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Startups now spend more on Airbnb than on office rent
- bpodgursky 5y agoI wouldn't be shocked if a lot of companies spent as much on hotels + airbnb before the pandemic as on office space anyway. Business travel is hella expensive, and salespeople don't stay at Model 8.
- bsder 5y agoI would be. Very few "standard" employees at a startup are sent on travel with expense accounts. Even if you allocated a $200/day ($6K/month) hotel room for a salesperson for 365 days, you're likely not even halfway to the annual office expense. Most startups don't have 2 salespeople at that level.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jostmey 5y agoJob Candidate: So how much vacation time do you offer? Interviewer: We offer one-month paid vacation with your co-workers at an exotic location of our choosing. Oh, and we decide when you take those vacations
- muzani 5y agoCEO to employees: It's an exotic trip to a remote Thai island we have all to ourselves! CEO to shareholders: It's a tax deductible 3-day meeting and team building exercise! CEO to spouse: Hey, jet skiing in Thailand was on your bucket list, right?
- danjac 5y agoDevelopers: I get to change my default external background image to tropical-island.jpg for a month
- seanmcdirmid 5y agoWhen I worked for Microsoft China we’d have a group offsite every year to some Chinese city or other Asian locale. It really isn’t that great to tour with your coworkers, at least compared to going on a relaxing vacation on your own terms.
- nisegami 5y agoLinus from LinusTechTips has done basically this (a while ago when the team was smaller). Take the team to Mexico (which includes his wife). They made videos while there of course, but I imagine there was some downtime for everyone except maybe Linus?
- inglor_cz 5y ago"Oh, and we decide when you take those vacations." This is sort-of normal elsewhere, actually. Even in Europe, employer has sway over vacations. Not a dictatorial power, but No will often be No for a certain period. It makes sense in many industries; you can't have a power plant running with too few qualified people present. Edit: downvoted for a perfectly neutral response. Yes, looking at my own country's labor code, vacations are determined by the employer. They will likely meet you halfway and approve vacations for July and August (slow season) without too much hassle, but they do not have to. As said above, it makes sense; certain skeleton crews must be maintained at all times in many industries.
- radres 5y agoIn Europe, worked in couple of countries. All the employers had the right to force you to take vacation at a certain date I have never seen it done. I am talking about software industry ofc.
- inglor_cz 5y agoSoftware is more permissive, yes. OTOH doctors are very used to have their options limited by the hospital they work in.
- saiya-jin 5y agoIn Switzerland for example, doctors can take vacation as they want (apart form Christmas/New Year/Easter when its strictly managed by hospital), but they need to apply 6-12 months in advance. Another example of the situation above are factory workers, ie in Germany there are millions of cars moving south every summer during specific weeks valid for their part of the country, when +-whole factory goes out.
- Scoundreller 5y ago> In Switzerland for example, doctors can take vacation as they want (apart form Christmas/New Year/Easter when its strictly managed by hospital) You need a more diverse workforce. Where I am, the Persian guy will work every Jan 1 as long as we guarantee him the first day of spring off. The Muslim lady will do Dec 24/25 as long as she gets some other specific day off. The hard days to schedule are “family day” and other non-cultural holidays.
- CryptoPunk 5y agoWhen the free market is allowed to work, people find unexpected uses for things, that raise utility, that people didn't forsee.
- benrbray 5y agoThe free market means that renters looking for a place to live have to compete with vacationers and business travelers willing to pay hotel nightly prices.
- CryptoPunk 5y agoPeople living in major in-demand cities that provide higher average income and life expectancy than the rest of the country SHOULD have to compete with vacationers and business travelers. Long-term residents of such cities are geographically privileged, and Airbnb is a way to share that privilege with less geographically privileged people whose long-term residence is in cities that people don't visit for vacation/business. You should also know that the "Airbnb harms rental affordability" narrative is one that was deliberately spread by the Hotel lobby via its astoturfing campaign: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/16/technology/inside-the-hotel-industrys-plan-to-combat-airbnb.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/16/technology/inside-the-hot...
- swiley 5y agoMaybe if the property owners were allowed to build more housing the competition wouldn’t be as intense.
- benrbray 5y agoIsn't it normally the property owners who rally against new housing developments to artificially raise the value of their own property?
- CryptoPunk 5y agoI don't see how your assertion contradicts OP's. A regulation barring more dense developments solves the defection problem that a pact between property owners in a free market would have. As long as the free market persists, then even if all property owners would benefit from fewer new developments, they have no practical way to enforce a pact to not build new developments, so their situation is a prisoner's dilemna where the best option is to build. The same principle applies to price cutting. If all companies could enforce a pact to not cut prices, then they could extract economic rent via above-market prices and inflated profit margins, but absent government enforced price floors, the best strategy for any given company is to reduce prices to gain market share, to the extent that their production costs allow.
