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Citing revenue declines, Airbnb cuts 25% of workforce
- nightshadetrie 6y agoThe most famous unicorn bleeds today.
- drwl 6y agoA lot of tech is getting hit, it seems like Airbnb is more in the spotlight
- remote_phone 6y agoFANG is surviving, if not thriving. A lot of famous companies will disappear in the next 9 months. This feels a lot like the dotcom bust to me.
- dillonmckay 6y agoAll global companies, too.
- three_seagrass 6y agoQ1 results only cover a few weeks of the lock down. FAANGs require consumers to continue spending, and with 30+ million unemployed, that's a lot less disposable income and piling debt. We won't be able to fully see the results of the pandemic in the FAANGs until early Q3.
- DamnYuppie 6y agoWhy do people consider AirBnB tech? They are a services company with a website connecting external parties. This isn't hard tech, this is marketing. Edit: It seems people are under the impression that because you have lots of technology that is required to run your company you are a technology company. I don't believe that to be true in this day and age, tire distributors probably have more technology requirements then AirBnB does but we don't consider them tech companies. By the same token I wouldn't consider Expedia/Travelocity etc to be tech companies either the use tech to provide a service.
- keiferski 6y agoI’d probably put them in the same category as Etsy: tech-enabled marketplaces.
- GuiA 6y agoShortest answer: because they went through YC.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- KoftaBob 6y agoTheir core business is a marketplace connecting travelers to hosts and their homes/rooms. That marketplace is software. If you're a company selling a service that is completely software based, are you not a tech company? By the definition you seem to be using, the only companies that can be considered tech are enterprise SaaS.
- Barrin92 6y agoThe defining feature of tech is marginal cost of production close to zero at scale . Meaning, as you grow your business you increasingly automate away human labour. That's why Instagram was worth billions with 13 employees. You're not a technology company just because you rely on software. Walmart makes software too, much more of it than airbnb actually. You're a technology company if you automate away human labour. This doesn't really seem to be the case for most of these 'marketplace' companies which is reflected in their margins. They just have to keep adding more labour as they expand.
- decafninja 6y agoMy personal take on what defines a "tech company" is a company that understands and respects that tech drives its business and thus treats its tech employees with respect. Almost every large company is tech driven these days. But in a lot of them, tech is considered more of a necessary evil "cost center". The tech employees are treated as second class citizens compared to the marketers, salespeople, traders, etc. who are the "profit center". A big investment bank (disclosure: I work at one) arguably has more tech running through its veins these days than say, Airbnb. But I would firmly classify Airbnb as a "tech company" per the above definition, and the bank as "not a tech company".
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- gaukes 6y agoAcquisition target IMO. While AirBnb bleeds, the FANGs continue to pile up cash. Google, Facebook, and Apple all have enough cash to buy several AirBnbs rn.
- vkou 6y agoYes, but instead of buying several AirBnBs, they could instead buy dozens of smaller startups that are not operating in the hospitality industry - which is going to recover much slower than most forms of B2B or B2C.
- gaukes 6y agoThose industries would also be hurting less which means a smaller discount. Meanwhile, long-term prospects for AirBnb have not changed. Disease existed before COVID and will exist after COVID.
- rightbyte 6y agoThe mass tourism boom in the year prior to Covid19 might not be the new normal.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago> Meanwhile, long-term prospects for AirBnb have not changed. Disease existed before COVID and will exist after COVID. Not sure I 100% agree with this. AirBnB's bread-and-butter was urban rentals. Even before Covid, there was huge backlash against AirBnB in a lot of those locales. Now, especially after you saw huge numbers of AirBnB's convert to long term rentals (really laying bare the nonsense of the "AirBnB doesn't take from long term rental stock" argument), I think you'll see tons of cities accelerate their plans to ban lots of short-term rentals in their current form, and these cities and society at large will become a lot more hostile to AirBnBs in residential neighborhoods.
- gaukes 6y agoI agree that there is a general backlash against AirBnb in certain locales but this was a risk before COVID too. I don't see how COVID would compel cities to move FASTER to ban short-term rentals. During a time like this, aggressively cutting down a good business (for property owners) seems like a bad move in general. The conversion of short-term -> long-term is a side effect of reduce demand. Once demand picks back up, supply will return.
