Comfortable enough place to work, limited innovation and growth - Data Scientist KAYAK Employee Review

3.0
Apr 1, 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Well run company with a track record of success - Competitive salaries and benefits - Good work-life balance - Strong technical mentorship - Managers are competent, generally have been around for a while and know the company well - Strikes a good balance between a professional and casual environment - Nice offices with decent on-site perks - They invest in their employees and want people to stay long term

Cons

- Advancement is slow. - Management talks about horizontal culture but in fact it is very hierarchical, which can be disorienting until you learn to separate lip service from reality. - Bias towards status quo and conformity. Many employees are primarily concerned with protecting their position and appearances, making honest discussions and appraisals of situations difficult. - Lots of engineering work for scientists and analysts. More data and ML engineering support would help improve the pace of production and free up scientists and analysts to use their strengths. - The tech stack is old and the mindset towards developing data science products is very old school. The justification for using outdated and suboptimal approaches is usually a mixture of "we can't do that because we are too lean" and "we don't need to do that because we have been doing fine without it". - Management doesn't know what they want from Product Managers, leading to high turnover in this role. I would beware of joining as a PM. - Poor trust and communication between marketing Account Managers and data scientists. AMs can be forced to use algorithms which obviously aren't working well and if you ask the data scientists what is going on, you will get evasive maneuvers and bluster about how "sophisticated" the models are. - Poor record of retaining female tech talent and exceedingly few women in leadership roles. - Culture is ultra-WASPy fake nice. Diversity groups are forums to virtue signal, praise the company for how inclusive it is, and avoid challenging discussions that could upset anyone.

Explore other reviews about KAYAK

5.0
Jan 27, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great people and interesting industry to be in

Cons

Sometimes too focused on the data and not the human experience.

4.0
Nov 24, 2025
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great benefits: Healthcare had great coverage and affordable monthly payments. I also really appreciated the work-from-wherever policy as well as all the office snacks. Fantastic people: I genuinely loved the people I worked with—they made me feel like I belonged and was appreciated. My manager worked to build me up, something that can't be said for a lot of places. Travel perks: The ability to travel for work made this experience incredibly rewarding.

Cons

Slow mobility: Trying to get promoted felt like a moving goalpost—the expectations changed every six months and made it nearly impossible to get to the next step. Even then, the business was stingy about who gets promoted, which was incredibly discouraging after years of trying to prove myself.

1
See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All