14 ms·

“Don't fuck up the culture” – A letter to the Airbnb team

196 points by LukeB_UK 13y ago

drakaal 13y ago
Too late for that. I don't live in my AirBNB's. I don't want to be friends with all of the people who stay at my places. I am running hotels where maid service is your responsibility, or you can pay an additional fee. I have really nice places. They are cheaper than hotels, and you get way more space. I would love to stay at their equivalents in other places. But I don't want to make friends with all the people who stay at my places, or the places I might stay. If AirBNB is going to work, it needs to be looking at ways to be more like TimeShares that you buy on a moment's notice, and less like a couch surfing site. It needs to be mainstream, not more hippy. Yes, it needed that hippy core to get started, but to really grow it has to transition from the hippy core to mainstream. You can't be a $10B company with a target audience that is only people who all want to be friends. That may be sad, but it is the truth of business.
- EricDeb 13y ago
  I think he meant culture of the workplace. It would have been interesting if he would have described the core components of the workplace and what character traits the average airBnB employee possesses.
- babo 13y ago
  How is that related to the content of this article?
  - joeblau 13y ago
    They obviously didn't read the article, just the title.
    - drakaal 13y ago
      I read it. Have you talked to the support people there? My phone support people have sounded stoned, made inappropriate jokes, and been horribly unprofessional. They are slow to respond, and worthless if anything goes wrong. How many changes have you seen to the website over the last 100 days? How many of those had a positive impact? AirBNB needs to grow up, they need to think mainstream, and they need to learn how to deal with real people at scale.
      - logicallee 13y ago
        It sounds like you need to be using Hyatt or DoubleTree's online franchised timeshare offering. What, there is none? Then be thankful that the culture you hate has created something you value. You sound like the complaints that Google doesn't offer phone support, just correct software and a knowledge base. If you want to deal with a traditional, huge, corporate juggernaut, feel free to check out their offerings. Let us know if you find anything.
        drakaal 13y ago
        The difference is Google mostly works. And yes I hate that Google has lousy support. AirBNB's corporate culture is based on the idea that nobody will care because the users would do it for free but it is nice to get paid. When you raise 500M on a 10B valuation, people start to care more that your stuff works. If you get a moldy muffin at a bake sale you say, "no big deal that was a nice guy". If you get a moldy muffin at Starbucks you get a lawyer. I am now a "Starbucks Franchisee" and so people expect more. I am also betting big on AirBNB with multiple properties, so I need them to do their part. As to the "dig" that I should be using Hyatt or Doubletree to do this... I expect I will soon. You don't expect them to stay out of the market do you? I expect Expedia to be in the space in the next 3 years as the legality of running a hotel (and that's what I do) gets shaken out in NYC and SF.
        logicallee 13y ago
        Well, you are clearly doing more than they communicate to you. I read you as being a franchisee in a franchise program that doesn't exist. Do they actively support buying apartments to lease out using Airbnb? So while I understand that you are already using them, that you see that they've raised money, and that you expect more from their franchise program than non-existence - indeed, you've set your stake down and established yourself in it - it strikes me as less than fair that you would show this level of entitlement toward a non-existent program. It's a bit like complaining to a bakery that your customers no longer wake up to the nice fresh smell of croissants in your apartment upstairs from them, now that the bakery get their croissants delivered from another baking location. Well, okay. But that's not their model. This is what your tone sounds like to me: "Dear airbnb: I've taken it upon myself to set up as a franchisee in your non-existent franchise program. And as an airbnb franchise owner, boy am I pissed. Your level of support for what I'm doing is appalling. Orders of magnitude worse than what I would get from a program that exists. As a $10B company, you cannot afford to stop supporting what I'm doing. It's a travesty. Make no mistake, I am upset and fully intend to abandon you and start using your competition - just as soon as it starts existing. Your days are numbered." I understand that you think they should go in the direction of supporting you (which may not even be legal!) but I would seriously consider the level of entitlement you show when making these requests. At the end of the day, you're not entitled to be a franchisee if they don't have a franchise program.
hkmurakami 13y ago
Not to mention that having a toxic culture is the fastest way to lose your very best people.
