- Global company that acts local and insular. Decisions are driven out of Needham with little strategic consideration for the international offices or the territories in which we have a presence. There are a few senior leaders who have "global" responsibilities in their title that rarely travel to offices outside of Needham.
- There is so much pivoting that we are all dizzy from doing a 180 based on the latest change of direction. We are a global company in the digital space that has to be nimble and flexible for the marketplace, but there has to be some discipline in how we think about product and marketing or you start heading to the land of inertia. It is no wonder the company is struggling for the past few years. The CEO often talks about playing the long game but we don't stay focused on a strategy, there is no real roadmap (it changes every week) and the words "strategic planning" don't exist. The process and hoops you have to jump through to do the right thing and drive the business is numbing.
- Speed wins is the company motto but the CEO and key executives do not embrace "speed wins" when it comes to the HR process, performance reviews, merit increases or bonus payouts. It is an archaic, bureaucratic, political -- and from what I have seen something of a capricious and arbitrary process that does not value the employees who have allowed TripAdvisor to thrive. Perhaps management only receives their compensation rewards and merit increases after the employee review process is completed and the employees have received theirs.
- Promotions are difficult to achieve for talented employees as management can be opaque on promotions and the process for promotions.
- Turnover is rampant across most areas but especially in marketing. The organization at large does not seem to understand or value marketing or publicity - other companies that do value marketing and PR such as Priceline, Expedia, Trivago and Google are eating our lunch in a space where we should be dominating across the board. There are some brilliant marketing and PR professionals at TA who have been hamstrung by an organization who naively thinks that consumer behavior can be changed if you put a home page pop up message telling the consumer what TripAdvisor thinks it should do.
