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eBay Employees Recall Work Environment Under Whitman, HP’s New CEO

Glassdoor Team — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 23:00:49 +0000

With the world watching as Meg Whitman, eBay’s former CEO, takes over as Hewlett-Packard’s newest CEO, Glassdoor dug into employee reviews to uncover what eBay employees had to say about working under Whitman. Whitman served as President and Chief Executive Officer of eBay from 1998 to 2008. During her ten years with the company she oversaw expansion from 30 employees and $4 million in annual revenue to more than 15,000 employees and $8 billion in annual revenue.

Here’s what eBay employees, during Whitman’s tenure as CEO, had to say:

“eBay was much better under Meg…not perfect just better.” – eBay Software Engineer (San Jose, CA)

“I never thought I would say this, but I miss Meg! Come back Meg!!!!!” – eBay Software Engineer (San Jose, CA)

“The working environment reflects Meg Whitman’s own political style … which is to say ruthless and passive-aggressive. Meg and her leadership team managed to transform Pierre’s utopian vision and great business idea into a sharp-edged organization feeding the Street quarter to quarter.” – eBay Vice President (San Jose, CA)

“Meg Whitman did a great job in bringing us from a 30 people corporation to a huge corporation.” – eBay Merchandising Manager (Los Angeles, CA)

“I was very PROUD to work for eBay. When Meg Whitman “walked” into her position and the new hires began their take over, everything the early employees (remotes) worked so hard for was quickly dissolved and pushed down the drain. I began to see that eBay was on its way of being a monster,”- eBay Customer Support employee (San Jose, CA)

“When eBay missed Wall Street goals for the first time, regular employees did not get a bonus, but the CEO (Meg Whitman at the time) received a one million dollar bonus.” – eBay Customer Service Representative (Draper, UT)

“Ex-CEO Meg Whitman is hugely popular although she is responsible for little other than series of well-planned photo-ops. She rode the wave of success, but dropped the ball when the going got tough and left a mess behind for others to clean up.” – eBay Product Marketing Manager (San Jose, CA)

“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.” – eBay Customer Service Representative (Vancouver, BC)

Interested in more?

HP: Will Whitman Fare Better Than Apotheker or Hurd? Apotheker Held 25% Approval In Sept.
Hewlett-Packard Company Reviews
eBay Company Reviews

eBay Employees Recall Work Environment Under Whitman, HP’s New CEO is a post from: Glassdoor Blog

Tech CEO Report Card: Schmidt Goes At All-Time High Approval Rating; eBay’s Donahoe Climbs As Yahoo’s Bartz Falls In Past Year

Glassdoor Team — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 16:30:52 +0000

As Google CEO Eric Schmidt prepares to hand over the reins, his employee approval rating is at an all-time high – and the highest among his peer group CEOs, according to new analysis from Glassdoor.com that evaluated employee opinions of 12 large technology companies over the past two years¹. Based on surveys submitted by Google employees over the past 12 months (March 2010-March 2011), Schmidt’s approval rating is 96%, up three points from the prior 12-month period.

He’s followed closely by Apple’s Steve Jobs, who — even while on medical leave — has a 95% approval rating, down 3 points from the prior year. During the same period, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Oracle’s Larry Ellison both dropped four points to 83% and 73% approval respectively.

eBay’s John Donahoe saw the greatest improvement in his approval rating year over year. Between March 2009 and March 2010, he had just a 24% approval rating among employees, whereas between March 2010 and March 2011, he held a 46% approval rating.

Other CEOs on the rise include Intuit’s Brad Smith, who saw an 18-point improvement from 69% approval to 87% in the most recent 12-month period. And, Dell’s Michael Dell saw a 12-point improvement year-over-year, holding an average 48% approval in the past 12 months.

The largest year-over-year decline belongs to Yahoo’s Carol Bartz, indicating her honeymoon may be long over. In the year she started, Bartz maintained a 77% approval rating, which was more than twice the approval rating of her predecessor Jerry Yang, who had a 34% approval upon his departure. In the past 12 months, Bartz’s approval has dropped to 50% after months of declining approval as seen in the line chart below.

Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer saw the second biggest decline among the dozen CEOs evaluated. Between March 2009 and March 2010, he held an average 46% approval rating, which has dropped to 40% in the past 12 months.