Theodores 13y ago
Also unrelated What happens in small tourist towns when all of the available property gets bought by outsiders wanting to 'Airbnb'? Let's face it, 'Airbnb' isn't about letting out the spare room or the flat whilst one is away for some pocket money (whilst helping some weary traveller out). Airbnb is about buying places specifically for rental. So, what happens? The few real 'Bed and Breakfast' hotels have a hard time of it and local people (not on big city wages or the money for a deposit) get pushed even further down the housing ladder. So, even if the culture is not messed up in the hip Mac-book Air stuffed office of AirBnb, the culture could be messed up in some far off town.
- guelo 13y ago
  That describes startup companies in general. It's about taking over a market that is run by small companies and driving them out of business by using Wall Street money to generate efficiencies of scale.
  - JumpCrisscross 13y ago
    So a pox on those who seek to reduce costs through scale and redundancies? It appears there is a lack of short-stay housing supply. AirBnB facilitates that market. Short-stay property owners should seek to spread their operating costs across multiple properties. This will drive out mom-and-pop operations - that is good business. The added wealth from leaner short-stay operations should make up for the temporary displacement. The displacement is a process our political process has to manage. But spitting on markets for eroding the incumbent's edge is an old game for tired societies.
    - vacri 13y ago
      It appears there is a lack of short-stay housing supply. AirBnB facilitates that market. AirBnB undercuts existing hotels by sidestepping required regulations. There isn't a lack of short-stay supply; AirBnB just works more cheaply because it has fewer expenses. The added wealth from leaner short-stay operations should make up for the temporary displacement. The point of the parent comment is that that wealth is not kept in the town, but siphoned off somewhere else.
joeblau 13y ago
That's great advice. I've been to the AriBnB offices a few times (before their most recent move) and I definitely noticed a distinct culture. Most of my cultural experience from AirBnB was though their tech talks. You get speak with engineers, other team members and you get food from their amazing executive chef. Even though their engineering team was relatively small, they created a great resource for engineers to meet and talk tech. It was something that I tried to create at the company I worked for at the time, but it was a totally different culture.
- zacharycohn 13y ago
  Free food is not culture.
  - ftay 13y ago
    It's a cultural practice.
msoad 13y ago
According to many Glassdoor reviews their culture is fucked up I guess. http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Airbnb-Reviews-E391850.htm http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Airbnb-Reviews-E391850.htm
- ilyanep 13y ago
  Is there a single company that has primarily positive Glassdoor reviews? I've only ever heard of companies having lots of negative reviews, and I think it might just be the same as apartment buildings, where nobody actually bothers to go on Glassdoor to write a review unless they're unhappy and looking for another job.
  - msoad 13y ago
    Let's look at Square that is very similar to Airbnb for example. http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Square-Reviews-E422050.htm http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Square-Reviews-E422050.htm It seems that good companies really have good reviews in general.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
- tim333 13y ago
  If they read a few of those out and dealt with them at the meeting it would be an entertaining one. "When started was friendly and open, now its gotten so big that those at the top have no connection with their employees, if you have a problem its now passed on to customer service and you receive a generic answer. middle management manage by threats and I doubt those at the top have a clue whats happening." for example.
- eqdw 13y ago
  Sometimes I feel shitty about the fact that I don't work at a glamourous, name-brand company. Thanks for making me feel better :). I should read these reviews for more companies.
dropit_sphere 13y ago
I have this pet theory that the best companies in the future will be those that act more like cults (putting the "cult" in culture) than companies. As the jobs that actually need doing become more and more ambiguous (how specific is the job description of a "growth hacker" compared to the median job in the 50's?), companies will have more and more trouble hiring for specific skills(reading anything about hiring developers will evidence this). So the differentiating factor will be culture fit rather than specific skills. Does this sound like it will have problems? Yeah, I think so. But does the current system have problems? (Left as an exercise for the reader) There's one more tidbit that comes to mind: what happens when the "core values" indicate that it's time for the company to close up shop? I'm not sure there's a catch-all answer, but this is a question for anyone who pays lip service to the idea of culture to ponder.
