Agoda reviews

Agoda is claiming to be lean and agile - what a joke! That's just for marketing purposes and to attract talents. In fact, Agoda is loosing a lot of good and talented Backend people (and booking) every month. Why? This is hell wrapped up in a shiny cellophane. The working environment is just pathetic - huge technical debt, no collaboration between teams, no visibility what-so-ever of what's going on, daily production escalations, bureaucracy and bad management practices. Everyone's little interests are their own KPIs. Product management is basically owning Backend team and development, while Backend management is weak and almost dis-functional. Guess who made sure the current and previous technical management is so weak? Dev management is absent, as they sit all day in meetings and are occupied with sending emails. That means it's all about product, features and micro management. So boring! Nobody makes any architectural decisions and there's a huge technical debt that slows development and created a LOT of frustration. Developers don't really have access to technologies (kafka, cassandra, ...) - if you need something, just send an email and wait... Things that should take days takes weeks. Does any of those sound like lean?! This code-monkeysism approach is a long tradition here. Developers are at the bottom of the food chain, and are being replaced yearly - others make sure they get the yearly bonuses at time! Developers - beware!

Stay away! No, seriously! This is not a place for talents, and juniors joining are basically ruined by learning worse practices... Here is all about emails, meetings, and micro politics. I worked here over a year, coming from a strong technical and innovative background, to find a bad working culture, bureaucracy, tribalism, code monkeys. Development is practically stopped due to bad management decisions and daily production issues. The salaries differences are just disgrace - local decent hard developers are payed peanuts, while great innovations are intercepted by young and ambitious mid level US managers and product owners, recruited by their fellows to... basically take the credit while doing politics and waiting for the yearly bonus. Some of the mid management are stuck here for few years, probably afraid to go back to the market - and for a good reason. Agoda is a bad line in your CV - assuming you're coming from a western IT market - believe me I have to find a lot of excuses while interviewing now. Sad to see a company built by the hands of the great ceo Robert Rosenstein becoming a swamp full of day-job opportunists working hard on... failing the employees!