Dead brand and direction, High turnover, Blameshifting, No Meritocracy - Product Manager Eventbrite Employee Review

1.0
27 Jun 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

A real 10-4 job, flexibility to work from home many days since product roadmaps aren't compelling or aggressive

Cons

Eventbrite was an admired brand in '08-'10 full of Stanford grads but many have since moved on and replaced by folks from dying brands like eBay and Twitter. Ticketing/e-commerce is now commoditized SAAS and the company's "strategic" projects has failed to deliver any differentiation. Both Product and Strategy teams have abandoned the marketplace mission as they struggle to make Eventbrite a destination page for event discovery. Instead the team executes multi-year efforts on refreshing the look and feel of the website to occupy time and without substantial metrics impact. The Engineering team moves at glacial speeds and mostly comes from other events-oriented SAAS companies (read: never worked at pedigree like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, etc). This breads an engineering culture that lacks real processes or documentation. The "bench strength" has never worked on large-scale services at aforementioned firms and thus many of its services/experiences have broken under larger loads. This lack of know-how also creates a fear of touching legacy code, building hack upon hack. Recent acquisitions have built off-shore engineering centers making it even harder to develop. With compensation well below market rate and and unknown equity value, more subpar talent is recruited. Meritocracy doesn't exist and only those that are willing to endure the poor culture eventually get promoted after 3+ yrs or brown-nosing.

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Eventbrite Response
9y
Hi there - thanks for your candid feedback, we appreciate it no matter how critical it is as it helps us improve as a company. Not surprisingly, we have a different point of view in terms of what we choose to work on. Our vision for the future is clear ("To become the global marketplace for live experiences") and we are making steady progress against it. We have to invent our way there as this has never been done before. I think everyone here at Eventbrite finds this challenge very exciting and I know we have the right team to get there. One area I think we can definitely continue to improve upon is our ability to work efficiently with Britelings located around the globe. We have incredible talent in our many offices (to name a few: Nashville, Mendoza, London, etc.) but I know it can be cumbersome at times to interact with remote coworkers. We're getting there but this is definitely an area where I think we need to make a lot of headway as we continue to grow globally. Thanks again for your feedback. If you are open to it, I'd love to hear more and have a discussion in person if you are interested. Laurent Sellier, VP Product

Explore other reviews about Eventbrite

5.0
30 Mar 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great team. Great Product. Awesome culture.

Cons

Layoffs are the main issue at hand.

4.0
14 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

-Chill culture, smart people -Get to work on impactful technical challenges at scale -Is a well known consumer brand to have on your resume

Cons

-There's an even mix of go-getters and slackers -Process can be overwhelming at times (docs, meetings, retros etc) -Product space is not that exciting nor motivating

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