schrijver 13y ago
EDT: To me, this post comes across as vacuous and pompous because it does not explain at all what ‘culture’ means in this context. An IMHO great reply has already been written before this post appeared: ‘What Your Culture Really Says’: https://medium.com/about-work/e8ab06c3b75f https://medium.com/about-work/e8ab06c3b75f > Let’s examine popular startup trends that are being called “culture” and look beneath the surface to find the real culture that may be playing out beneath it. This is not a critique of the practices themselves, which often contribute value to an organization. This is to show a contrast between the much deeper, systemic cultural problems that are rampant in our startups and the materialistic trappings that can disguise them.
- comrh 13y ago
  > The critique of startup culture that came in large part from the agile movement has been replaced by sanitized, pompous, dishonest slogans. You and that article nailed it for me.
robert_tweed 13y ago
In my experience, this is the first sign that a company culture is about to be fucked up. The reason is that a company culture is organic and highly dependent on the people that make it. When a company is very small, it's easy to have only the best people who also happen to fit in to the same culture, because those people naturally gravitate together. In the beginning, the company is small enough that they are not hiring for very specialised and disparate skills so much as "a bunch of smart people that work well together". As teams get bigger, inevitably things get more structured and by trying to hold on to that initial culture, you inevitably kill it. Personally I believe the best thing is to have small autonomous units within the business that have a set remit and are allowed to have their own culture, with the company as a whole acting to promote cross-pollination between units. There really doesn't have to be one single "culture" guided by the "core company values" because those are two different things that invariably do not mesh once you get past about 30 people. So when companies hit that awkward "teenage" size and try, they usually fail. I also find that the claims about company culture made by most mid to large sized company are inevitably false. There might be a particular culture within individual teams (the IT team in the basement, for instance), but usually it does not permeate the entire business to the extent the HR team wishes it did.
- dshah 13y ago
  I agree that company culture's are organic (changing) and highly dependent on the people that make it. Having said that, the people that are there are determined by the culture. If the culture of a company is well known, articulated and understood, there's a self-selection process that happens. A given culture attracts certain kinds of people -- so it becomes self-reenforcing. I also disagree with the notion that a culture cannot permeate across groups. There is certainly a sub-culture that can (and does) exist within groups (this exists everywhere people of like mind or activity aggregate), but that doesn't mean there can't be an overarching culture that is shared organization wide. I've given a lot of thought and calories to this topic. My company (HubSpot) has grown from 2 people to 800 people and like Brian (OP from AirBnB), we think about this culture thing a lot. Just because you hit the "awkward teen" size doesn't mean you are predetermined to fail at trying to have a functional , shared culture.
bronbron 13y ago
> Ever notice how families or tribes don’t require much process? That is because there is such a strong trust and culture that it supersedes any process. In organizations (or even in a society) where culture is weak, you need an abundance of heavy, precise rules and processes. I think it's disingenuous to say tribes and families don't "require much process." The processes are just more implicit than explicit. When you ask your parents for a new toy and they evaluate whether to say 'yes', that's a process - just an informal one. The only reason that's really possible is because the relationships are much more intimate and fewer. When you start to scale into numbers where it's just infeasible for "everyone to know everyone" then formal processes have to take the place of those informal ones. I can't evaluate Jim's request for 10 additional storage disks informally because I don't know the first thing about Jim. Coordinating lots of people is really hard. I would guess Airbnb is getting about the size where keeping the culture intact will require a sizable time commitment from the top level. Airbnb keeping that same culture at 20,000 employees would probably be a sociological feat all on its own.
- judk 13y ago
  Implicit? Tribes invented religions (over and over again) with complex rituals governing every aspect of daily, yearly, and generational life.
  - bronbron 13y ago
    Excellent point! I actually wasn't even thinking about religion. I was thinking more broad (e.g. Dowries), but you're absolutely right there are tons of explicit processes as well.
    - Noxchi 13y ago
      So in summary, if you want your company to be the size (employee wise) of a family, you don't need processes (a written down instruction of how to do something). If you want your company to be the size of a religion, you do.
