Great people, poor leadership, lack of strategy
Pros
A lot of great, smart people, who really have incredible experience and ability to take the company far if they were truly trusted and encouraged to do so. eBay is rightfully very connected with their seller base, and after meeting hundreds of eBay sellers myself, it became clear that eBay sellers really do love and protect eBay. It definitely creates a strong sense of purpose. Base pay is competitive, and stock grants are common for management level positions. eBay tried to do little things for employees, like donuts and bagel days, or catered lunches during hectic days.
Cons
eBay is constantly in a state of transition, going through leadership changes, drastic strategy changes, and mass layoffs nearly every quarter. These seem to be predominately knee jerk reactions vs. long term strategy based off data, innovation, and collaboration. Employee moral was very low throughout most of the time I was with eBay, due to a gross lack of communication and team building during major transition and layoff periods, a constant change in strategy requiring constant pivots, to the point employees are mostly fixing and reacting to changes, and due to a complete lack of regard for company culture. Suzy, the former America's CMO actually told many employees that the last thing she should care about is culture; that instead employees should be grateful to work for eBay. Employees are worked so hard, given tasks that easily make up 70+ hours of work weekly, and while leadership encourages employees to speak up if they can't handle their workload, when they do they are told that "this is just eBay. Take it or leave it". During the most recent round of layoffs, eBay randomly put employees in positions that did not at all align with their skill set, previous roles, or career ambition, and actually demoted a good amount of employees with these changes.
