12 ms·

Airbnb Employees Speak Out About Bullying and ‘Toxic’ Work Environment

178 points by rblion 9y ago

ubikretail 9y ago
It makes sense, if you compare it to the conditions of the hosts. I got people for a year and this is remarkable: — Not host, nor guests are legally related to AirBnB. Hence, none of the parties is really protected, even if ABnB talks about "insurance". — Not even the help desk is AirBnB. As they call them, they are "community helpers", and their help is not legally linked to AirBnB. — They changed the conditions just because, and they place them as you go in for you to accept them. If you disagree, you have to remove yourself from the platform via email. — They promise a plan of prizes for good hosts. It seems that most of your ratings should be high. It turns statistically impossible once your go into the real conditions: must be evaluated by +80% of your hosts, and +80% of your score must be five stars (or similar). — They don't pay your social security, welcoming time, help, and after all anything we call "added value". — Nevertheless, they added surreptitious-yet-public evaluation for things nobody is paying for, like being the tourist guide of someone who is getting a room for 10€/night. — They do not care about hosts opinions, in spite they are the ones putting the real value on the platform, paying taxes for it, doing the face-to-face with the end client, etc. If your guests arrive 8 hours early and they complain you didn't received them, the bad scoring is on you (happened). If your hosts leave a mess behind, AirBnB evaluates if they should cover it for the shake of their public image, or if they rather claim that according to the rules that is not covered. Everybody is free to do whatever, but after my experience I trust hotels more than anything.
- saghm 9y ago
  > They promise a plan of prizes for good hosts....[You] must be evaluated by +80% of your hosts. > If your hosts leave a mess behind, AirBnB evaluates if they should cover it for the shake of their public image It seems like the word "host" is being used for both "host" and "guest" in a few places, and I'm having trouble parsing a lot of trouble fully understanding this comment because of it.
  - ubikretail 9y ago
    My apologies. I'm not a native speaker and switched the words as I spoke. You are right: > [You] must be evaluated by +80% of your GUESTS." > If your GUESTS leave a mess behind, AirBnB evaluates if they should cover it for the shake of their public image.
    - saghm 9y ago
      No worries! Thanks for clarifying
gaius 9y ago
Whether its illegal sublets or unlicensed minicabs, you can't operate a business designed to evade regulation without that attitude eventually permeating its entire corporate culture. Welcome to "disruption".
- XJOKOLAT 9y ago
  Boom. Thank you.
- patrickaljord 9y ago
  What about arbitrary regulations that were designed to artificially limit supply and increase prices on customers and the fact that these regulations won't go away because too few people know about them and there's a lobby giving millions to law makers to make sure they won't go away? How is that not corruption in anything but in name? How can Airbnb and others fight against these corrupt regulations when they were design to keep new comers and innovators out and incumbents in? It's a dirty game and if you want to play, or change things, you have to get dirty too. I'm glad they're doing it. Same as when you prohibit drug or alcool, it's still going to happen but way more dirty. Who's to blame though? Willing adults who want to partake peacefully in their preferred activities or regulators armed with guns trying to prevent from doing these peaceful things? Hm...
  - dilemma 9y ago
    You're talking about housing which is a business Airbnb is not in.
    - ljw1001 9y ago
      If anything, Airbnb is in the business of converting housing to hotel space. Many units are hosted by people who buy them to rent to tourists, reducing the housing stock.
  - pille 9y ago
    Airbnb is a profit-seeking corporation, not a public interest group. They're not out to fight the good fight against "arbitrary regulation" any more than hotels are being evil by supporting it. If you don't like the law, you can vote, run for office, volunteer, donate to a candidate or nonprofit, or bother your elected officials. I'm no fan of lobbying ("corruption in anything but name"—sweetheart gigs for sympathetic representatives once they get out of office), but it's legal for AirBnb to do this too.
rl3 9y ago
I've often heard that it's extremely difficult to maintain any real culture or ethos beyond the amount of employees the CEO can personally manage, and that number is around 40-50. AirBnB is far beyond that, so it's no wonder. The larger the company, the more it's going to decay and suck. The degree to which it does is a function of management style and org structure. Of course, Kool-Aid doesn't help matters—especially at scale where it rings hollow.
- qq66 9y ago
  Lots of large companies have strong corporate cultures, good and bad. Southwest Airlines, Uber, UPS, Apple...
  - rl3 9y ago
    I'd argue each of those qualify as overall bad, however I can't really think of a single example of good corporate culture at that scale regardless. Perhaps good culture at that scale is simply the absence of culture—beyond simple items like accountability that largely boil down to "have a spine". If Kool-Aid doesn't work at scale, then better to not push it at all.