- fapi1974 6y agoThey are definitely doing right by their employees, which is commendable.
- fancyfish 6y agoAgreed. Shoutout to AirBnB management who made the best of the tough situation and did the right thing.
- dorchadas 6y agoI'll agree with that, even given how much I hate AirBnB as a company for what they've done to local housing in cities. They're at least doing the right thing here.
- dehrmann 6y agoAgreed. Remember to pay attention to how companies are treating their employees now and consider that the next time you're looking.
- hm8 6y agoI can only imagine how much it sucks to be laid off and what a difficult decision it must be for Airbnb executives. To me, the severance and exit benefits do seem to strike an employee friendly tone. Kudos to the leadership to striking a good balance on keeping the business alive and doing right by their people.
- justaguyhere 6y agoThese are abnormal circumstances. I wonder if it is possible to delay the layoffs by cutting salaries - maybe instead of firing 5 out of 10 equally paid people, they can cut the salaries of all 10 people by half (or something like that). Any which way these are hard decisions :(
- pedrosorio 6y agoCutting salaries in half guarantees they lose all the top performers, and probably more than half, instead of the 5 they pick. I don't believe that is the goal.
- tempsy 6y agoLyft cut salaries in addition to layoffs
- knd775 6y agoCertainly not by half, though
- justaguyhere 6y agoYes, during normal times. But these are not normal times - like, who is hiring now? If I were a top performer, I'd take a salary cut if it means saving my colleague's job. I get what you are saying though. They are a business and I guess they're doing what is best for their business. The severance package is generous (relatively speaking), so there's at least that. Edit : I guess I didn't word this properly. I was saying they'd lose top performers if their salaries are cut, during normal times.
- monkeyfacebag 6y ago14 weeks of pay + 1 week / year seems like a silver lining in an otherwise bad circumstance.
- vikramkr 6y agoThe health insurance too. That's huge and really important for US employees, multiplied 10x in a pandemic.
- ryanwaggoner 6y agoSeparated employees will receive 14 weeks of pay, and one more week for each year served at the company (rounding partial years up). The firm is also dropping its one-year equity cliff so that employees who are laid off with under 12 months of tenure can buy their vested options; Airbnb will also provide 12 months of health insurance through COBRA in the United States, and health care coverage through 2020 in the rest of the world. Layoffs always suck, no matter what, but this is laudable behavior on their part.
- keiferski 6y agoSeparated employees will receive 14 weeks of pay, and one more week for each year served at the company (rounding partial years up). The firm is also dropping its one-year equity cliff so that employees who are laid off with under 12 months of tenure can buy their vested options; Airbnb will also provide 12 months of health insurance through COBRA in the United States, and health care coverage through 2020 in the rest of the world. That strikes me as a pretty generous severance package.
- actuator 6y agoDropping the cliff period for new employees is pretty much useless. The equity/ESOPs new employees will be exercising will be of the last valuation price which would be already high, and after Covid-19, with the struggles of tourism industry as such the notional value would have fallen a lot. So if you exercise those significantly expensive options now, you would probably need to hold it for a long time and really believe that AirBnB can be where it was.
- lucasmullens 6y agoFrom some other comments it sounds like they're RSUs, not options.
- actuator 6y agoWhy do you need to buy the RSUs then? Don't you already get them once they vest.
- truthwhisperer 6y agodoes it matter? You want to make the world a better place right? Or is the world defined as a 50^2 place somewhere in a too expensive part of the world .. hmm
- hilbertseries 6y agoI think there was a 1 year vesting cliff, so if you get laid off before a year you get your rsus prorated instead of getting nothing.
- lacker 6y agoThere are going to be a lot of tough decisions for people who have to decide whether to buy their Airbnb options or lose them. I bet a lot of people at Airbnb are wishing they went public before all this.
- capocannoniere 6y agoWhile Airbnb is clearly going through a rough patch right now, there is a clear bull-case argument for why Airbnb will emerge stronger than it's ever been after this: - Airbnb has sufficient cash in the bank to survive the crisis. - A significant % of hotels and budget chains will not survive the crisis --> decreased competitor supply - People will be looking for budget options when traveling --> increased demand for Airbnb - People will seek to make extra income to make ends meet --> increased supply for Airbnb
- elliekelly 6y agoBetween the recession and a general fear of unnecessary travel during coronavirus I doubt there will be increased demand for Airbnb.
