[eropple]

Leaving the green-colored names at the door (none of this is something I haven't or wouldn't say to anyone in management there, so it's not like I'm talking out of school), I'd agree with pretty much everything said here. Especially the bit about other tech companies--I still get asked what I did at Trip even though it was my first job out of college. It's not at all a startup culture and if you go in expecting the kind of autonomy and trust you see at a smaller company you may be very disappointed, but the consolation prize of an above-average (not top-of-market) salary, easy work, and a few impressive-sounding bullet points for the resume may be worth it.

As a first gig out of college, it was great and I don't regret spending time there. It was a gentle-enough introduction to large corporate structure and while I'm not temperamentally suited to "Cog #541" type of gigs, it's easy to see why as a company it's very successful.

[walterbell]

I wonder what would happen if Yelp joined the hotel review business.

[eropple]

I don't know if they'd lose, but I don't know if they'd make a dent in TripAdvisor as opposed to the smaller competitors. People go where the data is, and Trip has the reviews and has the reputation for trustworthiness. Yelp doesn't have a good rep as far as trustworthiness goes--the allegations of paying to hide bad reviews, etc.--and would be starting from zero or near-zero.

(And, having seen a few organizations handle fraud in user-generated content, I think Trip does a pretty good--not great, not perfect, but better than anybody else I've seen--job of it.)