    - george_morgan 9y ago
      BBC, USMC?
      - gaius 9y ago
        Maybe not such good examples given Jimmy Saville and the recent Facebook scandal with the naked female marines photos being shared.
        jk563 9y ago
        Bad incidents, but I found the culture at the BBC to be fantastic 3-4 years ago.
    - 9y ago
abhinai 9y ago
Heard similar stuff from a friend who used to work at AirBnb. He was an ex-Facebook engineer who quit AirBnB even before his stocks vested because we was so unhappy at this company. I am really surprised. Things are going well for them as a company. Why do they want to screw it up for themselves?
- exBarrelSpoiler 9y ago
  Did he say why he was unhappy? Just look at the Frightful Five. At least two of them are renowned for having brutal, sometimes abusive, corporate cultures. Three if you include stack ranking-era Microsoft. Having an awful culture doesn't preclude business success.
  - ralfd 9y ago
    I only hear bad stuff about Amazon, they churn through fresh graduates. Apple has this whole secrecy stick, but people stay long term there, even when (especiall when?) working for Jobs. I dont recall any negative stuff about Facebook. Google would frighten me personally, because everyone is smarter than me and I would sink as a rock. Microsofts stack ranking seemed like institutional crippling.
    - xkcd-sucks 9y ago
      If you get in to the right department at Google, everyone is smart enough to not work too hard. Finding these departments can be difficult as they're also smart enough to appear hardworking
    - exBarrelSpoiler 9y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9342994 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9342994 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12502336 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12502336 https://mic.com/articles/154788/apple-employees-say-their-mental-health-issues-came-from-alleged-hostile-work-environment https://mic.com/articles/154788/apple-employees-say-their-me...
  - 9y ago
chx 9y ago
One data point does not make a whole lot but let me point this out: https://www.airbnb.ca/rooms/8618464 https://www.airbnb.ca/rooms/8618464 this here is a shit road side motel. I cancelled it when I realized and I reported it but it's still there more than a year later. It's trivial to check what it is: there are no houses at the junction. https://goo.gl/maps/WsPwXxa22ho https://goo.gl/maps/WsPwXxa22ho If you check the hosts' reviews it turns out he is airbnb'ing out the hotel rooms of his father all over Israel. This is blatantly visible and yet Airbnb lets it. Samples: "The staff at the hotel" "The place is more like a cheap hotel or a hostel (not a "home" like other Airbnb places I've rented in the past). " My trip was awesome nonetheless, brief report http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/25981843-post8.html http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/25981843-post8.html here.
- bigbugbag 9y ago
  AirBnB is known for having illegal listings and keeping them because profit, while also quietly removing them right before legal trouble or to sanitize their books before showing them. http://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-deleted-rentals-before-showing-data-2016-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-deleted-rentals-before...
- ubikretail 9y ago
  I quit AirBnB as they pushed me to accept the new terms or either chase them on the email to cancel my property offer. It happened that some people came by saying they had just reserved, and I told them I had nothing to offer. It's been +2 months and my room is still there. I am talking about foreign people finding they have no place to sleep. AirBnB doesn't care, as long as they have stock to bait.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- ig1 9y ago
  As far as I know AirBnB isn't restricted to private homes other than in specific cites which have legal restrictions, non-residential premises are allowed (on the listing you link to in question it's marked as a B&B rather than a private house).
MichaelBurge 9y ago
Large companies have enough disgruntled employees that even the laziest journalists can find a few to generate some outrage, which drives views/clicks to their site. Since AirBNB is a well-known name, people on HN will tend to upvote it and commenters will self-select for people who want to rant about AirBNB. That's 3 selection biases here: Visibility on HN(selects for an "interesting" story, not truth), disgruntled employees, comments will want to rant about AirBNB. It's almost certainly a mistake to judge them negatively based on this story. > In 2015, Glassdoor ranked the company as the #1 place to work, in 2017 that ranking dropped to 35th, and many employees are speaking out. 35th "best place to work" and "people are treated like cattle"? Somebody's giving you misleading statistics: Either it's Glassdoor.com, or the managing editor of "broke-ass stuart". I don't think there's a single company above 10,000 employees that you couldn't force a similar framing on.
- exBarrelSpoiler 9y ago