- Apocryphon 6y agoAirbnb hosts converting properties into 6-month or longer term rentals --> decreased supply for Airbnb
- dorchadas 6y agoAnd, hopefully, just hopefully, governments will actually step in and stop the supply from going back to AirBnB, helping alleviate some of the housing crisis in their country (I know AirBnB is a huge issue in Ireland, and several of my Irish friends are praying it fails to force all those apartments and houses back on the market; I am myself, as I'm possibly moving there this fall for a masters.)
- vzidex 6y agoThe funniest case will be if governments don't even have to step in - I've read cases of AirBNB hosts being extremely overleveraged in their "investment" properties. With some luck, they'll be forced to sell or convert to long-term rentals (which are _very_ strongly protected where I live) to avoid defaulting on the cheap debt they gorged on.
- dabeeeenster 6y agoMaybe they could pay some UK corporation tax next
- exogeny 6y agoIf any iOS engineers from Airbnb are in this thread and looking for what's next, happy to chat. Email in bio.
- nopriorarrests 6y ago>According to Chesky’s missive, Airbnb anticipates its 2020 revenue coming in under 50% of 2019’s total Very optimistic. They should be happy to get around 25% of 2019 totals.
- DrRobinson 6y agoTo be fair, that's under 50%
- filoleg 6y agoOnce places open up in a few months, I expect a massive short-term surge in demand for AirBnB lodging. I know for a fact that by the end of summer (assuming places open up like planned), I will start traveling again. And I will be doing no less traveling this year than I would any other year. Of course, that won't be the case for everyone, but keeping that in mind, the 50% revenue drop seems like a pretty reasonable expectation.
- ashconnor 6y agoOur CEO emailed today we are work from home until September. I'm told Amazon tech are work from home until October. At this point I doubt I'll see my office in 2020. I definitely won't be travelling.
- filoleg 6y agoGood for you. For us, it was announced as an optional WFH, entirely at the employee discretion (unless they are in a role that has hard requirements of being in the office, like hardware engineering), until October. To me, that sounds like a perfect opportunity to work remote on a nice beach during the day, and enjoy my time during the evening in a new place, without having to take days off for that. I get concerns of some people like you, and I am not trying to diminish your choice to stay at home. But your take on this is not representative of what everyone else will be doing (and neither is mine, hence why I expect AirBnB to still have that 50% revenue drop), so I wouldn't discount my original point based on that.
- 6y ago
- corporateslave5 6y agoWhat isn’t commonly known is that Airbnb has one of the most biased engineering hiring practices in the industry. Chinese individuals at the company regularly share interview questions through wechat groups. Preferring to hire their own. Extremely dishonest hiring culture is pervasive through engineering. Don’t believe me? Look at their engineers on LinkedIn
- noad 6y agoYou know you don't have to emulate the awful boomer who gave you this shitty worldview. You can just stop, any time you want.
- actuator 6y agoPlease don't post messages like these, it doesn't really help with the discussion. Also, just because maybe they have more folks from one ethnicity than most companies have on average, doesn't prove this argument. Lastly, sites like Leetcode exist where people share questions too, I doubt that it is restricted to just one ethnicity.
- pedrosorio 6y agoHow is this relevant to the topic?
- bzb3 6y agoIt may not be relevant to the topic but it's interesting nonetheless, especially if someone is looking for a job there.
- pedrosorio 6y agoAirbnb froze hiring more than a month ago. They just laid-off 25% of their employees. Who is looking for a job there right now?
- actuator 6y agoIt feels bad that this happened to one of the companies with a very good engineering culture. The stuff they have put out in the open either on GitHub or through their blogs is a testament to that. I think any company will be lucky to have these folks.
- xwdv 6y agoGood engineering culture, bad company, user hostile.
- Apocryphon 6y agoDubious product quality: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22810407 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22810407
- baby 6y agoNot sure why you’re getting downvoted. I love travelling with Airbnb but they are lying to users with displayed prices. There are plugins to see the real prices btw.