      - 13y ago
impendia 13y ago
> Ever notice how families or tribes don’t require much process? Interesting, I've observed the opposite. As someone single, I've been surprised at how much process there is among many married or cohabiting couples. Lots of discussion and planning around everyday routine chores, such as going to the grocery store. These couples have assured me with confidence that this is very important to the health of their relationships.
- stavrianos 13y ago
  My own anecdata suggests that while there may be a lot of back-and-forth, it's very free-form, rather than strictly codified and formalized. I assumed this was what was meant.
- sockgrant 13y ago
  You're comparing someone single to someone in a relationship. Two people need "process" to get along, whereas a person on their own does not. An analogy fitting to OP's point is comparing two people from Hollywood and Ethiopia living in the same apartment versus one of the cohabiting couples you're talking about. In one case, you'll need expressed rules for each to abide by since they're culturally quite different. Comparatively the other case will have very few rules, because of the cultural similarity. The cohabiting couple will more naturally work towards similar goals without painstakingly negotiating them and laying them out.
- nostromo 13y ago
  My personal experience is the opposite. I feel like dysfunctional couples need a lot more talking and planning and negotiating than more functional couples. "Hey, do you mind helping me clean the kitchen?" "Sure." Also, my favorite working environments have been similar to a family of peers. "Hey, do you mind pushing your changes this morning?" "Sure."
  - yukichan 13y ago
    I feel like many men sometimes aren't aware of how little they help around the house with chores and taking care of the children, so I am proactive and plan stuff with my wife. I don't wait for her to ask me. That isn't dysfunctional. There's also a lot of process in families. Some you can automate now, like paying the bills. Some processes are routines. Getting up, getting our child dressed, walking her to school, picking her up, taking her to her after school activities. Doing her homework with her. There's also process with checking things around the house. Checking the fire alarms regularly, scheduling dentist appointments, making plans for seeing family. These are all processes. The whole original article came off as ignorance and out of touch. As someone with an academic background in Anthropology and Sociology the author doesn't seem to understand what culture is or how hierarchy and unbalanced power relationships in the office place work. It's not a very sophisticated treatment of the topic in any regard. And in that vein, my opinion is that as long as the times are good and you're not hiring a bunch of dickhead managers your culture will be fine. If you take your culture to mean don't hire old people because they don't play the video games your 20 somethings do then your shit is fucked. In the end, when things go bad in the business, culture will sour.
danielweber 13y ago
One of the indications that I was going to have to quit a company (that I co-founded) was when a new person was brought on to "maintain company culture."
- colinbartlett 13y ago
  "VP of Culture" sounds like a dystopian business card title.
nirmel 13y ago
"The stronger the culture, the less process a company needs." This sentence finally made it click for me. Culture is not about making people happy. It is the set of principles on which you convince people to base their decisions and actions that affect the company. If those principles can be made uniform without hierarchy and approval processes, that makes a company unequivocally more efficient.
- krapp 13y ago
  Culture is, to a degree, about harmony, and therefore to an extent also about making people happy, in providing a sense of belonging to and identification with a group and a purpose greater than oneself. I believe there's a fundamental difference, however, between culture as an emergent property, subject to its members' needs and changeable by its desires, and 'culture' as a set of metaphysical properties determined by a company's founders, to which one must either conform or find themselves terminated. A culture which you have no influence over isn't really a culture to which you can belong.
judk 13y ago
AirBnB's culture is to do whatever it takes to get (er, "hack") what you want, rules and agreements be damned, so they certainly should only make rules for the purpose of giving people practice bending them.
- prodigal_erik 13y ago
  Why would known spammers feel the need to put their employees through a charade of having values? Surely they've noticed how our industry fails to deter sociopathy.
dkarapetyan 13y ago
Culture obsession is a little silly. If you hire smart individuals then the culture will work itself out as will pretty much everything else. Plus, whenever anyone mentions culture they either can't define it or it ends up being the definition of the hive mind, i.e. it is all around you and within you but you can't really know what it is until you are part of it. In other words I have learned literally zero things from this post other than Peter Thiel invested in Airbnb and told them to not fuck things up. Which I guess you can do when you give someone $150 million.