  #36 is Apple and #37 is Microsoft. I suspect that once you get to that level those happiness ratings spiral into meaninglessness. Especially when the companies involved are huge.
  - lostlogin 9y ago
    Good point. Ranking it by company is rather meaningless when they are multinational. How else could it be done though? By country? State/province?
    - user5994461 9y ago
      Glassdoor has ranking by country.
    - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
      For Microsoft, ranking by building might be effective. Happiness in building 12 vs. building 42 will be very different.
      - 9y ago
nikanj 9y ago
Are our standards for "toxic" and "terrible management" too low, when the only company without these is Etsy? Is their level of pampering the only acceptable environment now?
- exBarrelSpoiler 9y ago
  Stripe is renowned for having a good corporate culture.
  - blerpozut 9y ago
    Stripe is a lot smaller than Airbnb (by headcount, but also financials probably). But it's growing quickly, and things have already started to degrade. So, it's coming. On the other hand, they are very savvy about branding and comms, so they should be able to defy reality for a while ;) Seriously, they don't get credit for how good they are at this. And they probably wouldn't want that credit if they got it! (You know that piece about FB's "far-reaching tentacles" from the other day? I wonder why we haven't seen anything similar about Stripe yet. Hmmmm...)
- pille 9y ago
  Probably some selection bias in the stories. It's not as much fun to read about a pretty good place to work.
  - exBarrelSpoiler 9y ago
    Maybe the positive stories are from those who have experienced survivor bias
- caoilte 9y ago
  respecting your engineers is not pampering
- vertex-four 9y ago
  Or perhaps, alternatively, current common corporate structures tend to breed toxic environments and terrible management practices.
coo 9y ago
If you feed the SJW monster, don't be surprised when comes to eat you.
- cooper12 9y ago
  What on earth does anything in this article have to do with SJWs? Are they just the latest bogeyman to stand for "everything I don't like" for you?
Dowwie 9y ago
Take caution with this kind of hyperbole. AirBnB has grown enough that it is now an organization of organizations. Top-down culture is subordinated by the culture of the immediate group. It's entirely possible that these negative experiences happen within some but not all of the groups in the company. So, it's incorrect to draw an assumption that the entire company consists of toxic practices.
- z1c 9y ago
  Created an account just for this: I work at Airbnb (as an engineer). Fact is, most of the negativity seems to be coming from non-engineers since Airbnb has been trying to scale out its customer support and facilities staff by bringing people on as contractors. This is all pretty new and it's really not surprising there are growing pains. But in the past, they've been really good about addressing issues so I'd be really surprised if this doesn't get better in a year. As for engineering, it's still fantastic place to work. Right now, it's very much in a transitional phase but the good news is they've kept the hiring bar high and are bringing on plenty of talented people (lots of experienced ex-FB, ex-Twitter, and ex-Googlers hopping ship to join us). Yeah, the internal tooling needs work. Yeah, it's still kinda chaotic. But given the kind of growth we've seen, I'd be surprised if there weren't issues.
- employee8000 9y ago
  Do you feel the same way about Uber?
  - Dowwie 9y ago
    This article is about AirBnB, right? Stick to the subject. This isn't Reddit.
perseusprime11 9y ago
I see this as a recurring problem with companies that publish a culture deck. It seems like the companies with culture problems are the ones that arr emphasizing culture with these so called decks on freedom, autonomy and bean bags.
jorgec 9y ago
If you are good at your job and you are treated as trash then its simple: move elsewhere. As a former project in chief, i found that the worst employees was the first one to complain for everything. However, i never fired somebody, i just let them go ;-) (a fancy way to say the same)
- ceejayoz 9y ago
  > i found that the worst employees was the first one to complain for everything This sounds like a great way to dismiss any complaint you don't want to hear.
  - EpicEng 9y ago
    Not at all. The parent was talking about a pattern of behavior, not an isolated incident. I've had the same experience; some people just want to make a problem out of everything instead of chosing their battles wisely and finding workable solution.
- ljw1001 9y ago
  Clearly, people want the IPO. I suspect economists would argue that the potential for an outsized reward that makes people reluctant to leave, reduces the management incentive to "invest" in keeping employees happy.
- cjrp 9y ago
  > If you are good at your job and you are treated as trash then its simple: move elsewhere. I think that's good advice, and easy to see from the outside, but when you're involved personally it can sometimes be hard to see what's best in the long run.
- sngz 9y ago
  you sound like a great manager
noway421 9y ago
Can't wait to see Brian Chesky arguing with a troubled landlord at one's property.
zxcvvcxz 9y ago
