Horrible engineering culture - Senior Software Engineer KAYAK Employee Review

1.0
Nov 20, 2019
Recommend
Business Outlook

Pros

- Good work life balance

Cons

- No drive / boldness to innovate old monolite architecture - Making money is more important than user experience - Build + start time of frontend solution takes about 30 minutes - Managed by american employees, european knowledge gets discarded - No clear vision on how product should define itself within the next years - Tech teams don't work together, everyones is working for themselfes. They even compete silently against each other introducing different tech stacks. - Releasing fast instead of quality.

Explore other reviews about KAYAK

5.0
Jul 6, 2026
Recommend
Business Outlook

Pros

Incredibly helpful team members Very genuine people Geographic diversity Work-life balance is understood and appreciated Supportive culture

Cons

Compensation could be more competitive Lots of internal systems to navigate (but it's getting better) Limited racial diversity, at least on the Commercial teams

5.0
Jun 29, 2026
Recommend
Business Outlook

Pros

- Super smart team to learn from and very welcoming people - All voices are heard and ideas can be elevated and tested - Positive environment where many people have been with the company a long time and truly care about its success - Sporadic work travel and offsites - Free lunch in office 2 days a week and bagels, snacks, and drinks all the time - In office gym - Parking commuter benefit

Cons

- Reporting tool is specific to the company and can be a bit of a learning curve to figure out, but again, there are really great people to help you! - Multiple offices throughout the world, where team members are spread across or fully remote, so its rare that the entire team would be in one office together for collaboration - No train commuter benefit to coincide with parking benefit

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