- sockgrant 13y ago
  > If you hire smart individuals then the culture will work itself out as will pretty much everything else Culture is about people getting along, being motivated towards the same goals, and working in the type of environment that they enjoy. Not all smart individuals have the same culture desires. Google is the posterboy for culture discussions, and they are very open and blunt about denying some extremely smart interviewees. They very carefully prune for cultural fit, and it has a large impact. Google's culture is a multiplying factor on the productivity. A bad culture fit for an employee or employer is an < 1 multiplier to productivity.
leoc 13y ago
It should be said that maintaining a corporate culture that brought success isn't always sufficient for continued success, and sometimes isn't even compatible with it. HP and DEC both had a strong and much-admired culture and way of doing business and then wallop.
- tim333 13y ago
  You could argue HP lost the culture first, at least at the top when Carly Fiorina who was a marketer rather than an engineer put into run a company that had always been about great engineering. Then wallop as you say.
lexcorvus 13y ago
Nitpick: "to Joe, Nate, and I" should be "to Joe, Nate, and me."
- Myrmornis 13y ago
  This is starting be very widespread and it is embarassing because the primary cause is a vague idea that it is "more educated" to say "I" than "me", which of course backfires horribly when you reveal publicly the fact that you don't know that "I" should only be used as the subject of the sentence.
  - dmourati 13y ago
    Agree. See this tweet from before reading this: https://twitter.com/dmourati/status/457641268525289472 https://twitter.com/dmourati/status/457641268525289472 Hint: remove Joe and Nate from the sentence and then pick I/me, you'll get it right every time.
  - lexcorvus 13y ago
    Exactly. As you may know, the general phenomenon is called [hypercorrection](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection).
    - Myrmornis 13y ago
      ...linguists Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum claim that utterances such as "They invited Sandy and I" are "heard constantly in the conversation of people whose status as speakers of Standard English is clear"; and that "Those who condemn it simply assume that the case of a pronoun in a coordination must be the same as when it stands alone. Actual usage is in conflict with this assumption." It may take me some time to calm down after reading that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection
inopinatus 13y ago
It's a fine sentiment but blunders over the meaning in a rush to confirm the wisdom of the original epigram. I don't know if this because the author of this memo doesn't understand culture analytically or felt that explaining what was meant didn't have a place in this memo, but dismissing process was a mistake. A more nuanced perspective breaks culture into multiple domains: # Values # Norms # Routines Notice I didn't say processes. That's because processes are a subset of routines. They are the routines written down. The author seems to be terribly proud that AirBnB's routines aren't written down. I was left cold by this. It doesn't matter that much. Values are the fundamental beliefs that people cherish. The thing about values is that they are, as a result, near impossible to change quickly. Five to seven years and you'll have to change the CEO and the hiring policy to achieve it. Norms are the units of behavioral control. Norms are group-level social pressures such as bringing a plate for morning tea or writing good commit messages. These are the real interesting pieces because they shift readily in response to incentives. (If you're ever looking for easy goals in an organisational change effort, fiddle with the norms) Norms generally help keep routines-that-aren't-written-down (some might say "the unwritten processes") steady and reify new ones in response to externalities. So when Thiel was saying "don't fuck up the culture" I take away two things: * Don't bother wittering about values. You're stuck with them anyway. * Don't fuck with the incentive structure But contrary to a major point in the article, you can write down the routines as processes if you like, just remember to capture the why as well as the what.
- mruniverse 13y ago
  The $150M imparts wisdom.
- janto 13y ago
  I enjoyed reading your breakdown of culture and its malleability. Any good books or links that discuss these ideas?
gavinh 13y ago
I hope AirBnb's other communications aren't as ugly as that heap of sentence fragments.
n72 13y ago
"Our next team meeting is dedicated to Core Values, which are essential to building our culture." Having meetings about culture and "core values" is a sure sign your culture's fucked. The fact that he thinks having a meeting about culture might in some way help fix some culture issue indicates to me he's really not the person to impart pearls of wisdom when it comes to company culture. tl;dr that's mba-speak, bro.
