Frustrating, given management changes and overall turmoil - Staff Software Engineer eBay Employee Review

3.0
Mar 29, 2013
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Ideas win, data wins, people are exceedingly friendly, the entire organization seems to be rowing in the same direction. The culture is almost deceptively open--you get the feeling at first that you'll be able to change the company in big ways, and everyone listens to you. The compensation was extremely competitive, particularly the RSUs, given the trajectory of the stock as of late

Cons

They haven't been able to figure out how to integrate Quality into the Engineering process yet. Even though people are open to new things, the skill of the average engineer within the organization is much lower than at any high tech company I've been exposed to. It often seems like they have 10 mediocre people working where one really good person would do better. The code is so convoluted, so deeply coupled, so disastrously unreadable, It is difficult to imagine how they can implement features at all

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5.0
May 17, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

good culture friendly people and good benefits

Cons

leadership direction politics tenured individuals who do not change their ways of working

3.0
Jun 20, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Relaxing culture. family first. Stock performance is generally good for the recent two years and huge benefit if you're eligible for ESPP. Stable product with large customer base means you get opportunity to work on project with real impact.

Cons

1. Blind push for AI and leadership expect unrealistic efficiency improvement 2. Layoff every year in Feb (2024, 2025, 2026) and sometimes can feel the tension in team 3. Legacy tech stack with isolated and fragile infrastructure. Developer friction is a real pain. You get random infra down every once a while and internal support becomes even worse since they started offshoring to LCOL area in 2025. 4. Hiring freeze in San Jose... just expect more layoff coming up + frequent meetings at night / early morning across regions

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