15 ms·

From Belonging to Burnout, Five Years at Airbnb

266 points by arciini 4y ago

beckingz 4y ago
Corporations will never love you. No matter how much they say they do, they never will. Individuals within the company will intend to do good, but they will be required to do more than just good things. Take care of yourself.
- fdgsdfogijq 4y ago
  It took me too long to realize this. Actually managers will respect you for having this attitude. There's a certain liberation in accepting it
  - quickthrower2 4y ago
    Freelancer, Contractor, Permie, Consultancy? More the same than different.
- kelseyfrog 4y ago
  So hard to finally accept this. I would tell myself "Maybe this company is different", "Maybe this department is different", or "Maybe my team is different." Every time it was a fantasy. Sometimes it can happen for a month or a year, but the hourglass always runs out. The belt tightens, and dollars are squeezed from somewhere. Eventually the squeeze finds you and it's time to jump ship or quickly learn how to set boundaries.
  - prox 4y ago
    Took me ages to found a diamond amongst the coal. This boss payed himself after everyone else was paid. A boss who is perfect with planning. Great projects. It’s a masterclass in running and leading a company. For all other companies always reciprocate their loyalty. If there is none from their side, don’t invest in the company. When you are just starting out fresh from study you still believe in the “we can do this team if only we work a bit harder.” , but that’s usually a myth.
- refurb 4y ago
  Hard lesson to learn, but very true. I had great managers who, if up to them entirely, would have my interests at heart (as demonstrated by decisions fully under their control), but hey, they don't call the shots in the end. You're a cog in a machine and you may be the golden child while they need you, but once they don't, you're out. And all the talk of "family" is just that, talk. It's why the fake "we care" stuff gets under my skin - it's a lie - they care about "you" in the theoretical employee sense, but they don't care about you as an individual. Individual relationships do matter, but "the corp" in the end is an emotionless machine. And it doesn't matter whether you're a desk analyst or a CEO, I've seen both go from "calling the shots" to "not aligned to where the company wants to do" really damn quick.
- jonasdegendt 4y ago
  Much like romantic relationships, professional relationships are a learning experience and every new one, you'll hopefully learn to value yourself more, and approach the relationship with your employer more pragmatically. Unlike romantic relationships, at the end of the day you'll probably realize a professional relationship is almost strictly transactional. I guess a lot of people in tech have gone through the experience of getting a job straight out of college, working yourself to death trying to prove something (whether that's to yourself or your employer) and getting burnt out to some degree, or not seeing any dividends for it. These companies do a very good job at blurring the lines between expectations and what's realistic through the "perks" of the job and whatever flavor of culture reigns.
- AdrianB1 4y ago
  I found the opposite to be true: the key individuals within the company are the ones who break it, not the faceless corporation. In all cases where I found bad environments it was created and exacerbated by middle management taking directions from clueless higher management and implementing in the most distructive interpretations. It is generally accepted that the number 1 reason for people leaving companies to be the direct manager, but the environment in an entire department or area is a bit above, in the middle management (strict definition of mm is debatable, the idea remains). In my job I deal a lot with low and middle management in lots of companies. Unfortunately I did not find any exception to the general observation that today's low and middle management is a bunch of incompetent impostors with their career as the only concern, occupation and reason in life. That includes technology companies that I cannot name, but known by various acronyms. And I am saying this as a lower level manager myself.
mindwok 4y ago
Am I crazy to think there’s something wrong with the amount of engineering effort going into these startups? When you have engineers working into the wee hours of the morning because you don’t want a cursor to blink on a text field, I can’t help but feel that’s an enormous waste of energy and effort. Since I first used Airbnb 7 years ago, the only real change I can think of is when they added experiences (which is awesome don’t get me wrong), surely at some point you begin to wonder if we are utilising this talent effectively.
- goodpoint 4y ago
  > there’s something wrong with the amount of engineering effort going into these startups As a company hires more and more people, modern development and devops can create as much unnecessary complexity as needed.
- cactus2093 4y ago
  Spoiler alert: we mostly are. Engineers with 5 YOE are making $500k+ a year at these companies because they are generating much more than that in revenues and profits for the companies. Airbnb is worth $110B. It's not all blinking cursors, there are thousands of little experiments going on all the time. Increasing the number of bookings by 2% here, 3% there. Increasing the average price of bookings. Random extra features here and there to close that one whale of a client. Expanding into corporate accounts. Improving performance by 5% to take a big chunk out of the tens of millions of dollars infrastructure bill. From a 10,000 foot view looking at the product, it always looks like it's 90% done in the first couple of years and then things just coast along lazily. But from a profit point of view, that last 10% can generate hugely outsized returns. It's the power of exponential growth, all those extra late nights and tiny improvements that move the needle just a little bit all compound over time.
  - wging 4y ago
    https://danluu.com/sounds-easy/ https://danluu.com/sounds-easy/ is a good take on this - the central example is for search, but it applies to many more products, as cactus2093's comment (and the article) both point out. (and for what it's worth, I've observed this personally too)
twomoonsbysurf 4y ago