I keep hearing the phrase "evade regulations" with regards to Airbnb, Uber, et al. Why not "increase efficiency", "increase consumer choice", "reduce prices", or something more positive? As a user of both services (on both sides for Airbnb) I've been quite happy. "Evade regulations" - let's have some context here people. Think about all the ridiculous things that used to be illegal due to regulations. And all the things that currently are, and are hampering small businesses [0]. We should aim to reduce regulations on transactions between private parties, especially when these transactions leave both parties better off. [0] - http://www.businessinsider.com/ridiculous-regulations-big-government-2010-11 http://www.businessinsider.com/ridiculous-regulations-big-go...
- acdha 9y ago
  Those are huge companies which employ plenty of marketing & PR people. Why should anyone else spin on their behalf without getting paid? Similarly, while not everything the government does is perfect or the best way to accomplish a particular goal but it's really important to remember that there's a huge industry pushing outrageous stories to get public support for gutting regulations which really matter. We've seen this with e.g. Steven Milloy (the junkscience.com operator) who got his start shilling for the tobacco companies and is a reliable anti-science voice anywhere a large company is trying to halt or reverse regulations. He was one of the leading voices in a quixotic-seeming DDT crusade which turned out to be an attempt to discredit the WHO in Africa when their anti-smoking campaign was cutting into profits[1]. Any time you read one of these outrageous law stories, the first thing you want to check is what it actually says, followed very closely by asking who benefits from you getting outraged by that story or becoming primed to overreact to the concept in general. Going with that BI story, note that the only source for the first claim is a right-wing activist group. The actual statute very clearly shows that they're misrepresenting the law because it actually applies only to forensics work collecting evidence for a court: http://www.legis.state.tx.us/tlodocs/80R/billtext/html/HB02833F.htm http://www.legis.state.tx.us/tlodocs/80R/billtext/html/HB028... Since that story was based on the Institute for Justice's claims and that's full of lawyers, it seems quite unlikely that this is an innocent mistake caused by ignorance of the law rather than a blatant propaganda effort relying on the fact that most people hit forward without checking the sources. 1. http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/rehabilitatingcarson http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/rehabilitatingcar...
macspoofing 9y ago
So is this the beginning of the next internet mob to take take down another Silicon Valley darling?
kartan 9y ago
* Headcount: 2368 people* * Hired in 2015: 1160 people https://www.quora.com/How-many-employees-does-Airbnb-have-1 https://www.quora.com/How-many-employees-does-Airbnb-have-1 I worked in a company with similar growing speed. And things went from good to bad. Everything starts with the size of the company. Upper management stops being related with what most of their employees do. So they start to take bad decisions promoting the wrong people. That didn't happen when the company was 500 people, as upper management knew most of them and knew personally the people that they were promoting. That is lost way before getting to the 2000 employees mark. First-time managers promoted ad-hoc to fill the ranks are not able to deal with the company complexity. So now you have employees used to voice their concerns, to be pro-active, and demanding explanations from management decisions. But management is now mediocre and is not able to attend the needs of high performing employees. The company tries to play cool, but the people that believed in that way of working is long gone. Silos start to pop up everywhere. Departments try to protect themselves from the chaos. The first to leave is the leaders of the company. Those people were the ones-to-go when you had a problem, they maybe never became managers and just wanted to mind their business. For them is easy to find new jobs and they are tired of fighting the new bureaucracy. I don't know what happens next. The company I left is at this stage. Maybe things get better, maybe they just fail. But I guess that this "best company to work" just becomes a normal big company, and that's all.
bpatel576 9y ago
I'm going to be honest here and tell you guys that I didn't read most of the article. The more I come across these headlines the more I start to feel maybe these people that are complaining are feeling a little bit to entitled. I wonder how they would feel if they were working at a small publicly owned company out in Indiana. Fix the contrast bias and maybe you wouldn't feel so bad about where you work.
- mythrwy 9y ago
  Yes. After the things I've had to do and the people I've had to put up during working career it's hard not to think "self entitled whiner!" when seeing these types of headlines. Which might not be the case in this instance, but it's definitely the first thought that comes to mind.
dennisgorelik 9y ago
All complaints that this article quoted are too generic. For example, what specifically, does "people are treated like cattle" mean?