- wpietri 13y ago
  I think it's a sign, but not a sure sign. One company I consulted at, maybe 200 people, went through a substantial internal process to make their values explicit. I wasn't there for it, but I understand everybody participated, and there was a lot of discussion about what they really wanted in a mission statement and a set of values. When I was there, it amazed me to see employees at all levels actually pulling out the list of values when hard decisions were happening. They used it to remind themselves of what really mattered to them. Admittedly, I've only seen it once, but it really appeared to work. It's definitely something I'm keeping in my pocket the next time I'm at something that crosses Dunbar's Number.
  - arghbleargh 13y ago
    That sounds amazing to me too. What you described is really the only way that making lists of "core values" could possibly achieve something useful. I just never thought it could happen. Usually people just remember the core values as a list of things that sound good, and they're too abstract to offer any real guidance for a concrete situation.
- pm 13y ago
  You can't really tell whether it's fucked or not - they could just as easily have decided it was time to codify the overarching values that have developed organically over time.
- nostrademons 13y ago
  Google's "don't be evil" motto came out of a company meeting on core values. I would hardly say that Google's culture from 2002-2011 was fucked.
001sky 13y ago
It's a fine sentiment but glosses over the details... Interesting, I've observed the opposite... I think it's disingenuous to say... In my experience, this is the first sign that [X] about to be fucked up... I hope [company X's] other communications aren't as ugly as that heap of sentence fragments.... ___________ These are the first 1-5 comment's on HN. Is this the work some 4chan Meme propogation software?
dclowd9901 13y ago
I'm of two minds here. Mind one: Cultures are stupid. They're artificial and require buy-in. This either alienates people, or indoctrinates them, and in either case, you end up with something artificial, stupid and derivative. Mind two: Cultures are organic and incredible. They "become" because they are reflective of a small (VERY small) subgroup of people and their own rarely synchronous core values. Because of how humans only accept the idiosyncrasies of others if they're reflective of more than one person, cultures help to expose idiosyncratic tastes and behaviors to people who might not otherwise be exposed to them. Now that that's out of the way, at some point, your company will not have the clout or draw to be able to pull in the talent you want 100% of the time. Candidate A might be perfect on paper, but maybe doesn't like surreal humor. Candidate B might be the best Javascript gal you've ever seen, but she's not big on noise rock. These sound like stupid and trivial things, but the heart of a culture is the enthusiasm that lives alongside finding people who all march to the beat of the same drum. Who, for whatever reason, all were fans of The Gilmore Girls or who have a weird fascination with whale sounds or maybe like fighting with broomsticks. You will lose culture, so long as you're willing to bring on people who aren't exactly like you.
mbrock 13y ago
Families and tribes can of course also be suffocating, difficult, dramatic, abusive, controlling, insular, xenophobic, and so on. Process is not a bad thing, as in e.g. the idea of "due process." It can be a way of making things fair and transparent.
whoismua 13y ago
Nice try but "culture," "family," "our values," and all that crap goes right out of the window when things go south or when the company decides to save a few bucks. Seen it a lot of times to make it a trend.
adamzerner 13y ago
I found this cliche and unoriginal. I would have liked to see more concrete examples of what they do want to do, what they want to avoid, and how exactly they're going to "execute" at getting culture right.
evolve2k 13y ago
Preserving the culture is about staying true to some of the core ways things are done right now, despite the pressures to adjust how those things are done as the organization grows. On the surface 'culture' is just the way things are done (currently). Deepen engagement and understanding of your values by collecting and writing down organizational folklore. The best way your can preserve your current culture is to, as the leader, document your thinking and define and explain in your own words key unique and important ways of doing things. Disney and Sony were both good at this. Both companies later experienced drift from their original core way of doing things. It was referring back to these early papers written by the fonunder (often many years after they were gone) that enabled these companies to constantly rediscover their roots when they got lost. Write as if you were about to die and wanted to leave instructions and guidance for the next leaders.