It is sad to see that folks put a company and its equity-holders first, before attending to their own lives outside of work. They put off their personal relationships and personal care activities (such as exercise, getting outside, various healthy activities away from a computer), and instead put that time into going above and beyond a 40 hour work week... and yet are barely (if at all) recognized for their efforts. I am so glad to see people speak out about their experience, especially at companies which claim to uphold a certain set of values. Such as Amazon or Airbnb. I recall at Twilio, I was emailed by an HR person ... from the email account of a Director of Engineering. An HR person impersonated a Director of Engineering in order to recruit and have a better chance of getting the attention of software engineers, to attempt to persuade those engineers to join their team. Yet, one of Twilio's principles is/was "Transparency". Yet, there they were-- their HR people engaging in practices which are deceptive. We must hold companies to their supposed principles, and to a reasonable expectation of professional ethics in general. \ Bravo, I say, to the author of this article.
ceeplusplus 4y ago
> I was sure that refraining from lavish lunches, canceling ski offsites, and raising $1 billion from emergency venture capital investments was enough to keep Airbnb afloat, so I grew skeptical that executives had considered everything in the budget when trying to save jobs How can this person even say this when they don't touch any financial data? A quick look at Q4 2020 results for Airbnb shows a $1B loss on net income ex. IPO costs and a $21M loss on the financially engineered/hacked "adjusted EBITDA". An unprofitable company is not in a position to be keeping jobs for the sake of it. > These material conditions bled into work-life - while some of us took Ubers to work and shopped at Barney’s, others maxed out credit cards or could only afford to live in the East Bay Oh no, customer support can only afford to live in the East Bay. This person needs to get a grip. A customer service agent is not making 200k+ in any world. That is a recipe for running a failed business. You know what does let people live where they want? Building more housing. > a clearer non-product career ladder There is no "ladder" to being a customer service agent. Experience doesn't scale your value to the company, so there's no reason for there to be a ladder. And with the advent of gig platforms there's no reason for there to be a manager either. Saying that customer service agents need a career ladder shows how delusional this person is with respect to running a business. This person needs to realize that life is about working for yourself, never for the "Airfam". Loyalty means nothing. If they're burned out (it sounds like they are) then they can leave with their multi-million dollar stock options and free up a job for the rest of us who would gladly get paid half a million dollars a year to complain about "inequities". Corporate won't care they left and they shouldn't feel bad about it either. Sometimes some people just aren't cut out to keep going hard day in and day out for 5+ years. And that's okay, because if you worked at Airbnb then you can easily get a cushy job somewhere else.
- fdgsdfogijq 4y ago
  Burnout is a pretty serious thing that can last for years, a lot of time getting a new job while burnt out is an absolute nightmare. People with money are aloud to have grievances and opinions
  - orobanche 4y ago
    Burnout #1 2015 Burnout #2 2016 Psychiatry 2017-2018 Starting looking for a job doing manual labour. Working with a computer no longer an option. Had 2 engineering degrees: electronics & embedded.
anarticle 4y ago
“The CEO cried on a broadcast that we needed to say goodbye to some of our Airfam and called on us to support each other through this difficult time. “Lean on Me” by Bill Withers played at the end of the broadcast.” Wow, incredible, and insulting. I can't imagine getting played out by Bill Withers.
milkshakes 4y ago
I worked at Airbnb for four years in a dysfunctional department that had been significantly under resourced for the first 7 years of the company’s existence then tried to turn everything important up to eleven when senior leadership finally figured out it was a critical blocker for going public. That went about as well as you would expect— It wasn’t pretty at first but things definitely improved over time. I think we were “lucky” because we owned a business critical, measurable outcome. When I started, I didn’t even have a manager for a few months. I actually burned out within my first 3 months there, and my Director personally helped me navigate the leave process —- I wound up taking a 3 month fully paid leave (they topped the difference between what the STD insurance they provided me paid and my full salary). When I returned I had a great manager! I worked with a lot of contractors too, but my department converted well over half of the ones I worked with, and eventually the others churned out until they hired people full time. Mostly we started with contractors because it was easier to hire them but very difficult to get headcount (we sure did try). Anyway it was a pretty wild ride but I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Things were definitely uneven though. One thing that really made me sad was when they replaced the food team who we all loved with contractors (who we also all loved). After I left they really screwed over the Portland office too. But it wasn’t all bad and I cherish the friends I made there.
- dymk 4y ago
  > dysfunctional department that had been significantly under resourced Was it infra?
  - LilBytes 4y ago
    It nearly always is.
  - e28eta 4y ago
    My guess would be something related to financial / accounting / reporting, if it was a critical blocker for IPO.
farseer 4y ago
Honestly this doesn't sound too bad. You seem to have volunteered for a lot of assignments and it seems you were fairly well compensated. Once AirBnb becomes even bigger, the midnight code runs will end just like they have mostly ended in the likes of Microsoft and Google. Remember folks taking care of your mental health and avoiding burnout is your own responsibility. In this case, taking on less responsibility was an option.
- wly_cdgr 4y ago
  No, that's not fair or reasonable. A decent (I mean that in both the moral and competence senses) manager understands that it's part of their job to protect naive and emotionally vulnerable junior employees from exploiting themselves
- lnxg33k1 4y ago
  Yeah I had the impression the guy has underlying issues regardless of Airbnb, and I've met many who put themselves on a pedestal thinking that others will worship them because they can work until 9 pm and then complaining that they're tired.. the world is such a weird place
- menzoic 4y ago
  It seems like this is a large part of the issue. He mentioned a few times he was promoted and well compensated. In order to get promoted you have to "exceed" expectations for your current level, which by definition means he went above and beyond what would have been normally been expected of him. Looking at his LinkedIn he got promoted from Mid level to Senior, to Staff engineer. Very few people at big tech companies achieve Staff engineer level. His LinkedIn also says he joined Airbnb in 2016 which means his stock is worth multiple millions since IPO.
langsoul-com 4y ago