Over the two years, company ratings for the dozen tech companies evaluated remained pretty stable year-over-year. The highest rated is Google at 3.8 (satisfied), followed closely by Adobe (3.6, satisfied), Apple (3.6, satisfied) and Intel (3.6, satisfied). eBay saw the greatest increase, increasing from a 2.7 to a 2.9 (ok) rating in the past 12 months. Amazon slipped during the same period from a 3.3 to a 3.1 (ok) rating.

How will Larry Page rate? We invite Google employees to tell us starting Monday. Even as a co-founder, he has some large shoes to fill. Are you a tech employee? Fill out a Glassdoor survey and tell us how your CEO is doing.

(1) For this report, Glassdoor evaluated company and CEO approval ratings between March 16, 2009 through March 15, 2010, and March 16, 2010 through March 15, 2011.

(2) Glassdoor CEO approval ratings are calculated similarly to presidential approval ratings; Employees are simply asked: “Do you approve of the way your CEO is leading the company?”

Tech CEO Report Card: Schmidt Goes At All-Time High Approval Rating; eBay’s Donahoe Climbs As Yahoo’s Bartz Falls In Past Year is a post from: Glassdoor Blog

eBay Layoffs – Will Donahoe Be Next?

Tim Anderson — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 05:30:10 +0000

So the economy is tanking and there’s no shortage of bad news out there, but for today we thought we’d take a break from talking about financial services to talk about a local high-tech favorite – eBay.

Yesterday, John Donahoe, the new CEO of eBay, announced he would be “streamlining” – otherwise known as laying off 10% of their workforce and letting go of several hundred temporary positions (1,600 jobs in total). Layoffs by themselves are not surprising in this economy, but if you’ve been reading any of the eBay reviews from the last month you’d know that that employees themselves will be looking for John himself to be included in this round of cuts.

Company	CEO	Approval Rating
Motorola	Greg Brown	10.6%
Rain Bird	Anthony LaFetra	11.4%
AOL	Randy Falco	13.4%
EDS	Ron Rittenmeyer	13.5%
Computer Sciences	Mike Laphen	19.3%
Wal-Mart	H. Lee Scott Jr.	23.5%
eBay	John Donahoe	25.2%
Nortel Networks	Mike S. Zafirovski	25.5%
UBS	Marcel Rohner	27.0%
Sun Microsystems	Jonathan Schwartz	28.9%

With a dismal 25.2% CEO approval rating (among the 10 worst with 50 or more reviews), employees haven’t been holding back. Whether its managements need for yet another re-org, change upon change that shows a lack of understanding and appreciation for the eBay ecosystem, or concerns about management killing the “cash cow” or “golden goose” (take your pick) – eBay employees have been especially active on Glassdoor lately.

eBay is pure chaos every day. Upper management is constantly changing which means regular re-orgs. We’re a horizontal org, then a vertical one, and back and forth. We work in centralized teams, then six months later we’re decentralized. Employees don’t feel confident that the initiative they’re working on today will be around next month or even next week.” — Program Manager in San Jose

Crazy hours doing crazy things that are alienating everyone – employees, sellers, buyers, shareholders, analysts. Anyone with a stake in eBay is wondering what the hell is going on, or we would wonder if we weren’t so exhausted. We do things, people get upset, we change them, and upper management keeps asking us to make the same mistakes.” — Project Manager in San Jose

Donahoe has made eBay a miserable debacle and it’s getting worse every day…I never thought I would say this, but I miss Meg! Come back Meg!!!!!” — Software Engineer in San Jose

I guess it’s not surprising that this last employee is looking for Meg to return, her approval rating was 75% when she stepped down (3x that of John’s).

There are definitely strong feelings here, so let’s look for a positive – the employees are passionate (and so he has that going for him – which is nice!). Let’s hope that Jon can turn that passion into something positive. Our “hitlist” of the CEOs with the lowest Glassdoor approval ratings has already predicted the departures of CEOs at WaMu, AMD, and Alcatel-Lucent – you have to wonder who will be next? After all, employees know best.

eBay Layoffs – Will Donahoe Be Next? is a post from: Glassdoor Blog