Pros
If you're at a lower level (pre-senior), you won't be exposed to many of the cons listed below, which makes things more tolerable. The day to day is usually quite pleasant, the issues are often only when dealing with people in leadership. You have the opportunity to be exposed to a lot of different areas, which can be good for career development. I've learned a lot at Skyscanner about what to do (and what not to do). I really can't fault their work/life balance.
Cons
Skyscanner operates like a company 10x its size, with all of the disadvantages that come with that and none of the benefits. The much-vaunted culture is a facade. 'Traveller first' used to mean something, but these days it's ignored in favour of adding over-the-top tracking and features that nobody wants or needs. Skyscanner's app in particular is filled with technical debt but Product keep pushing new features instead of allowing teams time to fix it. Salaries are not competitive. The company gaslights people into thinking they're lucky to work there while paying well below market rate. Alongside this, they continually waste money on useless third party tools and closing offices that were inexpensive to run, which necessitates hiring replacements in very expensive markets. They have money, they are just choosing to waste it on other things instead. Promotions are a mess, optimising for how well you can talk about the value you deliver instead of actually delivering value. They take months, can be rejected for the most trivial of reasons, and even if you get one you won't get the salary increase for months (and it's not backdated when it does come through). Tribe leadership is full of passengers who maintain the status quo and do nothing to try and improve things. Skyscanner replies to a lot of these reviews, encouraging people to provide feedback internally to raise these concerns. Reader, know that I and many others raised concerns about these things over and over for years, then eventually left when I realised nothing would change. They are listening but not actually doing anything in response.