Never treat a company as family or believe in any of that bullshit. Businesses are a business. At the end of the day, you have to prioritise your own well being.
- AndrewThrowaway 4y ago
  What is funny about families is that a lot of them are dysfunctional. As one anecdote goes: Patient says that he recently made it up with his mother. Psychiatrist ask what happened. "She died" answers patient. And we all know a lot of those families who meet once a year because of the need. And companies then want to call themselves "families".
abledon 4y ago
> As burnt out as I was, I worked even more, clinging to this promise of acceptance, hoping that I could somehow work myself into being enough. The perfect worker for them oh god lol. The term "airfam" is such a weird thing, people saying 'Thanks fam!" these days... I am not your family, I will not lend you 20,000$ if you in a rough spot, I will not take care of your kids if you die. Maybe I just take the word 'family' too literally hah, maybe a bad habit from expecting variable names to do what they are called
- dvtrn 4y ago
  My friend I’ve got certain members of my own actual blood family that I wouldn’t lend $20,000 to. “Families” can be wonderful. But blood families can be just as abusive, as manipulative, aggrandizing and as toxic as the “work” family.
- Ocerge 4y ago
  I don't think you're taking it too literally, you're absolutely right. Always keep your professional boundaries and recognize the transaction of money-for-time for what it is: a transaction.
anon2020dot00 4y ago
Excellent article. The biggest thing that I got is that AirBNB doesn't have a healthy culture. It seems like AirBNB is trying to foster a family-like environment where-in there is no division between work and life and that work is life. Basically a common tactic of corporations is to espouse "we are a family" but it is just a manipulation tactic for employees to work long-hours and to give their all to the company. The "we are a family" mantra would be fine if it was coupled with a healthy separation of work and life; with the biggest indicator being that healthy working hours (around regular 8 to 9 work hours only) is maintained. In contrast, something like Netflix culture which is "we are a team and not a family" seems like to be more of a healthier alternative. On a last point, the "we are a family" (i.e. we care about our employees as persons instead of just means or cogs) mantra is fine but it usually turns into "we are a toxic family" (i.e. give your all to the company) instead of it being a "we are a healthy family" (i.e. our company values each employee).
- prox 4y ago
  One simple protip for the newly starters : don’t believe the hype. Don’t EVER buy into overwork “to take one for the team”. A small crunch at the end of a deadline : fine. A perpetual overwork culture is not something a family would do to you. Also look at what a company does instead of what it says.
  - nishs 4y ago
    +1. Do not drink the kool-aid. Take things in good faith generally, but be measured.
- billllll 4y ago
  Netflix emphasizes "team" over "family" to explicitly promote an environment where getting fired is easy. Is that really a better alternative? Whether it is a "family" or a "team," you can be assured that the company will be looking out for itself first and foremost, potentially to the detriment of the employees. I don't think that's necessarily bad, but you as an individual need to watch out for yourself no matter what rhetoric the company uses.
ta3411 4y ago
I am going to be voted down into oblivion but it's okay. This is my throwaway account anyway. Here are my 3 pragmatic takes regarding this situation: - If you are an engineer, your total comp is easily north of $200,000. At that pay scale compared to other careers, I expect (and I did) to burn through the night as needed. That's a lot of money for anyone to expect to have a comfortable work/life balance. I always compare myself with doctors residency, accountants, or labor jobs, who would do a lot more work for a lot less. Tech pay, benefit, and work/life balance are outrageously good in my opinion. - I have worked at AirBnB, Stripe, and Robinhood. And between the 3, AirBnB actually has the chillest work culture. It's known to be "too much democratic debate vs work output". But your experience may be different. - Most importantly: Just as much as you can quit the company whenever you like, companies can also lay you off whenever they want. My main takeaway is to take care of yourself. Don't buy into Airfam or company family. You do what's right for you and company does what's right for them. (I can't comment on the specifics if Airbnb layoff was the right business move).
- 121789 4y ago
  200k is too low in the US to overwork as a SWE. If you doubled that number I think you would be closer
- refurb 4y ago
  That's a lot of money ($200k) for anyone to expect to have a comfortable work/life balance. This isn't true at all. In my last job (not tech) a "brutal" week might be 50 hrs and people were making double that, albeit in more senior roles (10+ years of experience).
  - germinalphrase 4y ago
    What industry?
- hiq 4y ago
  > If you are an engineer, your total comp is easily north of $200,000. At that pay scale compared to other careers, I expect (and I did) to burn through the night as needed. How are other careers relevant? You take the best offer you can get in the (SWE) market, and if avoiding burnout is a choice criterion for you, you avoid the corresponding companies. Many of them are willing to pay the same compensation or more with a reasonable work-life balance, especially once they realize that they also benefit from it one way or another. One benefit of a free market is to help optimize resource allocations, and telling yourself "it could be worse" rather than asking "could it be better?" is counterproductive.
paul7986 4y ago
Just reading the title hits me as I never thought I'd get to a place where I wouldnt like where I work. It's been four years (longest IT job I've held in ten year career) but suddenly starting in 2022 I havent been paid by the same date I've always been and when asked the owner he said thats just how it is for contractors. Yet it's never been like that and I even noted to him paying me a week or two later then all other times/years causes stress I definitely don't need. He didnt seem to care cause I was paid even later in March and then i was offered a raise in Feb. which was to start March 1st per our conversation over Slack. In the beginning of this month (April) he said "oh sorry your raise is not effective to April 1st, I'm sorry." That was my first raise in four years as for me i'm not driven by money (he offered me a raise in 2020 I said that's ok im just happy to return/be brought back after 6 months away) rather a show of respect and that I am a value to you/your company. His actions to me say he does not value my contribution/work, so...
