I have been here for more than three years and I am not satisfied. I expected a lot more and that during this time I would make much more progress in my career. I plan to leave soon, but I still keep wondering whether it was just me or did others not have much opportunity for growth at Sabre either?
4 replies (most recent on top)
The honest truth, Sabre has zero culture. They tried many different names, SVPs to lead it, and nothing stuck. Culture like ‘people team’ are nonexistent. The high note, careers outside S are lucrative and treat people like they’re the number one asset. Not a fairytale, it’s a reality.
Good Advice B00bies... early on its good to try to get as much as exposure to different areas (biz units, biz functions etc) as possible and that's hard to do in Sabre. There are a few that have been able to job hop in Sabre with success, but there are limits to how much you can go with that approach. In a smaller org, you can get thrown into alot more areas because you have to pick up the slack since there are not enough hands to go around. While at Sabre pick up everything you can, but don't marry yourself to the place.
If I were you, I would be leery of anonymous career advice on the internet so take this with a grain of salt.
I assume you're relatively young and more or less in the early stage of your career. You're eager to expand your resume with solid experience and a broad range of skills to build strong professional a career on. You were hoping that a job with Sabre would be the vehicle to set your career aspirations into motion.
You've come to the wrong place.
A lot of it has to do with working in a large organization. By the simple fact that you're working with a lot more people, your work will be more specialized and you will be tasked to solve a smaller piece of the overall puzzle. You can't, for example, expect to choose the tech stack you would like to implement your next project - that sort of thing is decided by committees composed of sub-committees composed of senior staff (half of whom haven't written any code in the last ten years).
And then there's Sabre culture. For a company that fancies itself as a tech company, Sabre is surprisingly risk-averse, which leads them to miss out on the next big thing. (Somebody else in this forum pointed Sabre has a penchant for ki----g innovation - that is so true it hurts.) There is a reason that Sabre had a 20-year+ head start on Amadeus but soon fell behind to half Amadeus' size within ten or so years. It is the same reason that Travelocity, despite its early-mover advantage over Expedia, is no more. Travelocity was twice the size of Expedia in 2000 but is now just one of Expedia's stable of brands. (I could go on about Sabre culture and its pi-s-poor job product management but that's probably best left for another post.)
My advice to you is to get out of Sabre and join a start-up. With a smaller team, you would get to work on a lot more things and have better chances of getting noticed. Even if the start-up is not successful, it would still look better on your resume to have had a broader range of responsibilities.
Good luck!
Totally depends on the team and what you want. I loved solving problems. I learned a lot of techniques. Mostly, I learned it's not about the latest "hot" tech acronym to add to my resume'. It's how to think. Old Sabre gave me opportunity, and I worked hard to do it. Now it seems devs are measured by their list of acronyms, which no, Sabre never gave you. So, depends what you mean.