- tempsy 6y agoGood engineering culture...? Airbnb is a simple CRUD app...it’s hardly a shining example of hard deeply technical engineering problems that are fun and interesting to work on.
- alfalfasprout 6y agoThere's a great deal of recommendations, fraud detection, global payment complexity, etc. behind the CRUD app.
- tempsy 6y agoAll solved problems. Or at the very least not problems other companies don’t face as well.
- nacho2sweet 6y agoFinally some good covid news.
- jerzyt 6y agoDoes anyone know what percentage of the call centers are not actual employees but contractors? The contractors are usually demand based, therefore "invisible" in these stats.
- godzillabrennus 6y agoA lot of tech companies have relied on BPO (business process outsourcing) like TaskUs for call center workers. They try to take on fresh college graduates as employees in the Philippines for about $400/salary + benefits and try to resell them to companies as outsourced talent for about $1800/month.
- MattGaiser 6y agoCollege graduates? For call centres?
- kube-system 6y agoThey can't all work at Starbucks :D
- subsubzero 6y agoI know a few people who work over at airbnb, they are very generous with who they call an employee. Unless things have changed in the past year or so security guards and food staff(people who make meals onsite) are all full fledged employees who I assume get stock, I think this is awesome as a lot of these folks come from low income backgrounds and having full insurance and a extra bit of cash via salary and stock options goes a long way towards improving their lives.
- abhorrence 6y agoThings have changed (unless they changed back). Food hasn’t been in house for nearly two years. Only a small portion of customer support are direct employees. Most physical security was outsourced too.
- julesqs 6y agofor everyone praising the severance package, laid off employees at kickstarter are getting even more severance and full healthcare (not COBRA) because they unionized: https://twitter.com/ksr_united/status/1256382357311012871 https://twitter.com/ksr_united/status/1256382357311012871
- zebnyc 6y agothat is a pretty good severance. I was laid off from an ad-tech company based in SF in April and received 4 weeks of pay (I had worked there for almost 2 years)
- pb7 6y agoDoesn't look like more to me. Roughly same salary duration (would bet a pretty penny that Kickstarter doesn't pay nearly as much as Airbnb to begin with), significantly less health insurance, nothing about equity. That's what a union came up with for such a microscopic layoff compared to Airbnb? Sounds like the free market is better off deciding these things.
- julesqs 6y agooh I might be confused about the COBRA situation actually. I can't tell if Airbnb is actually paying for COBRA. aside from that, assuming that non-engineers get paid better at Airbnb than elsewhere is a big assumption.
- pb7 6y agoWill agree on the point regarding non-engineers. I would bet all else being equal they do, but will not fight over it as it's just an educated guess. With regards to COBRA, the premiums are certainly covered by AirBnb as COBRA is available to employees for 18 months by default and 36 months in California where AirBnb is headquartered.
- julesqs 6y agoright right, it was confusing to me that they mentioned COBRA but it does sound like Airbnb is paying, which is good.
- nsxwolf 6y agoMy initial reaction is "wow, nice severance package!" My secondary reaction is they must think things are going to be very bad for a very long time for this kind of payout to make sense financially.
- tempsy 6y agoDepending on the role not everyone is going to have an easy time finding another job. Technical roles sure but areas like marketing and recruiting no.
- greenyoda 6y ago> Technical roles sure... I'm not so sure. Recent news has been that lots of startups are laying people off and Google has slashed budgets and frozen (or at least scaled back) hiring across the company.[1] Companies like Google and Facebook that rely on ads for most of their revenue aren't going to be doing so well when a lot of the businesses that buy their ads are closed down. Companies like Apple that sell premium-priced goods are also not likely to do well in a recession - people who have lost their jobs or are afraid of losing their jobs won't be running out to buy a new iPhone. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/23/google-to-cut-marketing-budgets-hiring-freeze-expected.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/23/google-to-cut-marketing-budg...
- jlbnjmn 6y agoGood point. If they're wanting to part ways with 25% of the workforce now, covering 3 months of full salary and 12 months of expensive healthcare, they must be expecting fundamental market shifts. Also, the debt they took on may have been partly to cover these lavish severance packages while also extending the runway. And yes, this is extremely lavish. Paying severance that appears roughly equal to the median annual income in the USA.