178 points by rblion 9y ago

It makes sense, if you compare it to the conditions of the hosts. I got people for a year and this is remarkable: — Not host, nor guests are legally related to AirBnB. Hence, none of the parties is really protected, even if ABnB talks about "insurance". — Not even the help desk is AirBnB. As they call them, they are "community helpers", and their help is not legally linked to AirBnB. — They changed the conditions just because, and they place them as you go in for you to accept them. If you disagree, you have to remove yourself from the platform via email. — They promise a plan of prizes for good hosts. It seems that most of your ratings should be high. It turns statistically impossible once your go into the real conditions: must be evaluated by +80% of your hosts, and +80% of your score must be five stars (or similar). — They don't pay your social security, welcoming time, help, and after all anything we call "added value". — Nevertheless, they added surreptitious-yet-public evaluation for things nobody is paying for, like being the tourist guide of someone who is getting a room for 10€/night. — They do not care about hosts opinions, in spite they are the ones putting the real value on the platform, paying taxes for it, doing the face-to-face with the end client, etc. If your guests arrive 8 hours early and they complain you didn't received them, the bad scoring is on you (happened). If your hosts leave a mess behind, AirBnB evaluates if they should cover it for the shake of their public image, or if they rather claim that according to the rules that is not covered. Everybody is free to do whatever, but after my experience I trust hotels more than anything.

saghm 9y ago
> They promise a plan of prizes for good hosts....[You] must be evaluated by +80% of your hosts. > If your hosts leave a mess behind, AirBnB evaluates if they should cover it for the shake of their public image It seems like the word "host" is being used for both "host" and "guest" in a few places, and I'm having trouble parsing a lot of trouble fully understanding this comment because of it.
- ubikretail 9y ago
  My apologies. I'm not a native speaker and switched the words as I spoke. You are right: > [You] must be evaluated by +80% of your GUESTS." > If your GUESTS leave a mess behind, AirBnB evaluates if they should cover it for the shake of their public image.
  - saghm 9y ago
    No worries! Thanks for clarifying

gaius 9y ago

Whether its illegal sublets or unlicensed minicabs, you can't operate a business designed to evade regulation without that attitude eventually permeating its entire corporate culture. Welcome to "disruption".

XJOKOLAT 9y ago
Boom. Thank you.
patrickaljord 9y ago
What about arbitrary regulations that were designed to artificially limit supply and increase prices on customers and the fact that these regulations won't go away because too few people know about them and there's a lobby giving millions to law makers to make sure they won't go away? How is that not corruption in anything but in name? How can Airbnb and others fight against these corrupt regulations when they were design to keep new comers and innovators out and incumbents in? It's a dirty game and if you want to play, or change things, you have to get dirty too. I'm glad they're doing it. Same as when you prohibit drug or alcool, it's still going to happen but way more dirty. Who's to blame though? Willing adults who want to partake peacefully in their preferred activities or regulators armed with guns trying to prevent from doing these peaceful things? Hm...
- dilemma 9y ago
  You're talking about housing which is a business Airbnb is not in.
  - ljw1001 9y ago
    If anything, Airbnb is in the business of converting housing to hotel space. Many units are hosted by people who buy them to rent to tourists, reducing the housing stock.
- pille 9y ago
  Airbnb is a profit-seeking corporation, not a public interest group. They're not out to fight the good fight against "arbitrary regulation" any more than hotels are being evil by supporting it. If you don't like the law, you can vote, run for office, volunteer, donate to a candidate or nonprofit, or bother your elected officials. I'm no fan of lobbying ("corruption in anything but name"—sweetheart gigs for sympathetic representatives once they get out of office), but it's legal for AirBnb to do this too.

rl3 9y ago

I've often heard that it's extremely difficult to maintain any real culture or ethos beyond the amount of employees the CEO can personally manage, and that number is around 40-50. AirBnB is far beyond that, so it's no wonder. The larger the company, the more it's going to decay and suck. The degree to which it does is a function of management style and org structure. Of course, Kool-Aid doesn't help matters—especially at scale where it rings hollow.

