eBay reviews

Not at all a meritocracy. Performance reviews are not objective and related to your performance, it's all up to your manager, and if he/she is one of those passive aggressive types, which most of them are, because that is the current culture (survival), you are wasting your time and precious life. Most of the middle layer of mgt (directors and above) are relatively inexperienced, only been there 2-3 years if not less. They are just concerned about job preservation and frankly don't even use the site or care about the buyer or seller base. They just want to get their bonus and they do whatever it takes to do that. eBay is one of the hold outs using the forced stack rank system, which like everywhere else it has been used, has served well to decimate true talent and experience at all levels. This is exactly what you DO NOT do in a IP based company. eBay is hurting for a reason, it is self inflicted damage and it has not woken up from its old ways that actively help sociopathic managers. The recent layoffs made everything worse.

It takes a tremendous amount of work to get things done. There are too many owners of each piece of an initiative to make an impact. Also, there are far too many meetings and smaller distractions. I'd often have to send an email or two reminding someone to follow up with me. Lastly, upper management is far too removed from understanding the site and the challenges our customers face. There are too many layers when bubbling up issues.