- b212 6y ago"Good point. If they're wanting to part ways with 25% of the workforce now, covering 3 months of full salary and 12 months of expensive healthcare, they must be expecting fundamental market shifts." Why? Can't they rehire the people they laid off during this period?
- ProAm 6y agoI called this 3 weeks [1] ago and no one believed me. Were are going to see A LOT of this the next 3-4 months as large companies experience bad quarters. These are the companies that were setup and run well (i.e. not day to day, burning stacks of money with no revenue). [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22901720 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22901720
- ThisIsTheWay 6y agoMANY people called this, especially after they announced salary reductions at the top over a month ago. [0] This is not at all a surprise or unexpected. https://www.inman.com/2020/03/30/airbnb-announces-drastic-cost-saving-measures-to-survive-slowdown/ https://www.inman.com/2020/03/30/airbnb-announces-drastic-co...
- random42 6y agoSuch an odd 'I told you so' comment in a thread about thousands losing their livelihood.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ProAm 6y agoI guess I was bitter because of the argument I got when originally discussing it on HN. I do feel validated. It sucks for these employees but everyone working for a VC fueled startup lives in this same boat. They had to know at any moment they might get tossed overboard, they were going to have layoffs prior to IPO as is. And AirBNB has caused plenty of strife in the communities they operate in over the years, impact is always relative to ones perspective.
- banads 6y agoNow is a terrible time to be gloating about such things.
- ping_pong 6y agoI'm shocked that 2020 revenues will come in only 50% below 2019. I don't think anyone will be travelling for the bulk of this year, especially with the looming threat of potentially getting sick in a foreign country or away from your home. It will take 5+ years for them to get back the same level of inventory/hosts/customers as they had in 2019. Many hosts will foreclose on their rented properties during 2020 or convert to long-term rentals. Airbnb may lost inventory for multiple years, not just months. The second wave will be the nail in the coffin for a lot of companies, I think Airbnb is one of them unfortunately.
- eganist 6y ago> I'm shocked that 2020 revenues will come in only 50% below 2019 This is a fair point, but it also suggests strongly that a significant minority of their business is month to month rentals, possibly in place of leasing. And hey, being frank, I wouldn't mind considering going somewhere else for a few months now that I can work remotely for a while.
- blast 6y ago> a significant minority of their business is month to month rentals I was wondering about that too. My next-door neighbors vacated their place when the lockdown started, but someone else has been living there. Since they often rent their place on Airbnb for weekends, my assumption has been that this is another Airbnb renter. She's been there for over a month now.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ping_pong 6y agoI would too, but the thing holding me back is if the shit hits the fan, and I need to do something like buy a freezer to store extra food, I can't conveniently do that in an Airbnb. And if I somehow get sick, I'm at the mercy of the doctors and hospitals in this foreign land. I'd rather be in my own home with the doctors and hospital system that I'm familiar with. I think more than 50% of people feel this way, which is why I think a 50% cut in revenue is too little, I would say its more like an 80-85% cut in revenue. This is catastrophic for Airbnb.
- polskibus 6y agoI wonder how will the revenue drop be distributed globally. which countries, places will see the worst revenue drops. In such places there will be highest probability than some Airbnb landlords start selling off their properties - can be a good time for people who want to buy a place for themselves!
- bbgferreira 6y agoIn an effort to keep both the demand and supply sides of its marketplace healthy enough to survive hibernation, Airbnb has allowed users to cancel some reservations without penalty, and provided financial succor to its hosts. Unsure if this will ring true to most hosts. They were heavily penalized with full cancellations, while Airbnb issued vouchers. Airbnb will have to make a lot of effort to win hosts' trust back.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
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- asdff 6y agoGood. The faster Airbnb pulls out of my local housing market, the better for everyone else who lives here.
- ifeedmartians 6y agoseriously wtf. 1900 people lost their jobs and you think that's "Good". Check yourself
- nojito 6y agoairbnb has devastated large swaths of America.
- taurath 6y agoDevastated housing costs which were on a decade long uptrend before AirBNB existed you mean? Or because its capitalized rentals to a higher extent than the normal purchase/rental market could do?
