eBay Reviews in Vancouver, BC Area

Pros

Two things kept me at eBay - the compensation and benefits (above average) and the fantastic people that I worked with every day. Everyone on each team I worked with was bright, technically saavy, and customer oriented. It's a great place to experience cutting edge software and see how e-commerce works (the good and the very, very bad).

Work there if you want to get some experience and make some money for say, six months. Then move on. Career - not so much.

Cons

Where to start? Even when Meg was CEO management was too far removed from the day to day problems CSRs encountered, and seemed to focus on making the job harder every year. Lower level employees were treated as disposable units despite lip service promoting eBay as a good place to work. Hard to have "work-life balance" when you are kept on a night shift with no chance of going to days, or when you needed to schedule a sick day ahead of time (or be penalized), or when a bathroom break of over 3 minutes is a cause of concern. Yes, all activities were logged by the minute....

And that brings me to metrics. Don't work at eBay if you like to work at your own pace or if you like to show creativity in corresponding with your customers. There are numbers you have to hit every day, and a proscribed way to do it, and it doesn't matter if it is fair or unhelpful to your customers. If your Satisfaction rating sucks because of some new policy that has people upset, sorry, your fault! and you get dinged for it.

The company is run by technocrats who show very little concern for anything but the bottom line, and it has been that way for years. The appointment of John Donahoe is the logical endpoint for a management that sees customer support as a money drain and buyers and sellers as a necessary nuisance. They just aren't pretending any more that the eBay community is some shining experiment in democratic capitalism. Reality bites - welcome to North American business in the 21st century.

Advice to Senior Management

Hey, they make way more than I ever will, and didn't get where they are now listening to low level employees in any of the other companies they managed.The peons all knew that Skype wouldn't fly (we talked to the customers, remember?) , that China was a bust, and that eBay Express was just another way to dilute the brand. But it really doesn't matter what any of us thought, does it - we aren't sitting on millions of dollars in remuneration and stock options.

Pros

1. Working with awesome people who are now quitting one by one
2. Hope things will turn around, a fool's hope

Cons

1. The company slaves you by "keeping it human"
2. Upper management are detached from reality and they think they know better.
3. So very unorganized, "going with the flow" has its limits
4. For a company that flants to have billions of dollars saved up in the bank, they sure act stingy.

Advice to Senior Management

"If you’re ridin’ ahead of the herd, take a look back every now and then to make sure it’s still there."

Pros

The people. eBay still has a large pool of talented and extraordinary individuals which motivates us to come back to work every day.

Cons

It has been a shock and awe approach to business this past year. We have rolled out changes, rolled them back, put people into positions for three months, transferred them to an entirely different role, and have had very, very limited success stories to boot. We have had no communicaiton or direction of where we are headed over the course of the year, and are now being forced to follow a very PayPal-esque model of business (which is shocking, because the last time I checked, we were an online auction house, not a financial institution). We four fundamenal values that no one seems to care about anymore (when is the last time you have heard 'trust each other', practice judgement', 'lead completly' ). Moreover, believing that honest, open environment can bring out the best in people seems to be the furthest memory from anyone's mind. Those who go against the grain and stand to be a voice of reason are quickly 'simplified.' Performance is based on metrics, and the numbers have become so expansive and arbitrary that spinning raw numbers and manipulating them to your advantage on how your most recent 'project' saved the company money seems to be the only measure of performance. It's really difficult to come into work nowadays, because everyone is just watching their own back for fear of being next on the simplificaiton list.

Advice to Senior Management

Slow down all of your shoot-from-the-hip projects, keep people in positions for more than three months, and listen to your CS, your tech support, and pratice the upside down triangle business model you boasted at eBay Live!

Pros

The people. eBay really does hire some great people with great ideas, they just don't necessarily have influence to change anything. They do try to make it a fun environment with rewards and recognition as well, and employees do have the chance to voice issues to leadership.

Cons

The culture has completely changed over the last year. It's feeling much more corporate. Executives seem to be outright disregarding who we once were, and pursuing some new brand image that doesn't work and doesn't fit, yet they won't even fully admit that this is their goal. On the one hand, they say they still care about the small businesses and sellers that made eBay what it is today but on the other, every action they are taking says otherwise. We have totally alienated our customers. We are offering a platform that is complex with rules and polices that don't make sense. With the economy the way it is today, people should be flocking to eBay to sell their used goods and items and instead we've driven them away. Ideas aren't listened to by management; it takes an incredible amount of time to get anything done and by the time anything is implemented we're off onto the new flavor of the week.

Advice to Senior Management

LISTEN to your employees - they have great ideas and no venue or people of influence to make them happen. Even better, LISTEN TO YOUR CUSTOMERS. If you want to go recruit the buy.com's of the world, fine, but don't alienate everyone else in the process. Strike a balance.