- uxhacker 5y agoWhy are they using AirBnb rather than hotels, is it just price or is there something hotels don’t offer?
- bpodgursky 5y agoWould you rather have your offsite in (1) a Tahoe ski cabin (2) a beach house or (3) the Holiday Inn conference center suite 2C?
- brendoelfrendo 5y agoYeah, hotels have really gone downhill since Holiday Inn achieved monopoly status and became the only option for hotel stays.
- joefife 5y agoKitchens. Away on business for a few days, would you prefer to cook healthy meals in your own kitchen and relax, or do you want yet another calorific restaurant meal?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Kiro 5y agoFor me, cooking is the opposite of relaxing. Being away is the perfect excuse for not having to cook at all.
- mrgill 5y agoAlways ordering take away can get very expensive, very fast. And very unhealthy unless, again, you're willing to spend good money. Cooking yourself is way cheaper. Sure, if money is not a problem, have someone else cook so you spend more time on improving the product/relaxing.
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- helen___keller 5y agoI think it's a fascinating idea, operating a team on the basis of permanent remote work with occasional team work "retreats" when periods of heavy innovation and interaction are needed. Many people from my experience say that, given the option to work remotely or in office, they would prefer a flexible option that lets them come into the office maybe 2 or 3 days a week and otherwise work remotely. The idea seems to be that a lot of people like having human interaction and teambuilding, but not paying for that connection with 5 full commutes a week and 8 hours a day in a cubicle. The idea of taking the team out to an airbnb (or some other communal living arrangement) in the woods or by the beach for a week or two to launch a new major initiative 1-4 times a year seems like it could theoretically be an alternative, providing that human connection but not demanding an outdated office lifestyle. In theory, anyways. I'm interested to see if this kind of thing becomes a major perk/attraction of the next generation of startups, much like the attractive offices of today's tech giants were "revolutionary" in the aughts. Then we can look forward to the big guys trying to copy the model and creating a horrific corporatized version of it.
- zdragnar 5y agoForcing me to take a week or two away from my family multiple times a year would be enough to get me to quit. There's a reason I choose to work remotely. I don't mind working closely with others, but leaving the household for two weeks straight simply isn't feasible, and certainly not more than once a year.
- helen___keller 5y agoI totally understand, there's a reason I used the word "fascinating" and not "exciting" I would personally be open to trying it once, but I have no idea if it would fit in my life as a regular occurrence or if it would be miserable and make me want to quit.
- zdragnar 5y agoI did have a job previously that required 2-3 days of travel 4 times a year, and was able to make it work. In fact, a 2 week trip to a cabin to focus on work and team building sounds fantastic... for me. My spouse, on the other hand, would not be having a great time. It certainly has a whiff of unintentional ageism.
- tristor 5y agoThis doesn't surprise me, although it's a trend I expect to be suppressed due to the pandemic. I've been working permanently remote for over half a decade now and these sorts of trips are common ways to create alignment and camaraderie. With a prior employer I visited Montenegro, Croatia, Portugal, Argentina, Uruguay, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, and Ireland all as part of work to do large-scale planning exercises and team building. Usually we stayed in hotels because they would cut us a deal on room rates and provide conference spaces, but it was not uncommon to also have some or all staff staying in AirBnBs because we had a large enough team that many of the locales we visited didn't have a hotel that could accommodate all of us and it was more economical to use AirBnBs for the overflow rather than two different nearby hotels (from different chains). As an employee in this situation I preferred staying in the AirBnB to the hotel, since I prefer that style of living, having access to a kitchen, and the more "homey" feel, additionally it's nice being in a more residential area vs being in a more commercial area, especially in Europe where cities tend to be relatively walkable with good public transport. Also because AirBnBs were less expensive, it was easier to negotiate private accommodations vs sharing with a coworker. Generally I found these sorts of trips to be really high value and pretty much essential in a fully-remote company, to create the sorts of positive relationships with coworkers and camaraderie that help get through difficulties inherent to the work. Large-scale planning exercises also helped significantly with communicating alignment throughout the organization and training customer-facing functions on deeper intricacies of the product that they may not be exposed to daily.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- wheresmycraisin 5y agoObviously week long 'retreats' are out of the question for those with very young children/etc, but that's a tiny minority amongst tech workers. If you're childless under 40 and would rather quit than take a few retreats throughout the year, you don't hate the office -- you hate coworkers -- and I highly suggest you start your own business before it becomes an employer's market again.