- joyj2nd 6y agoAirBnB is a great business. I actually met the founders when they were just starting, handling out Obama 'O's as marketing gifts. Maybe should have asked them to join their company. This being said. Their business and bypassing of local laws has made many housing markets in touristic city insanely expensive. I know, some win, some lose but still, it is a major concern.
- asdff 6y agoIn the face of a housing crisis, the last thing you want to do is turn perfectly good housing stock into a de facto hotel. There are whole apartment buildings that have been turned into Airbnbs. The only work done in converting them was installing the cheapest flat screen TV possible, some futons and coffee tables from walmart, and a microwave. This maneuver can net a landlord twice as much money a month, and removes housing supply from the market in the process.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sriram_sun 6y agoA lot of people playing in the public markets should thank their lucky stars that Airbnb did not IPO a couple of years back!
- break_the_bank 6y agoThat is a nice way to look at it. It'd have been on my buy list if it were public.
- user5994461 6y agoPredicted that weeks ago. AirBnb is super bloated, they have a similar amount of employees as the other major travel groups but only serve a fraction of the products and customers https://thehftguy.com/2020/03/23/will-airbnb-go-bankrupt-and-when/ https://thehftguy.com/2020/03/23/will-airbnb-go-bankrupt-and... Good to hear that they are giving a decent severance package.
- ryneandal 6y ago> the company said that 1,900 employees will be laid off, or 25.3% of its 7,500 workers Thought I misread that the first time through. What did those 7,500 do?
- dangwu 6y agoTell us why you think 7,500 employees is too high, in order to implement, maintain, and grow an online lodging and experiences marketplace in 191 countries.
- user5994461 6y agohotels.com managed just fine with only 500 employees in their headquarters.
- dangwu 6y agoApples and oranges. Hotels.com is a middle-man. When you have a problem with your stay, you talk to the actual hotel, which has its own front desk, customer service, legal, engineering, business, marketing, blah blah blah, teams.
- kungato 6y agoMy family vacation house which we let got a visitor through hotels.com through expedia and we don't have anything you mentioned. My guess would be whatever something is called be it Hotels or AirBnB they are working with everyone in the business in some capacity
- mdamore 6y agoI can only hope this leads to a backlash against high growth companies staying private for so long. Along with their jobs, I imagine many AirBnb employees have lost a majority of their (paper) net worth because they were not given the opportunity to sell and diversify.
- duxup 6y agoI think if any employees were relying on that paper wealth... that's the problem. IMO People need to understand what that really is (usually not much) rather than blame the company.
- freewilly1040 6y agoThe point is that in this case there was real wealth that could have been released had they done an IPO
- duxup 6y agoIf not for COVID-19? When should they have IPOed?
- mdamore 6y agoWe're talking about a decade-old company with billions in revenue. If your job at AirBnb was your first chance to build any wealth, you never had the option to diversify. I don't think it's fair in that case to blame the employee. I don't necessarily blame the management either. I do hope this reminds employees of private companies that their equity is only on paper until they are able to sell, and they should pressure management to give them the option.
- thatsenough 6y agoOr, don’t get lured in by a company offering you huge compensation that you can’t actually touch (without realizing it’s a gamble). To be fair, even the cash compensation at Airbnb was supposedly pretty high. But I’m not sure whether that’s much consolation now, after they’ve been dangling a golden carrot in front of employees for years.
- supernova87a 6y agoIf Airbnb is willing to pay 14 weeks (3.25 months) of severance, they must believe this is going to go on significantly longer than that. Or they're using this as an opportunity to cut underperformers at the same time. Because if they believed things would start to recover by fall, wouldn't you just pay the people as normal and make a judgement call around then? You're spending the payroll money either way -- 14 weeks of severance and people stop working immediately, or 14 weeks of payroll and people are still working.
- ashtonkem 6y agoI personally suspect that travel related industries will be one of the last to recover, both due to consumer reticence and due to lower levels of disposable income during the recovery.
- toshk 6y agoMaybe but Im guessing there will be 1 to 3 months flights are open in summer and there will be lots of crazy partying and spending. (in Europe)
- baxtr 6y agoOh yeah. I feel like there are going to be totally crazy parties popping up everywhere like there is no tomorrow. And then we will have a spike in births around Feb/Mar 2021
- ashtonkem 6y agoOh yeah, there’ll be a baby boom, but it’ll all be first born children.