shmde 4y ago
All in all you're just another brick in the wall.
isuckatcoding 4y ago
> while some of us took Ubers to work and shopped at Barney’s, others maxed out credit cards or could only afford to live in the East Bay Hey now what’s wrong with being in the East Bay?
- strikelaserclaw 4y ago
  Maybe he is talking about people having a long commute to live in affordable areas.
AdrianB1 4y ago
- adbachman 4y ago
  > this sounds like political activism Everything is political activism, by that metric. Inviting tech workers to openly talk about their experiences and your warning tech workers not to openly talk about their experiences are both political positions. Congrats on not backing the workers, I guess? I'm sorry you had a bad experience in your country, "people writing about burnout leads to Gulags" isn't the lesson we should learn from it.
- rexpop 4y ago
  TWC is literally what it says on a thin: all workers, no backers, just being honest about our experiences. You can call us entitled, but insofar as we're propagandists, each individual is only pushing our own personal "narrative." "Building power" is _definitely_ political activism but, again, the way we build power is, primarily, by exposing ourselves to eachother's personal experiences in the tech industry. That knowledge is power. Think of it as a qualitative extension of passing around the salary spreadsheet. Sometimes, we formalize the exchanges through a speed-dating-like "worker's inquiry" where techies pair off and ask eachother basic questions like: 1. How is our work evaluated? 2. How are decisions made in our workplaces? 3. How do our respective bosses motivate us? 4. How does our work fit into the larger economic picture? 5. How is conflict handled at our workplaces? These answers aren't collected, except when they're published in articles like this. It's just... good to know what's going on with eachother. In previous generations, we'd have eachother over for dinner, for poker night, or whatever. We'd join bowling leagues, or the Sierra Club, and people working in the same industry would likely be living in the same towns, and joining the same bowling leagues. These formal, albeit recreational institutions offered workers the opportunity to casually learn about one-another's working and living conditions. Those activities have largely evaporated since the 1950s (in America, at least), atomizing our society, and making us all supremely ignorant of one another (outside the carefully curated social media profiles, and the highly dramatized "reality TV".) I don't really know why a literate person would object to casual, even semi-formal discussion of working conditions. (Of course the TWC self-selects people who are dissatisfied with our conditions, but it's a common truism that work sucks, no.)
thom 4y ago
AirBnB’s mission isn’t “create a world where anyone can belong anywhere” it’s “get people to pay money to stay in each other’s properties”. Perhaps there would be slightly less misalignment of expectations and values if we were a bit more honest with ourselves?
cudgy 4y ago
Great expression of the dark, hollow corporate experience disguised as a fulfilling, productive career. It saddens me that the author (and many others) drink the corporate kool-aid to the point of considering self-harm. I learned a similar lesson early in my career: noone can single-handedly satiate the enormous appetite of a large corporate enterprise. It will literally consume you alive. Perhaps, the contractors had a better gig? At least they might have felt less pressure to please the corporate ethos, and they were hopefully paid hourly overtime during the silly death marches.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
cosmiccatnap 4y ago
"the founders announced that they had no choice but to lay off all 500ish contractors and around 1,900 employees. The CEO cried on a broadcast that we needed to say goodbye to some of our Airfam and called on us to support each other through this difficult time. “Lean on Me” by Bill Withers played at the end of the broadcast" This stuff is sickening and toxic.
agd 4y ago
I read these kind of blog posts, but honestly, it’s hard to have too much sympathy. This guy presumably earned millions out of working at AirBnB, is staggeringly rich compared to most people, and he could have left at any time for another job.
AndrewThrowaway 4y ago
> 7,000-plus workforce It is sometimes just too hard to wrap your head around this. How what is basically a website requires such a workforce? I get that it is much more than a website, there are various aspects of platform and etc. I understand that my comment might seem off. However 7000 is really a lot people.
- gruez 4y ago
  customer service/sales/compliance?
fullshark 4y ago
Ultimately employees want to be seduced, they want to believe they are doing more than helping a company's owners' capital accrue + gain value in how it's implemented. They don't want to just punch the clock, they want to be part of a larger mission (and get rich doing it). A lot of this is because the traditional ways people have found value in their time on earth: religion, family, and friends are disappearing and being replaced with careerism. This guy's story is not a rare one, and it points to a larger spiritual crisis in modern life I think.
- cvhashim 4y ago
  You hit the nail on the head
- ecshafer 4y ago
  "God is Dead" wasn't an aspirational statement by Nietzsche, it was an observational one. Jung further called the move on to "spirituality" in light of the "death" of god as people move on to politics or new age religions to find meaning. This is natural evolution of that.
frakkingcylons 4y ago
Really, they were shocked to learn that customer support makes only $18 an hour? How insulated from the rest of society in the US do you have to be to find that shocking?
lkrubner 4y ago
About this: "I could have left Airbnb before things got so bad. But despite all that I observed and experienced, I truly loved my job." If I love a job, I hesitate to quit just because some of the management is terrible. As a point of reference, many people on Hacker News have read my book "How To Destroy A Tech Startup In Three Easy Steps": https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Easy-Steps/dp/0998997617/ https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Easy-Steps/dp/09... If you go read the reviews on that book, one of the most common sentiments is "Lawrence should have left that job much earlier than he did." And yet, I really loved the work and I had a lot of fun, in many ways. Maybe I didn't emphasize how much fun we had along the way, but I think, getting to work on great tech while being well paid is a relatively rare gift to an engineer, so I don't think many of us really want to walk away from a job too soon. I do understand why an engineer might stick with a place like AirBnB, even if the burden is heavy.

