Its too big for its own good - Anonymous employee Expedia Group Employee Review

3.0
Dec 31, 2016
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Work/Life Balance is great Benefits, stock options, yearly free money for fitness and health (personal gym membership, etc) Friendly coworkers The company is very charity-friendly

Cons

Bad Management - Managers are clueless about the technology, and don't care about technical debt. They will push the team to produce more and more content and the code-base suffers. They tend to hire people who are under-qualified and keep them around. Low Salary - almost anywhere else will pay more. Nepotism determines promotions - go to lunch with your boss if you want a promotion Women get more advantages than men. They are more likely to be promoted and given raises even if their work doesn't validate it. Under-qualified women get hired over qualified men. Women who make mistakes are not reprimanded as hard as men who do, and often men take the blame for women's mistakes. Expedia has a 50/50 policy where their goal is have an equal number of men and women at all positions. Since it's currently tipped towards men's favor, their way of accomplishing this goal is very sexist and hurts teams. The code base is terrible. It's build on layers of ancient technology and making serious changes to the architecture is impossible due to the size of the problem and because management doesn't care. There is 20 year old code still operating fundamental services. Both the domain and client layers of the site are poorly written all around the site. The site itself isn't aging well. The design looks dated and the site is too big to update it. It's also very slow. Consumers will find better alternatives elsewhere. If Google decides to build a checkout system for their travel services, Expedia will have a hard time maintaining their position (which is currently only on top because Expedia Inc buys its competitors). Compare flights.google.com to Expedia and the difference is immediately clear. You won't be learning new skills and improving as a developer much. The company cares about employees who know a lot about Expedia, not about development. Most of what you learn is going to be about how to navigate the terrible code, convoluted architecture, and poor practices.

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Cons

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Pros

Good pay, supportive manager, and genuinely pleasant colleagues.

Cons

Frequent reorgs and shifting strategic direction made it difficult to build momentum or plan long‑term. Over time, contractor roles became increasingly narrow and production‑focused, which limited opportunities for meaningful skill development. Responsibilities that originally included project management were reduced to primarily email production work. There’s also a broader corporate pattern where work is expected to be completed exactly as written, with little room for judgment or improvement. Even small, quick optimizations can lead to pushback rather than appreciation, creating an environment where going “above and beyond” requires multiple layers of approval — which defeats the purpose of being proactive in the first place. Finally, there’s an in‑office expectation (less strict than for full‑time employees, but still present) for work that can be done entirely remotely. This tends to benefit highly social personalities, but for those who prefer focused, independent work, it feels unnecessary. Social dynamics also play a noticeable role; if you’re not immediately well‑liked or you make a single early mistake, it can create a self‑fulfilling perception that’s difficult to overcome.

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