Start listening or the ship is going to sink, even though it's already taking on water - Anonymous employee eBay Employee Review

2.0
Dec 27, 2008
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

1. It's the fellow coworkers 2. RRSP matched by eBay, up to 4% 3. Stock purchase plan 4. Monthly (from metrics) and quaterly (changing to bi-yearly, based on company goals) bonuses

Cons

1. Upper management doesn't listen to any advice 2. Upper management makes stupid changes without thoroughly thinking it though 3. Work environment is too metric based. Case in point, there is a program that tells you when you need to take your lunch or break and if you don't do it at the time specified, you are deducted points. 2 min or 5 min over, it doesn't matter 4. Work life balance, if you do good, you get a good shift. Don't meet metrics once before shift bid is up, don't expect to get a good shift. Someone I know that use to work there got moved to late afternoon start from early mornings. Even though he said it conflicted with school, they still wouldn't budge. 5. Sick days, we don't get sick days. Sick one day, you get an occurrance. Get 5 - 7 occurrances and you can be terminated. 6. Can't take time off on the same day you request even though you have the banked hours. 7. Bugs. What can I say. There are bugs that have been open or known for a year and nothing is done. 8. Paypal and eBay customer service communication is the pits. Paypal issues get sent to eBay and vice versa on a daily basis with the offending rep saying "it's not a paypal issue" even though you are signed into paypal.com 9. Outsourced work. Sure, some company's outsource. When eBay started outsourcing, they said no jobs would be lost due to it. Well, jobs have been lost. 10. Outsourced workers (India and Phillipines) have a decent understanding of eBay issues. However, support for them has been removed last month. They now rely on this thing called "knowledge base". Good luck with that and helping a customer out with an unique issue. It's not always cookies and cache... 11. Closure or outsource of several key departments. Image services, account closures, Account security, Internal helpline support, etc just to name a few have been closed down or outsourced. With the closure of a department, you rarely have a chance to say where you want to go in the company. They just stick it to you and if you don't like it, they don't care if you leave. (ie: helpline going from a specialist position you had to apply for and being moved to a topbuyer entry position that ebay hired off the street) 12. The lying. Ask upper management something and even though they know the answer, it's either beat around the bush until you give up or they are not heard from again.

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Pros

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Cons

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5.0
Jul 9, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
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Pros

Challenging work, great company culture. There is something genuinely motivating about building for a brand that everyone knows and uses: the scale and real-world stakes make the work feel meaningful. The AI work specifically is at the frontier of applied AI: production systems, hard problems in agentic workflows and evaluation, and real customer impact. Good work-life balance. Leadership is more engaged and technically credible than I expected from a company this size — when I built a prototype, senior stakeholders engaged substantively and supported continued investment quickly. Competitive compensation, sharp colleagues, and a well-sized Austin office with a focused, collaborative feel.

Cons

Like any tech company, there is some legacy code to deal with which can cause friction. That said, eBay has made meaningful progress on modernizing the tech stack and has genuinely embraced the latest tools: AI development here uses current frameworks and infrastructure, not decade-old patterns. Large company coordination processes (security reviews, cross-team alignment) can slow things that could move faster, and vendor partnerships add some communication overhead. But the reach of what you build makes it worth the extra overhead.

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