A lot of Re-orgs & Gender bias - Senior Member of IT Group eBay Employee Review

2.0
Jan 6, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Work-life was great (in my dept). Free soda, game room, fun activities from time to time, great pay and bonus, nice benefits.

Cons

Lay-Offs: eBay laid off 7% (~2400 people) in 2015 and then a few months later bragged on LinkedIn about the "amazing" batch of 200+ new-hires. I was a top performer in my role (received several raises, top review scores, and a promotion) but was laid off just weeks after receiving a "Spot award". Within 1 month, I found 2 job postings for my position. Do not be fooled... Employees are just numbers and a means to an end. Re-orgs: Despite the yearly practice of conducting the Pulse Survey, there was little trust amongst the employees that leadership would actually address the identified issues. Mgmt put a lot of time and effort into selling the ever-changing vision. As objectives and directions change, departments and team get reorganized. This happened at least 1-2x per year. Leaders are often put in charge of new and/or larger groups than their experience and knowledge would allow them to effectively manage. Managers then become overly distracted and distant from the work being completed. This results in leader being so removed that employees don’t have the support they need to get tasks completed. Gender Bias: As many would agree, having gender neutral business practices, affording opportunities to all employees regardless of gender, is preferred. However, when these actions begin to step into the realm of reverse discrimination, there is a problem. Although affirmative action efforts are designed to avoid discrimination, it manages to produce the discrimination for the perceived historical majority. It has been regularly observed by myself and other that under-qualified candidates are being selected for advancement in order fulfill a quota, instead of selecting individuals with the best qualifications.

Explore other reviews about eBay

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.

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

See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All