- karthikb 6y agoI'm not so sure. Airlines have sent huge numbers of their aircraft to the desert for storage, so quickly spinning up flight supply and then spinning that back down will be expensive.
- subsubzero 6y agoI'm glad the employees got a generous severance package, hopefully ISO's was misreported and the employees received RSU's instead, as it would be a burden on the employee to have to come up with cash to exercise during such a time. Its important to remember that Lyft and Airbnb also Uber are all heavily tied to travel which isn't happening now due to covid. With states reopening and warmer weather, plus a drug that reduces the duration of covid-19(remdesivir) things will hopefully be getting better. If and when a second wave comes more drugs could surface that show efficacy against the virus so it won't be all doom and gloom.
- nojito 6y agoAnother unicorn with a flawed business model poised to trim its bloated company. All signs are pointing to a bubble being popped. It's going to be interesting to see how the tech sector looks in 9-18 months from now
- b212 6y agoI'm wondering what's the ratio of IT folks to "others" in Airbnb, I suppose most of the workforce is customer service, human resources, legal and so forth? So maybe this cut won't touch engineering teams at all? After all dev teams can still do something during times like these (eg. trying to make other unicorns) but keeping big headcount in customer service is simply burning money...
- alfalfasprout 6y agoEng was hit hard-- particularly product-facing engineers.
- vmception 6y agoAw and you went to coding school to learn Ruby of Rails for the IPO and are now stuck with an irrelevant skillset. AirBnB is the only reason the bay area uses Ruby. All those startups stuck maintaining old code bases can only find talent because of attrition or rejects from AirBnB.
- Panini_Jones 6y agoDoesn't Airbnb use Ruby because Twitter uses Ruby?
- tomhoward 6y agoAirbnb and Twitter use Ruby for the same reason; Rails was the fastest way to bootstrap a working product in 2006-2008, when they both started out. When the issue comes up here these days, plenty of people argue it still is.
- spbaar 6y agoStripe, Doordash, Gusto, Flexport, Shopify
- tomashertus 6y agoThe is the most meaningless comment in the entire thread! How did you come up with your conclusion that RoR is irrelevant? Declining, yes, but irrelevant? Wake up kiddo...
- rootedbox 6y agoDoes anyone want to sleep at someone else's house they don't know??? At least not until there is a vaccine??
- Cyclone_ 6y agoI had a guest that destroyed thousands of dollars of property at my house weeks ago and it's still going through their claim process. They've been stalling for a while now and it's been extremely frustrating since no one in support seems to have any idea what's going on.
- joyj2nd 6y agoCan you elaborate? What and why did the guest destroy something?
- atomic77 6y agoWhile I don't want to seem like I'm wishing unemployment or hardship on anyone, the implosion of Airbnb is already causing a rent price correction that was sorely needed in many cities that have become severely unaffordable. Wired published an article about this effect in London [1] and I've seen price drops as much as $500 for condos in the downtown core of Toronto on Zillow already. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/airbnb-coronavirus-london https://www.wired.co.uk/article/airbnb-coronavirus-london
- drstewart 6y agoIt's pretty bold to claim any and all price drops are directly attributable to Airbnb when in the middle of a recession causing pandemic that is heavily impacting normal housing/rental market activity.
- atomic77 6y agoI admit that both my observations, and the ones in the Wired article I cited, are anecdotal. And it's certainly not the only factor driving those rent decreases. But it's oddly coincidental that the biggest and most immediate price drops seem to be concentrated in the areas that had the most Airbnb listings, at least based on what i've looked at in Toronto.
- c3534l 6y agoIt's possible that while AirBnB increased demand for housing, the market could have responded by building and allocating more real estate to housing, resulting in an equilibrium. So it is at least plausible to me that an implosion of AirBnB might be good for renters in the short term as there is an over-allocation of housing, but that without AirBnB, market rates will increase to about where they were before as supply drops over time in response. The whole thing is complicated enough that there's no way I'm going to trust any single, non-academic article on the subject.