qq66 9y ago
Lots of large companies have strong corporate cultures, good and bad. Southwest Airlines, Uber, UPS, Apple...
- rl3 9y ago
  I'd argue each of those qualify as overall bad, however I can't really think of a single example of good corporate culture at that scale regardless. Perhaps good culture at that scale is simply the absence of culture—beyond simple items like accountability that largely boil down to "have a spine". If Kool-Aid doesn't work at scale, then better to not push it at all.
  - george_morgan 9y ago
    BBC, USMC?
    - gaius 9y ago
      Maybe not such good examples given Jimmy Saville and the recent Facebook scandal with the naked female marines photos being shared.
      - jk563 9y ago
        Bad incidents, but I found the culture at the BBC to be fantastic 3-4 years ago.
  - 9y ago

abhinai 9y ago

Heard similar stuff from a friend who used to work at AirBnb. He was an ex-Facebook engineer who quit AirBnB even before his stocks vested because we was so unhappy at this company. I am really surprised. Things are going well for them as a company. Why do they want to screw it up for themselves?

exBarrelSpoiler 9y ago
Did he say why he was unhappy? Just look at the Frightful Five. At least two of them are renowned for having brutal, sometimes abusive, corporate cultures. Three if you include stack ranking-era Microsoft. Having an awful culture doesn't preclude business success.
- ralfd 9y ago
  I only hear bad stuff about Amazon, they churn through fresh graduates. Apple has this whole secrecy stick, but people stay long term there, even when (especiall when?) working for Jobs. I dont recall any negative stuff about Facebook. Google would frighten me personally, because everyone is smarter than me and I would sink as a rock. Microsofts stack ranking seemed like institutional crippling.
  - xkcd-sucks 9y ago
    If you get in to the right department at Google, everyone is smart enough to not work too hard. Finding these departments can be difficult as they're also smart enough to appear hardworking
  - exBarrelSpoiler 9y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9342994 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9342994 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12502336 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12502336 https://mic.com/articles/154788/apple-employees-say-their-mental-health-issues-came-from-alleged-hostile-work-environment https://mic.com/articles/154788/apple-employees-say-their-me...
- 9y ago

chx 9y ago

One data point does not make a whole lot but let me point this out: https://www.airbnb.ca/rooms/8618464 https://www.airbnb.ca/rooms/8618464 this here is a shit road side motel. I cancelled it when I realized and I reported it but it's still there more than a year later. It's trivial to check what it is: there are no houses at the junction. https://goo.gl/maps/WsPwXxa22ho https://goo.gl/maps/WsPwXxa22ho If you check the hosts' reviews it turns out he is airbnb'ing out the hotel rooms of his father all over Israel. This is blatantly visible and yet Airbnb lets it. Samples: "The staff at the hotel" "The place is more like a cheap hotel or a hostel (not a "home" like other Airbnb places I've rented in the past). " My trip was awesome nonetheless, brief report http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/25981843-post8.html http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/25981843-post8.html here.

bigbugbag 9y ago
AirBnB is known for having illegal listings and keeping them because profit, while also quietly removing them right before legal trouble or to sanitize their books before showing them. http://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-deleted-rentals-before-showing-data-2016-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-deleted-rentals-before...
ubikretail 9y ago
I quit AirBnB as they pushed me to accept the new terms or either chase them on the email to cancel my property offer. It happened that some people came by saying they had just reserved, and I told them I had nothing to offer. It's been +2 months and my room is still there. I am talking about foreign people finding they have no place to sleep. AirBnB doesn't care, as long as they have stock to bait.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
ig1 9y ago
As far as I know AirBnB isn't restricted to private homes other than in specific cites which have legal restrictions, non-residential premises are allowed (on the listing you link to in question it's marked as a B&B rather than a private house).

MichaelBurge 9y ago

Large companies have enough disgruntled employees that even the laziest journalists can find a few to generate some outrage, which drives views/clicks to their site. Since AirBNB is a well-known name, people on HN will tend to upvote it and commenters will self-select for people who want to rant about AirBNB. That's 3 selection biases here: Visibility on HN(selects for an "interesting" story, not truth), disgruntled employees, comments will want to rant about AirBNB. It's almost certainly a mistake to judge them negatively based on this story. > In 2015, Glassdoor ranked the company as the #1 place to work, in 2017 that ranking dropped to 35th, and many employees are speaking out. 35th "best place to work" and "people are treated like cattle"? Somebody's giving you misleading statistics: Either it's Glassdoor.com, or the managing editor of "broke-ass stuart". I don't think there's a single company above 10,000 employees that you couldn't force a similar framing on.

