Nearly 5 years there - what was I thinking - Senior Staff Software Engineer eBay Employee Review

1.0
Sep 12, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

I worked there for nearly 5 years. It was just barely acceptable when I started. It was hopeless when I left. If you're in marketing, you will probably love it. Engineering and Product Management will hate you with a burning passion, but eBay is a marketing company that happens to (be forced to) do tech.

Cons

A super political work environment - I've worked at banks with less political BS. Very top heavy. There is lots of talk about "innovation" and "work life balance", it is all lip service. Innovation does not happen here (not even in the labs or search), work life balance is a joke - I have to tell a story re: WLB - at one of the (very very frequent) organizational all hands meetings, management decided to talk about the "work life balance" initiative, it was a 9am meeting and, shock, I was there - because I was up all night working around a severe bug in the ridiculous V3 code base; so I started nodding off in the meeting - that's irony for you. in the nominal 40 hour work week, I would spend a minimum of 15 hours in meetings. Every week. Every. Single. Week. And for about 3 weeks every quarter, I would spend over 25 hours a week in meetings. If for some reason you have to work with the CS teams in SLC, god help you. The single most back-biting group of vermin I've ever seen. Just horrendous.

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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

5.0
May 27, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Good work, lots of AI experiments, AI innovation, latest tech stack, Co-workers are very co-operative and helpful. Most AI tools are still unlimited.

Cons

Some teams are over-working due to smaller teams as a result of recent layoffs. Office perks (like catered food, snacks) are dwindling every quarter even though company wants every employee to be 3 days a week in office. Company wants 80 percent code to be generated by AI but no clear guideline how to achieve that.

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