Unhappy Booking.com Developers? The data conflicts with Volkskrant's latest article.
On Saturday August 10, de Volkskrant published an article about the chaotic, stressful work culture in Booking.com’s IT department, leading to unhappy employees. Within the Dutch recruitment industry, similar stories are frequently whispered around. “Yeah, Booking.com hires a lot of developers. But their employee turnover is also very high”, they say.
Nonetheless, the data paints a different picture than these anecdotal pieces of evidence.
On LinkedIn, there are 1458 profiles with the title “Software Engineer” or Developer that work or have worked at Booking.com. Of them, 372 (25,51%) left the company.
In comparison: at ING, the biggest IT employer of the Netherlands, the turnover is 66,73% (3692 of 5532 total left). At Coolblue, this percentage is 49,78% (118 of 237). TomTom: 40,35% (757 of 1876). Bol.com does a better job at keeping their developers: 26,68% left (115 of 431). This percentage is still higher than the 'notorious' Booking.com turnover, though.
So, are Booking.com developers retained by a golden cage that masks the unhappiness of the department? Or, is the reality a bit more nuanced than what the de Volkskrant article suggests?
Trading application specialist at Optiver
5 年Or the linkedin statistics are not reliable. People do not update their Linkedin when they left a company; only when they find a new job.
Data Engineering | Data Science | Python, SQL, Spark | ** ONLY Freelance REMOTE **
5 年I guess that a Headhunter shouldn't do data analysis, just like data analysts shouldn't do headhunting... your "hard" data doesn't take into account sooooo many things starting with developers that stay there waiting for their shares to vest, cohorts (if you hire a lot today, your turn around is lower mechanically), the salary can be such that it's hard to find better elsewhere... etc
Senior Executive Search & Recruitment Consultant (a.i.)
5 年Je cijfers zijn een ruwe indicatie en van een snelle desk research, maar toch wel een goede nuancering voor 'n discussie. De insider stories en developer-leed-verhalen zijn ook niet nieuw getuige dit stuk uit 2012; https://blogs.perl.org/users/bookingemployee/2012/03/truth-about-bookingcom.html Een andere vraag die ik wil stellen is; hoe kan het dat met het grootste Recruitment leger in NL, met een nog grotere leger aan development capaciteit niemand bij Booking management het aandurft om te gaan replatformen naar een andere, modernere, flexibelere stack/architectuur? Het huidige legacy-platform is een monster dat steeds gevoerd wordt met nog meer handen aan 't toetsenbord maar zich vroeg of laat in de hoge marges van het verdienmodel-staart gaat bijten.
Co-founder& Chief product
5 年Ik vrees xat als onderzoeker ik toch een paar gaatjes zie in je analyse jan. Belangrijker is volgens mij gemiddelde tennure en spreiding. Dus hoe lamg zit men er gemiddeld en ook hoeveel mensen zijn vaak snel weg. Vergeet niet dat een bedrijf als ING al veel langer bestaat, dus dat mensen veel langere stints kunnen hebben gehad voor hun vertrek, bijvoorbeeld
Business Technologist/Processes Innovator - Leveraging Technology, Creativity and Ingenuity to create innovative solutions and to fix people’s and businesses problems.
5 年Can’t say if Volkskrant is right or not, but your data analysis is missing an important factor: Booking.com hires developer from all around the world, therefore developers that have moved their families to a different country/continent won’t quit at the first sign of trouble, once they have moved over there they’ll try to make it work until they decide that moving back is better than staying (at this point you can imagine the problems are really big). As you can see, your turnover data is not complete, because if most of your employees moved from another country/continent, obviously the turnover will be way lower than if all of your employees were locals.