266 points by arciini 4y ago

Corporations will never love you. No matter how much they say they do, they never will. Individuals within the company will intend to do good, but they will be required to do more than just good things. Take care of yourself.

fdgsdfogijq 4y ago
It took me too long to realize this. Actually managers will respect you for having this attitude. There's a certain liberation in accepting it
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  Freelancer, Contractor, Permie, Consultancy? More the same than different.
kelseyfrog 4y ago
So hard to finally accept this. I would tell myself "Maybe this company is different", "Maybe this department is different", or "Maybe my team is different." Every time it was a fantasy. Sometimes it can happen for a month or a year, but the hourglass always runs out. The belt tightens, and dollars are squeezed from somewhere. Eventually the squeeze finds you and it's time to jump ship or quickly learn how to set boundaries.
- prox 4y ago
  Took me ages to found a diamond amongst the coal. This boss payed himself after everyone else was paid. A boss who is perfect with planning. Great projects. It’s a masterclass in running and leading a company. For all other companies always reciprocate their loyalty. If there is none from their side, don’t invest in the company. When you are just starting out fresh from study you still believe in the “we can do this team if only we work a bit harder.” , but that’s usually a myth.
refurb 4y ago
Hard lesson to learn, but very true. I had great managers who, if up to them entirely, would have my interests at heart (as demonstrated by decisions fully under their control), but hey, they don't call the shots in the end. You're a cog in a machine and you may be the golden child while they need you, but once they don't, you're out. And all the talk of "family" is just that, talk. It's why the fake "we care" stuff gets under my skin - it's a lie - they care about "you" in the theoretical employee sense, but they don't care about you as an individual. Individual relationships do matter, but "the corp" in the end is an emotionless machine. And it doesn't matter whether you're a desk analyst or a CEO, I've seen both go from "calling the shots" to "not aligned to where the company wants to do" really damn quick.
jonasdegendt 4y ago
Much like romantic relationships, professional relationships are a learning experience and every new one, you'll hopefully learn to value yourself more, and approach the relationship with your employer more pragmatically. Unlike romantic relationships, at the end of the day you'll probably realize a professional relationship is almost strictly transactional. I guess a lot of people in tech have gone through the experience of getting a job straight out of college, working yourself to death trying to prove something (whether that's to yourself or your employer) and getting burnt out to some degree, or not seeing any dividends for it. These companies do a very good job at blurring the lines between expectations and what's realistic through the "perks" of the job and whatever flavor of culture reigns.
AdrianB1 4y ago
I found the opposite to be true: the key individuals within the company are the ones who break it, not the faceless corporation. In all cases where I found bad environments it was created and exacerbated by middle management taking directions from clueless higher management and implementing in the most distructive interpretations. It is generally accepted that the number 1 reason for people leaving companies to be the direct manager, but the environment in an entire department or area is a bit above, in the middle management (strict definition of mm is debatable, the idea remains). In my job I deal a lot with low and middle management in lots of companies. Unfortunately I did not find any exception to the general observation that today's low and middle management is a bunch of incompetent impostors with their career as the only concern, occupation and reason in life. That includes technology companies that I cannot name, but known by various acronyms. And I am saying this as a lower level manager myself.

mindwok 4y ago

Am I crazy to think there’s something wrong with the amount of engineering effort going into these startups? When you have engineers working into the wee hours of the morning because you don’t want a cursor to blink on a text field, I can’t help but feel that’s an enormous waste of energy and effort. Since I first used Airbnb 7 years ago, the only real change I can think of is when they added experiences (which is awesome don’t get me wrong), surely at some point you begin to wonder if we are utilising this talent effectively.

goodpoint 4y ago
> there’s something wrong with the amount of engineering effort going into these startups As a company hires more and more people, modern development and devops can create as much unnecessary complexity as needed.
cactus2093 4y ago
Spoiler alert: we mostly are. Engineers with 5 YOE are making $500k+ a year at these companies because they are generating much more than that in revenues and profits for the companies. Airbnb is worth $110B. It's not all blinking cursors, there are thousands of little experiments going on all the time. Increasing the number of bookings by 2% here, 3% there. Increasing the average price of bookings. Random extra features here and there to close that one whale of a client. Expanding into corporate accounts. Improving performance by 5% to take a big chunk out of the tens of millions of dollars infrastructure bill. From a 10,000 foot view looking at the product, it always looks like it's 90% done in the first couple of years and then things just coast along lazily. But from a profit point of view, that last 10% can generate hugely outsized returns. It's the power of exponential growth, all those extra late nights and tiny improvements that move the needle just a little bit all compound over time.
- wging 4y ago
  https://danluu.com/sounds-easy/ https://danluu.com/sounds-easy/ is a good take on this - the central example is for search, but it applies to many more products, as cactus2093's comment (and the article) both point out. (and for what it's worth, I've observed this personally too)

twomoonsbysurf 4y ago

It is sad to see that folks put a company and its equity-holders first, before attending to their own lives outside of work. They put off their personal relationships and personal care activities (such as exercise, getting outside, various healthy activities away from a computer), and instead put that time into going above and beyond a 40 hour work week... and yet are barely (if at all) recognized for their efforts. I am so glad to see people speak out about their experience, especially at companies which claim to uphold a certain set of values. Such as Amazon or Airbnb. I recall at Twilio, I was emailed by an HR person ... from the email account of a Director of Engineering. An HR person impersonated a Director of Engineering in order to recruit and have a better chance of getting the attention of software engineers, to attempt to persuade those engineers to join their team. Yet, one of Twilio's principles is/was "Transparency". Yet, there they were-- their HR people engaging in practices which are deceptive. We must hold companies to their supposed principles, and to a reasonable expectation of professional ethics in general. \ Bravo, I say, to the author of this article.