exBarrelSpoiler 9y ago
#36 is Apple and #37 is Microsoft. I suspect that once you get to that level those happiness ratings spiral into meaninglessness. Especially when the companies involved are huge.
- lostlogin 9y ago
  Good point. Ranking it by company is rather meaningless when they are multinational. How else could it be done though? By country? State/province?
  - user5994461 9y ago
    Glassdoor has ranking by country.
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    For Microsoft, ranking by building might be effective. Happiness in building 12 vs. building 42 will be very different.
    - 9y ago

nikanj 9y ago

Are our standards for "toxic" and "terrible management" too low, when the only company without these is Etsy? Is their level of pampering the only acceptable environment now?

exBarrelSpoiler 9y ago
Stripe is renowned for having a good corporate culture.
- blerpozut 9y ago
  Stripe is a lot smaller than Airbnb (by headcount, but also financials probably). But it's growing quickly, and things have already started to degrade. So, it's coming. On the other hand, they are very savvy about branding and comms, so they should be able to defy reality for a while ;) Seriously, they don't get credit for how good they are at this. And they probably wouldn't want that credit if they got it! (You know that piece about FB's "far-reaching tentacles" from the other day? I wonder why we haven't seen anything similar about Stripe yet. Hmmmm...)
pille 9y ago
Probably some selection bias in the stories. It's not as much fun to read about a pretty good place to work.
- exBarrelSpoiler 9y ago
  Maybe the positive stories are from those who have experienced survivor bias
caoilte 9y ago
respecting your engineers is not pampering
vertex-four 9y ago
Or perhaps, alternatively, current common corporate structures tend to breed toxic environments and terrible management practices.

coo 9y ago

If you feed the SJW monster, don't be surprised when comes to eat you.

cooper12 9y ago
What on earth does anything in this article have to do with SJWs? Are they just the latest bogeyman to stand for "everything I don't like" for you?

Dowwie 9y ago

Take caution with this kind of hyperbole. AirBnB has grown enough that it is now an organization of organizations. Top-down culture is subordinated by the culture of the immediate group. It's entirely possible that these negative experiences happen within some but not all of the groups in the company. So, it's incorrect to draw an assumption that the entire company consists of toxic practices.

z1c 9y ago
Created an account just for this: I work at Airbnb (as an engineer). Fact is, most of the negativity seems to be coming from non-engineers since Airbnb has been trying to scale out its customer support and facilities staff by bringing people on as contractors. This is all pretty new and it's really not surprising there are growing pains. But in the past, they've been really good about addressing issues so I'd be really surprised if this doesn't get better in a year. As for engineering, it's still fantastic place to work. Right now, it's very much in a transitional phase but the good news is they've kept the hiring bar high and are bringing on plenty of talented people (lots of experienced ex-FB, ex-Twitter, and ex-Googlers hopping ship to join us). Yeah, the internal tooling needs work. Yeah, it's still kinda chaotic. But given the kind of growth we've seen, I'd be surprised if there weren't issues.
employee8000 9y ago
Do you feel the same way about Uber?
- Dowwie 9y ago
  This article is about AirBnB, right? Stick to the subject. This isn't Reddit.

perseusprime11 9y ago

I see this as a recurring problem with companies that publish a culture deck. It seems like the companies with culture problems are the ones that arr emphasizing culture with these so called decks on freedom, autonomy and bean bags.

jorgec 9y ago

If you are good at your job and you are treated as trash then its simple: move elsewhere. As a former project in chief, i found that the worst employees was the first one to complain for everything. However, i never fired somebody, i just let them go ;-) (a fancy way to say the same)

ceejayoz 9y ago
> i found that the worst employees was the first one to complain for everything This sounds like a great way to dismiss any complaint you don't want to hear.
- EpicEng 9y ago
  Not at all. The parent was talking about a pattern of behavior, not an isolated incident. I've had the same experience; some people just want to make a problem out of everything instead of chosing their battles wisely and finding workable solution.
ljw1001 9y ago
Clearly, people want the IPO. I suspect economists would argue that the potential for an outsized reward that makes people reluctant to leave, reduces the management incentive to "invest" in keeping employees happy.
cjrp 9y ago
> If you are good at your job and you are treated as trash then its simple: move elsewhere. I think that's good advice, and easy to see from the outside, but when you're involved personally it can sometimes be hard to see what's best in the long run.
sngz 9y ago
you sound like a great manager

noway421 9y ago

Can't wait to see Brian Chesky arguing with a troubled landlord at one's property.

