shareholders, and staff I hope this happens soon.


Sep 25, 2009

4.0

eBay Customer Service Representative in Burnaby, BC (Canada):   (Past Employee - 2009)

1 of 1 people found this helpful

Pros

Great social events, all the coffee, tea, soda you can drink, fitness gym, fun contests, prizes, great people. Fun environment due to the casual setting. You can decorate your desk and show your personality. Charities are an important part of eBay's value.

Cons

Surprise laid off announcement. Depends on which department, there may be politics. Work can be very repetitive. Due to many internal information, it can be frustrating to explain why certain things is the way it is to the customers.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't be a Nazi, sometimes being nice and trusting goes a long way.


Sep 29, 2009

4.0

eBay Manager, Marketing:   (Current Employee)

Pros

Great people to work with. People support outside-of-work endeavors. Interesting time for the company, given the slowdown of marketplaces. Lots of opportunity to learn cross-functionally. People are very open to meeting and discussing their roles.

Cons

Highly political, advancement can be difficult. Promotion process is unclear and time between promotions is also cloudy. Senior management can be hard to trust. Their communications seem very artificial and overly produced.

Advice to Senior Management

Senior management needs to be more honest with the staff about the state of the business. I would push for a clearer promotion process.


Sep 28, 2009

1.0

eBay Senior Program Manager in San Jose, CA:   (Current Employee)

Pros

Promotes time off, family-ness, understands that you have a life -- if you're not an engineer. Rarely fires people for not contributing to anything in his/her line of work. In another word, you can easily slack off.

Cons

Used ot be a good company, but new management screwed it up with foul decisions and complete lack of understanding in the marketplace economy. I'm sure the management team have never done any business before.

Advice to Senior Management

Senior management - you have obviously never done any serious business before. You don't know how it's like to run a small business, so please get some experience before you foul it up anymore.


Sep 27, 2009

4.0

eBay Senior Finnace Manager in San Jose, CA:   (Current Employee)

Pros

Lots of opportunities for learning & taking on exciting challenges
Great idea & business model, in need of folks to achieve its full potential instaed of screwing it up

Cons

Missing a leader who can address the conflicts & not just call them out
eBay needs to unschakle Paypal
Look beyond myopic costs cutting as a short run driver of bottomline growth

Advice to Senior Management

Invest in Paypal instead of going after fancy ideas like Verisign, Skype or BML
Get a new CFO for Paypal who can drive financially sound decisioning
Invest in the core architecture, system & tools as we're a "product" company and only as good as the product. Instead of trying to bring "expert" from outside to drive marketing, startegy and banks, which at best is wasteful and at worst counterproductive.


Sep 22, 2009

3.0

eBay Team Lead in Burnaby, BC (Canada):   (Past Employee - 2009)

Pros

The people at eBay were amazing, they made it fun to come in to work. Most times members would be very grateful for the support which made it easier to deal with the angry members. Agents were always eager to learn and in turn I learned a lot from them.

Cons

Members can be very mean spirited and difficult to deal with. There are some people who worked harder than others meaning that sometimes you would have to pick up their slack.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop outsourcing. I've had many interactions with outsourcing partners and in large part they are not fun to deal with - I can only imagine what members experiences are.

1 - 10 of 319 eBay Reviews
eBay Overview (EBAY)
Web
www.ebay.com
Industries
Size
5000+ Employees, $8B+ Revenue
HQ
San Jose, CA
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