START USING YOUR OWN SITE. As both a seller and buyer. You'd see how complex it is, how much you end up paying in fees, and what our members are actually upset about.

Pros

Wage is at par for other call center environments. Two years ago, employees were happy and they were the "next stop" up from garbage outsourced call centers, but now they are just miserable.

Cons

Impossible to maintain metrics once you are failing. QC is once a week, when you need to have 8 QC's passing in a week to just meet metrics which never happens. Too many sources of metrics makes it easy for management to terminate employees for not meeting just one of them. Not allowed to actually help eBay members, repeatedly told to provide intentionally useless email responses and just send them out as fast as possible. Outsourced help in the Philippines sending out useless messages or routing things back wastes time.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop allowing supervisors to intimidate staff with termination for not meeting metrics. If any supervisor loses or terminates more than three employees in 6 months, that indicates a problem with the supervisor. Allow for all metrics to be contested. Bring back upwards feedback so staff can tell you which departments have poor morale.

Pros

Above Average benefits, Bagel Day, Discounts on Transit, ESPP, Group RRSP, bonuses.

Cons

Micromanagement with numbers numbers numbers - monitoring of screens, emails, msn, Internet, and time usage to a Kindegarten level. eBay follows the rules as far as Employment Standards are concerned, but fails to trust the employees to give true empowerment on the job. We are fully aware of our expectations, everything is on a 'quota per hour' basis - however the addition of monitoring in the name of 'quality assurance' is detrimental to morale and does not serve a positive purpose. If an employee is routinely performing at an 'exceeds' or 'outstanding' level - 125% + and 150% of quota, effectively doing the job of up to 2 people in production statistics, there should not be a heavy handed approach to personal use of msn or Internet. Of course, we are adults and can fully appreciate that we are there to do a job - however a few minutes each shift for personal communication does wonders to morale and actually has been proven to assist productivity. If I am performing under 100% then I would expect to be more focussed on the job at hand - but if I am performing far and above what is expected then please leave me alone.

Work/Life balance is good only if you have accrued enough time off to make it work. eBay has a strange system whereby you have to earn your Paid Time Off - so you always have a struggle scheduling time off for vacation early in the year if you have few hours remaining due to time taken for sick leave etc. There are family days and such which helps, but the system of earning time is not acceptable and I suspect it is one of the factors that people leave.

Advancement is and remains a challenge. You have to be a specific personality type to get ahead at eBay. Exuding the 'values' that are so readily posted and extolled to us on a daily basis. Only very recently have they finally adopted a system where your accomplishments follow you throughout your tenure. Before, sadly, if you were on a team for months with acomplishments and achievements built up, ready to challenge an interview for the next level, and your supervisor leaves or you change teams, the slate is WIPED CLEAN. That is the biggest morale and motivational KILLER at eBay. I had it happen to me twice, and as a result have zero interest in moving on up at eBay.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop the micromanagement - get rid of eQuality once and for all. Grant us our vacation all at once in January so that we can properly schedule our time off. Remove the corporate greed that has taken over the site and drove people away - the fees are killing eBay and PayPal and it is starting to really catch up to both of them now. Let us chat or use the Internet if we are solidly meeting our quotas, what harm is there in that? We are not robots who can sit in front of a computer for 8 hours at a time banging out emails mercilessly. Promote solid performers, not just people who act like rabid go getters - you are passing up many mature and solid contributors - many of whom have already left or are right now thinking of leaving. There needs to be much more promotion of people who deserve some recognition - CSR3's should be much more common.

Pros

Benefits, personal development, career growth, and my direct co-workers.

Cons

The new CEO team has changed the organizational culture from a great, innovative company to one that I'm no longer really proud to work for. The eBay "values" should not just be a "slogan" used for a corporate speech.

Advice to Senior Management

The layoffs could have been done through reorganization and attrition. We didn't have to permanently get rid of employees. This was a cut throat tactic that was unnecessary and will contribute to attrition, turnover, and increased costs and lower productivity due to low morale. Furthermore, many of the people who were let go didn't make sense (some top performers). Plus, stop it with the excessive hand motions during speeches Lorrie and John!

Pros

Adequate pay and decent benefits.

Cons

Weak management, high job stress (customer support), front-line staff are often surprised or poorly prepared for major changes that upset buyers/sellers, lack of respect for front-line workers (becoming a typical call centre), little discussion of career advancement (dead-end job).

Advice to Senior Management

Give positive reinforcement to front-line customer service staff. When staff are already stressed out from massive changes and dealing with upset customers, don't force unrealistic productivity targets on them. Provide better training for management, and teach them how to engage staff in a positive way. Keep it human.