zxcvvcxz 9y ago

I keep hearing the phrase "evade regulations" with regards to Airbnb, Uber, et al. Why not "increase efficiency", "increase consumer choice", "reduce prices", or something more positive? As a user of both services (on both sides for Airbnb) I've been quite happy. "Evade regulations" - let's have some context here people. Think about all the ridiculous things that used to be illegal due to regulations. And all the things that currently are, and are hampering small businesses [0]. We should aim to reduce regulations on transactions between private parties, especially when these transactions leave both parties better off. [0] - http://www.businessinsider.com/ridiculous-regulations-big-government-2010-11 http://www.businessinsider.com/ridiculous-regulations-big-go...

acdha 9y ago
Those are huge companies which employ plenty of marketing & PR people. Why should anyone else spin on their behalf without getting paid? Similarly, while not everything the government does is perfect or the best way to accomplish a particular goal but it's really important to remember that there's a huge industry pushing outrageous stories to get public support for gutting regulations which really matter. We've seen this with e.g. Steven Milloy (the junkscience.com operator) who got his start shilling for the tobacco companies and is a reliable anti-science voice anywhere a large company is trying to halt or reverse regulations. He was one of the leading voices in a quixotic-seeming DDT crusade which turned out to be an attempt to discredit the WHO in Africa when their anti-smoking campaign was cutting into profits[1]. Any time you read one of these outrageous law stories, the first thing you want to check is what it actually says, followed very closely by asking who benefits from you getting outraged by that story or becoming primed to overreact to the concept in general. Going with that BI story, note that the only source for the first claim is a right-wing activist group. The actual statute very clearly shows that they're misrepresenting the law because it actually applies only to forensics work collecting evidence for a court: http://www.legis.state.tx.us/tlodocs/80R/billtext/html/HB02833F.htm http://www.legis.state.tx.us/tlodocs/80R/billtext/html/HB028... Since that story was based on the Institute for Justice's claims and that's full of lawyers, it seems quite unlikely that this is an innocent mistake caused by ignorance of the law rather than a blatant propaganda effort relying on the fact that most people hit forward without checking the sources. 1. http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/rehabilitatingcarson http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/rehabilitatingcar...

macspoofing 9y ago

So is this the beginning of the next internet mob to take take down another Silicon Valley darling?

kartan 9y ago

* Headcount: 2368 people* * Hired in 2015: 1160 people https://www.quora.com/How-many-employees-does-Airbnb-have-1 https://www.quora.com/How-many-employees-does-Airbnb-have-1 I worked in a company with similar growing speed. And things went from good to bad. Everything starts with the size of the company. Upper management stops being related with what most of their employees do. So they start to take bad decisions promoting the wrong people. That didn't happen when the company was 500 people, as upper management knew most of them and knew personally the people that they were promoting. That is lost way before getting to the 2000 employees mark. First-time managers promoted ad-hoc to fill the ranks are not able to deal with the company complexity. So now you have employees used to voice their concerns, to be pro-active, and demanding explanations from management decisions. But management is now mediocre and is not able to attend the needs of high performing employees. The company tries to play cool, but the people that believed in that way of working is long gone. Silos start to pop up everywhere. Departments try to protect themselves from the chaos. The first to leave is the leaders of the company. Those people were the ones-to-go when you had a problem, they maybe never became managers and just wanted to mind their business. For them is easy to find new jobs and they are tired of fighting the new bureaucracy. I don't know what happens next. The company I left is at this stage. Maybe things get better, maybe they just fail. But I guess that this "best company to work" just becomes a normal big company, and that's all.

bpatel576 9y ago

I'm going to be honest here and tell you guys that I didn't read most of the article. The more I come across these headlines the more I start to feel maybe these people that are complaining are feeling a little bit to entitled. I wonder how they would feel if they were working at a small publicly owned company out in Indiana. Fix the contrast bias and maybe you wouldn't feel so bad about where you work.

mythrwy 9y ago
Yes. After the things I've had to do and the people I've had to put up during working career it's hard not to think "self entitled whiner!" when seeing these types of headlines. Which might not be the case in this instance, but it's definitely the first thought that comes to mind.

dennisgorelik 9y ago

All complaints that this article quoted are too generic. For example, what specifically, does "people are treated like cattle" mean?