- moneywoes 6y agoAre we aware how many engineers were affected?
- saadalem 6y agoAt least they aren't doing it the wrong way, like when some big companies need to clean house a bit, they move the office to a new location quite distant from the current one. In the process they reduce the office size from 50,000 seats to 30,000 because they've estimated that amount of people will resign rather than endure a 4 hours commute... But officially : > totally you still have your job if you want, we are not laying you off, but I need you in the office everyday... Or you could resign if you don't like the new location...
- jedberg 6y agoThe generous severance makes a lot of sense. Besides being the right thing to do, if the economy somehow does have a V shaped recovery, they may want to rehire a lot of these people. It's a lot easier to rehire someone who still likes you than to try and find new people.
- garyclarke27 6y agoWas a mystery to me why they waited so long to do an IPO. They must be kicking themselves now, will be a long long time, before they can match the kind of cash they could have raised anytime in 2019.
- Panini_Jones 6y agoI wonder what the previous CFO is thinking right now. I believe he tried to take it to an IPO earlier but Chesky disagreed with him. This is rumor of course.
- cletus 6y agoI'm kind of surprised it took this long, honestly. It does suck if you're one of those affected so you have my sympathy if you're one of those. On the bright side, at least by US standards, this does seem to be pretty generous. That aside, if this whole pandemic manages to kill or mortally wound AirBnB, I won't be upset. What AirBnB does to cities, neighbourhoods and the long-term rental market is atrocious and it needs to be reined in.
- baby 6y agoI’d be extremely sad personally. Airbnb has allowed my family, my friends, and I to travel all around the world and feel like home everywhere I went.
- JSavageOne 6y agoYou can't blame AirBnB for cities failing to ensure their residents have access to affordable housing.
- moltar 6y agoWondering what that means for their new Montreal office. They erected this whole new building in a trendy area.
- luckydata 6y agoif anything I can see them move more of their operations there and downsizing in SF where talent is still relatively expensive.
- collectedparts 6y agoAn official copy of the memo referenced in the Techcrunch article has now been posted: https://news.airbnb.com/a-message-from-co-founder-and-ceo-brian-chesky/ https://news.airbnb.com/a-message-from-co-founder-and-ceo-br... (dang, I wonder if the company release is a better article to link to?)
- OrgNet 6y agoits a good time to cut the fat (but either way, that 25% probably doesn't include any of their real workforce, the landlords)
- PalsSolmeni 6y agoThis hit me hard for some reason and really put things in perspective. You can never take your career for granted and assume it's guaranteed. The lesson I took from this is to always have a backup plan in case of unforeseen events.
- kovac 6y agoIt's possible that the contract with these employees requires 3 month notice period both ways. So, an immediate dismissal would require them to pay it in compensation (guess this would also depend on the legislation). Regarding the insurance, usually its already bought for a year or so, so they possibly let it run as there's no point in revoking it without getting a refund. If the 3-month notice is true and the compensation comes with that, then its still cheaper to let go now than in 3 months as there will be other costs like bonuses, expense claims for phone bills etc, other mandatory govt insurance schemes in some countries, more leave accrued. I'm not too convinced that it was all a nice gesture.
- onetimemanytime 6y agoNot privy of their figures but what are they gonna do with the 75% of workforce? Maybe I'm biased related to where I'm sitting, but looks like everything has stopped, travel especially. And looks like 2020 at least will stay that way. Of course they can't just shut down....they have to hope and be ready.
- JSavageOne 6y agoOther companies that've recently had significant layoffs: Uber, Lyft, TripAdvisor, Yelp, Eventbrite, Patreon. Is COVID-19 the reason, or the excuse?
- rswskg 6y agoThey wanted to do this for a while. Airbnb would make good money if it wasn't so bloated.
- nsomani 6y agoMaybe, but just the last August bootcamp of new hires was north of 100 people. If Airbnb wanted to do this for a while, I'd imagine they would have hired less even around then.
- jl2718 6y agoWhy not furloughs or temporary part-time? I thought this was a rocket ship. Why would they have even consider an IPO raise if they weren’t looking to massively expand? Are they going to rehire all these people when business picks up? Not that I disagree, but it smells like vanilla-variety cuts for efficiency/performance.