A very basic review... - Systems Administrator eBay Employee Review

3.0
Jan 9, 2009
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Well, there's lots of good reasons to work at eBay. Primarily, the culture is open and inviting. Compensation is average. People seem to be of decent caliber both technically and personally. I wouldn't say that it's the best place I've ever worked, but I wouldn't think that it would be the worst either. I guess average is the main adjective to use. The Skype acquisition brought a lot of promise, but we haven't seen a huge payoff.

Cons

I think that some people are just there to receive a paycheck, but hey, it is called work for a reason. There are some, let's say "interesting" engineers personality-wise, but I think that that is the case at just about every Silicon Valley company. I think that the acquisitions could have been better utilized... Skype for example. Food is decent around the San Jose campus near Hamilton Ave, but is pretty much just general suburbia.

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5.0
Jul 14, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Really good company you will go out as a leader

Cons

Frequent org changes , layoffs

5.0
Jul 9, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

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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