Dying slowly. - Withheld eBay Employee Review

2.0
31 Dec 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

There are some great people, some really talented people in the business and given the mess it's in the enthusiasm and the passion to change is still strong. eBay is still a brand that creates emotion in people and being part of that can be hugely rewarding.

Cons

Unfortunately none of the great, talented people are at the executive or senior management level. Due to a combination of poor leadership, lack of coherent vision and a fear/mistrust of the platform there's a complete inability to execute projects efficiently. The main product of eBay is Powerpoint, and it's an oft-quoted line that 'meetings are the work'. People, particularly those more senior are fearful of making the commitment to change that's required to save this business from slowly dying on the vine. Focus seems to swing from one project to another depending on what is perceived as the current silver bullet.

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5.0
9 Jul 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
20 Jun 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

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