ceeplusplus 4y ago

> I was sure that refraining from lavish lunches, canceling ski offsites, and raising $1 billion from emergency venture capital investments was enough to keep Airbnb afloat, so I grew skeptical that executives had considered everything in the budget when trying to save jobs How can this person even say this when they don't touch any financial data? A quick look at Q4 2020 results for Airbnb shows a $1B loss on net income ex. IPO costs and a $21M loss on the financially engineered/hacked "adjusted EBITDA". An unprofitable company is not in a position to be keeping jobs for the sake of it. > These material conditions bled into work-life - while some of us took Ubers to work and shopped at Barney’s, others maxed out credit cards or could only afford to live in the East Bay Oh no, customer support can only afford to live in the East Bay. This person needs to get a grip. A customer service agent is not making 200k+ in any world. That is a recipe for running a failed business. You know what does let people live where they want? Building more housing. > a clearer non-product career ladder There is no "ladder" to being a customer service agent. Experience doesn't scale your value to the company, so there's no reason for there to be a ladder. And with the advent of gig platforms there's no reason for there to be a manager either. Saying that customer service agents need a career ladder shows how delusional this person is with respect to running a business. This person needs to realize that life is about working for yourself, never for the "Airfam". Loyalty means nothing. If they're burned out (it sounds like they are) then they can leave with their multi-million dollar stock options and free up a job for the rest of us who would gladly get paid half a million dollars a year to complain about "inequities". Corporate won't care they left and they shouldn't feel bad about it either. Sometimes some people just aren't cut out to keep going hard day in and day out for 5+ years. And that's okay, because if you worked at Airbnb then you can easily get a cushy job somewhere else.

fdgsdfogijq 4y ago
Burnout is a pretty serious thing that can last for years, a lot of time getting a new job while burnt out is an absolute nightmare. People with money are aloud to have grievances and opinions
- orobanche 4y ago
  Burnout #1 2015 Burnout #2 2016 Psychiatry 2017-2018 Starting looking for a job doing manual labour. Working with a computer no longer an option. Had 2 engineering degrees: electronics & embedded.

anarticle 4y ago

“The CEO cried on a broadcast that we needed to say goodbye to some of our Airfam and called on us to support each other through this difficult time. “Lean on Me” by Bill Withers played at the end of the broadcast.” Wow, incredible, and insulting. I can't imagine getting played out by Bill Withers.

milkshakes 4y ago

I worked at Airbnb for four years in a dysfunctional department that had been significantly under resourced for the first 7 years of the company’s existence then tried to turn everything important up to eleven when senior leadership finally figured out it was a critical blocker for going public. That went about as well as you would expect— It wasn’t pretty at first but things definitely improved over time. I think we were “lucky” because we owned a business critical, measurable outcome. When I started, I didn’t even have a manager for a few months. I actually burned out within my first 3 months there, and my Director personally helped me navigate the leave process —- I wound up taking a 3 month fully paid leave (they topped the difference between what the STD insurance they provided me paid and my full salary). When I returned I had a great manager! I worked with a lot of contractors too, but my department converted well over half of the ones I worked with, and eventually the others churned out until they hired people full time. Mostly we started with contractors because it was easier to hire them but very difficult to get headcount (we sure did try). Anyway it was a pretty wild ride but I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Things were definitely uneven though. One thing that really made me sad was when they replaced the food team who we all loved with contractors (who we also all loved). After I left they really screwed over the Portland office too. But it wasn’t all bad and I cherish the friends I made there.

dymk 4y ago
> dysfunctional department that had been significantly under resourced Was it infra?
- LilBytes 4y ago
  It nearly always is.
- e28eta 4y ago
  My guess would be something related to financial / accounting / reporting, if it was a critical blocker for IPO.

farseer 4y ago

Honestly this doesn't sound too bad. You seem to have volunteered for a lot of assignments and it seems you were fairly well compensated. Once AirBnb becomes even bigger, the midnight code runs will end just like they have mostly ended in the likes of Microsoft and Google. Remember folks taking care of your mental health and avoiding burnout is your own responsibility. In this case, taking on less responsibility was an option.

wly_cdgr 4y ago
No, that's not fair or reasonable. A decent (I mean that in both the moral and competence senses) manager understands that it's part of their job to protect naive and emotionally vulnerable junior employees from exploiting themselves
lnxg33k1 4y ago
Yeah I had the impression the guy has underlying issues regardless of Airbnb, and I've met many who put themselves on a pedestal thinking that others will worship them because they can work until 9 pm and then complaining that they're tired.. the world is such a weird place
menzoic 4y ago
It seems like this is a large part of the issue. He mentioned a few times he was promoted and well compensated. In order to get promoted you have to "exceed" expectations for your current level, which by definition means he went above and beyond what would have been normally been expected of him. Looking at his LinkedIn he got promoted from Mid level to Senior, to Staff engineer. Very few people at big tech companies achieve Staff engineer level. His LinkedIn also says he joined Airbnb in 2016 which means his stock is worth multiple millions since IPO.

langsoul-com 4y ago

Never treat a company as family or believe in any of that bullshit. Businesses are a business. At the end of the day, you have to prioritise your own well being.

