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by bedobi 763 days ago
ex Expedia employee here

I remember the long period of no CEO after the previous one went to Uber and Barry Diller, I think he was chairman of the board, was kinda at the helm

eventually there was an all hands where it was announced Peter Kern would be the new CEO

his qualifications? "we used to play golf together"

the old boys club vibe was next level

which is like, ok, it always is, but they weren't even trying to tastefully hide it, they literally just made it clear on the record first thing

to be clear, I'm not saying Barry or Peter did a bad job (nor a good one) - as a cog, I usually find C level news and initiatives distractions that merit little attention

I do remember though how Barry said Expedia's work life balance was all balance no work

and how Peter would phone in all hands from his castle in Colorado where he was spending time with his family to tell everyone how important it was people wound down remote work and started coming in to the office again (AFAIK he himself was very rarely in office in any meaningful capacity)

would I call it a well-run company? no, not really, but neither are most other companies, lol. most execs seem to have no better or worse idea what they're doing running a company than the average employee would.

3 comments

Yeah I quit Expedia around that time, early 2020. They began this massive reorg merging a bunch of eng from VRBO and Hotels.com and whatever else together haphazardly. I went through 4 different managers under a year. Very “productive” !!!
To anyone else.. Please if you have the means and skills, and find yourself at these shitty companies, just leave.

Honestly the best decision I made was leaving the shitty albeit huge company I worked at to join a startup that had great reviews and working on something actually meaningful. Run by people who weren’t d bags. Ended up becoming a unicorn and is today a big company.

Put something good into the world and you’ll find the rewards. No point wasting life working for losers. Just my opinion.

Expedia was not always shitty. When Expedia bought Orbitz the Expedia head of HR really went out of her way to ensure people were taken of. They were very generous.
I agree with you but Expedia was the best game in town where I was at the time, and while the company left a lot to be desired, my individual team was the best I've ever worked with. But yeah in a perfect world toxic leadership and companies that run mostly on just decades old momentum wouldn't be the norm.
Never say “class warfare”
I don't think it's conscious or deliberate, these people are literally just completely oblivious to their own privilege

even the few who do reach that level from more humble beginnings seem to quickly forget what it was like down there, overestimate their competence and start to look down on the plebs

pretty infuriating to be talked down to that way

like, you're talking to professional adults with Computer Science degrees here, not some deadbeats off the street lol (not that people on the street deserve scorn either, I'm just being rhetorical)

No. They are conscious. You see this whenever someone becomes unaccountable and surrounded by yes men. Did they have these views before? Probably. Could they express and act on them before? No. That’s the difference.

There’s a reason why fair and respectable people in power are called out as a rarity.

> There’s a reason why fair and respectable people in power are called out as a rarity

100%, you simply won't be allowed or enabled to join those ranks unless you give up a lot of qualities that aren't welcome there