- zactato 5y agoI think its probably on the rare side at startups, but employees with kids are pretty common at larger companies (>1000). Obviously those places aren't doing full company offsites in an AirBNB
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago> Obviously week long 'retreats' are out of the question for those with very young children/etc, but that's a tiny minority amongst tech workers. Maybe true in expensive cities that aren't family-friendly (Bay Area, I'm looking at you), but once you leave those bubbles it's actually really common for people in tech to have children. This isn't really a tech thing. It's more of an age thing. Some tech bubbles, especially startup bubbles in places like the Bay Area, end up selecting for young, childless people. Once you age out of the bubble or your company grows up and starts collecting employees from a broader range of ages and locations, you'll be surrounded by parents.
- alistairSH 5y agoSmall sample, but on my current team... - 1 is an empty nester - 3 have young children (primary school or younger) - 2 have no kids - 2 have older kids (secondary school or college aged) On my prior team... - 2 empty nests - 3 w/ young kids - 1 w/ older kids - 3 w/ no kids at all
- chipotle_coyote 5y agoWhile I don't love the idea of Airbnb-ing with coworkers as a required part of the job, I'm a little surprised at the hostility being expressed to the broader notion of "remote workers are expected to travel to meet with coworkers in person for a week a few times a year." I've been working in Silicon Valley for about two decades now, and literally every company that I've been at that offered what I'd call Truly Remote work -- e.g., it's not that the office is in San Jose and you're out in Tracy, but the office is in San Jose and you're in San Diego or Orlando or Boise -- had this as at least an implicit expectation. If Bob was usually working at his home hundreds of miles away, there would be a few times a year Bob would be in the office. The company would put Bob up at a nearby extended stay hotel, "Bob in Office" would be marked on the company calendar, etc. So has this become a terrible horrible no-good dealbreaker in the last few years, and the place I'm currently at that still does this[1] is a weird, out-of-step mutant? I see all the "this can't be expected of people who have families, that's utter madness!" comments, and, I mean, these are basically business trips, aren't they? I can't imagine the idea of "business trip" is a dealbreaker, at least for most people. I kind of wonder if what's causing the "hell, no" reaction isn't the "let's spend a week together every quarter" part, it's the "let's spend a week together at a vacation home as if we're all college buddies every quarter" part. Which, again, I get: as a relative introvert, that sounds dread-inducing in a way that the week in the extended stay hotel does not. But if the company has no physical office space and you do want to have in-person meetings occasionally, you're going to have to figure out something that involves actual sleeping arrangements and collaborative space. [1] I'm not sure any of those remote workers are left at this point, but that's not related to their remote status, AFAIK.
- alistairSH 5y agoI think there's a couple of facets to this... - Some people don't want any business trips at all. Ever. - Some people are ok with a short trip 1x-2x/year. But the traditional business trip, you stay in your own hotel room and attend business events during something close to normal business hours. You can general dine on your own. - This Airbnb retreat is not a normal business trip. It's a shared house, shared dining area, and I only assume the expectation is long hours of collaboration and/or socialization.
- sharadov 5y agoStaying with colleagues for a week in a hotel in a city, is something I would not mind. I can take off in the evenings if I want, there is a gym to work out, or places to go to. But a house in the woods, where I am sharing the bathroom/kitchen, sorry, I don't want that level of closeness. I don't want to be cooped up 24/7 with people I work. They are colleagues not friends, and you want that professional barrier. As much as startups espouse the "we are a family BS" , I've worked long enough to understand that it is a transaction at the end of the day.
- toomuchtodo 5y agoOlder me agrees with you. Younger me (-10 years) had a blast sleeping on an outdoor furniture couch in a common area (because there weren’t enough bedrooms) at a company retreat when it was less than 20 of us, and some of those colleagues became long term (life long? TBD) friends. Really depends on where you are in life. I don’t know if I could do it again at 40 with two kids, but it was a life experience worth having at the time.
- mikeryan 5y agoI can't tell but is this conflating Startups that "Rent" their "office space" via AirBnB? In other words putting "rent" in the "travel" accounting category? I know a few homeowners and early stage startups who let or rent homes via AirBnB as "offices" for early stage companies who are willing to pay, sometimes, a bit of a premium for the flexibility they provide.
- hyuuu 5y agocould you talk more about this point of early stage startups renting homes as offices? I am extremely curious
- abnbabb 5y agoThis will lead to a lot of in-breeding