Pros
The people. eBay still has a large pool of talented and extraordinary individuals which motivates us to come back to work every day.
Cons
It has been a shock and awe approach to business this past year. We have rolled out changes, rolled them back, put people into positions for three months, transferred them to an entirely different role, and have had very, very limited success stories to boot. We have had no communicaiton or direction of where we are headed over the course of the year, and are now being forced to follow a very PayPal-esque model of business (which is shocking, because the last time I checked, we were an online auction house, not a financial institution). We four fundamenal values that no one seems to care about anymore (when is the last time you have heard 'trust each other', practice judgement', 'lead completly' ). Moreover, believing that honest, open environment can bring out the best in people seems to be the furthest memory from anyone's mind. Those who go against the grain and stand to be a voice of reason are quickly 'simplified.' Performance is based on metrics, and the numbers have become so expansive and arbitrary that spinning raw numbers and manipulating them to your advantage on how your most recent 'project' saved the company money seems to be the only measure of performance. It's really difficult to come into work nowadays, because everyone is just watching their own back for fear of being next on the simplificaiton list.