AndrewThrowaway 4y ago
What is funny about families is that a lot of them are dysfunctional. As one anecdote goes: Patient says that he recently made it up with his mother. Psychiatrist ask what happened. "She died" answers patient. And we all know a lot of those families who meet once a year because of the need. And companies then want to call themselves "families".

abledon 4y ago

> As burnt out as I was, I worked even more, clinging to this promise of acceptance, hoping that I could somehow work myself into being enough. The perfect worker for them oh god lol. The term "airfam" is such a weird thing, people saying 'Thanks fam!" these days... I am not your family, I will not lend you 20,000$ if you in a rough spot, I will not take care of your kids if you die. Maybe I just take the word 'family' too literally hah, maybe a bad habit from expecting variable names to do what they are called

dvtrn 4y ago
My friend I’ve got certain members of my own actual blood family that I wouldn’t lend $20,000 to. “Families” can be wonderful. But blood families can be just as abusive, as manipulative, aggrandizing and as toxic as the “work” family.
Ocerge 4y ago
I don't think you're taking it too literally, you're absolutely right. Always keep your professional boundaries and recognize the transaction of money-for-time for what it is: a transaction.

anon2020dot00 4y ago

Excellent article. The biggest thing that I got is that AirBNB doesn't have a healthy culture. It seems like AirBNB is trying to foster a family-like environment where-in there is no division between work and life and that work is life. Basically a common tactic of corporations is to espouse "we are a family" but it is just a manipulation tactic for employees to work long-hours and to give their all to the company. The "we are a family" mantra would be fine if it was coupled with a healthy separation of work and life; with the biggest indicator being that healthy working hours (around regular 8 to 9 work hours only) is maintained. In contrast, something like Netflix culture which is "we are a team and not a family" seems like to be more of a healthier alternative. On a last point, the "we are a family" (i.e. we care about our employees as persons instead of just means or cogs) mantra is fine but it usually turns into "we are a toxic family" (i.e. give your all to the company) instead of it being a "we are a healthy family" (i.e. our company values each employee).

prox 4y ago
One simple protip for the newly starters : don’t believe the hype. Don’t EVER buy into overwork “to take one for the team”. A small crunch at the end of a deadline : fine. A perpetual overwork culture is not something a family would do to you. Also look at what a company does instead of what it says.
- nishs 4y ago
  +1. Do not drink the kool-aid. Take things in good faith generally, but be measured.
billllll 4y ago
Netflix emphasizes "team" over "family" to explicitly promote an environment where getting fired is easy. Is that really a better alternative? Whether it is a "family" or a "team," you can be assured that the company will be looking out for itself first and foremost, potentially to the detriment of the employees. I don't think that's necessarily bad, but you as an individual need to watch out for yourself no matter what rhetoric the company uses.

ta3411 4y ago

I am going to be voted down into oblivion but it's okay. This is my throwaway account anyway. Here are my 3 pragmatic takes regarding this situation: - If you are an engineer, your total comp is easily north of $200,000. At that pay scale compared to other careers, I expect (and I did) to burn through the night as needed. That's a lot of money for anyone to expect to have a comfortable work/life balance. I always compare myself with doctors residency, accountants, or labor jobs, who would do a lot more work for a lot less. Tech pay, benefit, and work/life balance are outrageously good in my opinion. - I have worked at AirBnB, Stripe, and Robinhood. And between the 3, AirBnB actually has the chillest work culture. It's known to be "too much democratic debate vs work output". But your experience may be different. - Most importantly: Just as much as you can quit the company whenever you like, companies can also lay you off whenever they want. My main takeaway is to take care of yourself. Don't buy into Airfam or company family. You do what's right for you and company does what's right for them. (I can't comment on the specifics if Airbnb layoff was the right business move).

121789 4y ago
200k is too low in the US to overwork as a SWE. If you doubled that number I think you would be closer
refurb 4y ago
That's a lot of money ($200k) for anyone to expect to have a comfortable work/life balance. This isn't true at all. In my last job (not tech) a "brutal" week might be 50 hrs and people were making double that, albeit in more senior roles (10+ years of experience).
- germinalphrase 4y ago
  What industry?
hiq 4y ago
> If you are an engineer, your total comp is easily north of $200,000. At that pay scale compared to other careers, I expect (and I did) to burn through the night as needed. How are other careers relevant? You take the best offer you can get in the (SWE) market, and if avoiding burnout is a choice criterion for you, you avoid the corresponding companies. Many of them are willing to pay the same compensation or more with a reasonable work-life balance, especially once they realize that they also benefit from it one way or another. One benefit of a free market is to help optimize resource allocations, and telling yourself "it could be worse" rather than asking "could it be better?" is counterproductive.

paul7986 4y ago

Just reading the title hits me as I never thought I'd get to a place where I wouldnt like where I work. It's been four years (longest IT job I've held in ten year career) but suddenly starting in 2022 I havent been paid by the same date I've always been and when asked the owner he said thats just how it is for contractors. Yet it's never been like that and I even noted to him paying me a week or two later then all other times/years causes stress I definitely don't need. He didnt seem to care cause I was paid even later in March and then i was offered a raise in Feb. which was to start March 1st per our conversation over Slack. In the beginning of this month (April) he said "oh sorry your raise is not effective to April 1st, I'm sorry." That was my first raise in four years as for me i'm not driven by money (he offered me a raise in 2020 I said that's ok im just happy to return/be brought back after 6 months away) rather a show of respect and that I am a value to you/your company. His actions to me say he does not value my contribution/work, so...

shmde 4y ago

All in all you're just another brick in the wall.

isuckatcoding 4y ago

> while some of us took Ubers to work and shopped at Barney’s, others maxed out credit cards or could only afford to live in the East Bay Hey now what’s wrong with being in the East Bay?

strikelaserclaw 4y ago
Maybe he is talking about people having a long commute to live in affordable areas.

AdrianB1 4y ago

adbachman 4y ago
> this sounds like political activism Everything is political activism, by that metric. Inviting tech workers to openly talk about their experiences and your warning tech workers not to openly talk about their experiences are both political positions. Congrats on not backing the workers, I guess? I'm sorry you had a bad experience in your country, "people writing about burnout leads to Gulags" isn't the lesson we should learn from it.
rexpop 4y ago
TWC is literally what it says on a thin: all workers, no backers, just being honest about our experiences. You can call us entitled, but insofar as we're propagandists, each individual is only pushing our own personal "narrative." "Building power" is _definitely_ political activism but, again, the way we build power is, primarily, by exposing ourselves to eachother's personal experiences in the tech industry. That knowledge is power. Think of it as a qualitative extension of passing around the salary spreadsheet. Sometimes, we formalize the exchanges through a speed-dating-like "worker's inquiry" where techies pair off and ask eachother basic questions like: 1. How is our work evaluated? 2. How are decisions made in our workplaces? 3. How do our respective bosses motivate us? 4. How does our work fit into the larger economic picture? 5. How is conflict handled at our workplaces? These answers aren't collected, except when they're published in articles like this. It's just... good to know what's going on with eachother. In previous generations, we'd have eachother over for dinner, for poker night, or whatever. We'd join bowling leagues, or the Sierra Club, and people working in the same industry would likely be living in the same towns, and joining the same bowling leagues. These formal, albeit recreational institutions offered workers the opportunity to casually learn about one-another's working and living conditions. Those activities have largely evaporated since the 1950s (in America, at least), atomizing our society, and making us all supremely ignorant of one another (outside the carefully curated social media profiles, and the highly dramatized "reality TV".) I don't really know why a literate person would object to casual, even semi-formal discussion of working conditions. (Of course the TWC self-selects people who are dissatisfied with our conditions, but it's a common truism that work sucks, no.)

thom 4y ago

AirBnB’s mission isn’t “create a world where anyone can belong anywhere” it’s “get people to pay money to stay in each other’s properties”. Perhaps there would be slightly less misalignment of expectations and values if we were a bit more honest with ourselves?

cudgy 4y ago

Great expression of the dark, hollow corporate experience disguised as a fulfilling, productive career. It saddens me that the author (and many others) drink the corporate kool-aid to the point of considering self-harm. I learned a similar lesson early in my career: noone can single-handedly satiate the enormous appetite of a large corporate enterprise. It will literally consume you alive. Perhaps, the contractors had a better gig? At least they might have felt less pressure to please the corporate ethos, and they were hopefully paid hourly overtime during the silly death marches.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

cosmiccatnap 4y ago

"the founders announced that they had no choice but to lay off all 500ish contractors and around 1,900 employees. The CEO cried on a broadcast that we needed to say goodbye to some of our Airfam and called on us to support each other through this difficult time. “Lean on Me” by Bill Withers played at the end of the broadcast" This stuff is sickening and toxic.

agd 4y ago

I read these kind of blog posts, but honestly, it’s hard to have too much sympathy. This guy presumably earned millions out of working at AirBnB, is staggeringly rich compared to most people, and he could have left at any time for another job.

AndrewThrowaway 4y ago

> 7,000-plus workforce It is sometimes just too hard to wrap your head around this. How what is basically a website requires such a workforce? I get that it is much more than a website, there are various aspects of platform and etc. I understand that my comment might seem off. However 7000 is really a lot people.

gruez 4y ago
customer service/sales/compliance?

fullshark 4y ago

Ultimately employees want to be seduced, they want to believe they are doing more than helping a company's owners' capital accrue + gain value in how it's implemented. They don't want to just punch the clock, they want to be part of a larger mission (and get rich doing it). A lot of this is because the traditional ways people have found value in their time on earth: religion, family, and friends are disappearing and being replaced with careerism. This guy's story is not a rare one, and it points to a larger spiritual crisis in modern life I think.

cvhashim 4y ago
You hit the nail on the head
ecshafer 4y ago
"God is Dead" wasn't an aspirational statement by Nietzsche, it was an observational one. Jung further called the move on to "spirituality" in light of the "death" of god as people move on to politics or new age religions to find meaning. This is natural evolution of that.

frakkingcylons 4y ago

Really, they were shocked to learn that customer support makes only $18 an hour? How insulated from the rest of society in the US do you have to be to find that shocking?

lkrubner 4y ago

About this: "I could have left Airbnb before things got so bad. But despite all that I observed and experienced, I truly loved my job." If I love a job, I hesitate to quit just because some of the management is terrible. As a point of reference, many people on Hacker News have read my book "How To Destroy A Tech Startup In Three Easy Steps": https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Easy-Steps/dp/0998997617/ https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Easy-Steps/dp/09... If you go read the reviews on that book, one of the most common sentiments is "Lawrence should have left that job much earlier than he did." And yet, I really loved the work and I had a lot of fun, in many ways. Maybe I didn't emphasize how much fun we had along the way, but I think, getting to work on great tech while being well paid is a relatively rare gift to an engineer, so I don't think many of us really want to walk away from a job too soon. I do understand why an engineer might stick with a place like AirBnB, even if the burden is heavy.