dredmorbius 13y ago
TL;DR: Dunbar's number
dasil003 13y ago
After reading the article I wanted to come and comment that it sounds good but I couldn't tell if it really meant anything. Then I read the comments and they make a lot of good points, but they are all conflicting and it's hard to distill any real takeaway. At this point I'm convinced of only one thing: company culture is magic. Everyone influences it, but there is no controlling it. When you're a tiny little startup of course the culture will reflect your values as a founder or early employee, when you're bigger it will change on its own. You can hire for culture, and you can talk about it, or even wax poetic, but ultimately it's a chaotic interaction of individuals and you're a fool if you think you can control it.
stevedc3 13y ago
It would have been much more helpful if he had actually defined Airbnb's culture or shared some values. While I admire the note to employees and I'm sure it spurred a discussion at the company, there was no reference to what their culture was before or after the letter.
- mikeg8 13y ago
  Its's an internal letter, hopefully everyone who received it already knows the values and has a sense of the culture. Having to spell it out for everyone (assumingly again) would have meant things were much worse off.
  - ftay 13y ago
    It's being published externally, so it's a fair criticism.
lazyant 13y ago
"Passion"? check. "Core Values"? check. Not a single specific of what those core values or culture is? check.
EGreg 13y ago
I have a simple saying: "People live lives. Companies build products." To me, maintaining a free lifestyle is an important goal, more than money. If the company is building something worthwhile, it will eventually get there. That's why I am a big proponent of setting up clear autonomous systems and processes, and placing less blame on people. As long as things get done, I don't care who the person dates or where they live. If things aren't getting done, then we review what the problem is. Half the time it's not the person, but the process. One thing this article gets right: there are tools and there are culture. Tools determine the process, which has an effect on the culture, but the culture develops organically depending on who's in the team. If you are super culture heavy, you'll hire A+ superstars (like the recent article about building a cult). But as for me, I don't want to be a cult leader. I want to build better tools to empower people to help each other and make their own decisions. Both in our company, and in the rest of the world.
harryh 13y ago
To me the most interesting thing about this blog post is that Brian doesn't actually say what defines AirBnB's culture. Perhaps he did so in some other internal document or meeting, but it doesn't make sense to say that you shouldn't fuck something up when you haven't clearly defined what that thing is. I much prefer Ben Horowitz's post on this topic: http://www.bhorowitz.com/programming_your_culture http://www.bhorowitz.com/programming_your_culture I like the fact that he makes it clear that there are many different ways to define a company culture and that, if possible, leaders should make a conscious choice to choose among them. * Move fast and break things. * Take pride in the work we do. * The customer is always right. Any of these (and many more) could be cornerstones of company culture, but they're all pretty different. If you're just defining your culture as "work hard and do a good job" then you haven't really said much. Everyone wants to do that.
- xerophtye 13y ago
  You have managed to articulately put what so many of us are pointing out that, he didn't really say what it is that he wants to preserve. Yes, culture doesn't need to be defined in a formal document, but it can be hinted at with a few words
fjk 13y ago
> Culture is not a good or bad thing. It’s a shared thing. I sometimes hear people say “they aren’t a culture fit” as if it’s a bad thing, or others feel bad pointing this out as if it’s an indictment on someone’s character. It’s not. I am not a culture fit at probably any other company, which is why I had to help start one! This (which is one of Brian's notes in the article) is one of the best ways to think about culture that I've encountered. A company can't have "good" culture or "bad" culture. It just has a certain shared way of doing things that may or may not vibe with you. On a related note, Tony Hsieh of Zappos believes what your culture is doesn't matter as much as having a strong identity. Just figure out who you, as a company, are and the rest will follow: "...one of the really interesting things I found from the research is that it actually doesn’t matter what your values are, what matters is that you have them and that you align the organization around them. And the power actually comes from the alignment not from the actual values"[1] [1] https://blog.kissmetrics.com/zappos-art-of-culture/ https://blog.kissmetrics.com/zappos-art-of-culture/
- rmrfrmrf 13y ago
  My main issue with the "culture fit" thing is that it's a very new-school style of business that has been shoehorned into an antiquated process (hiring) that hasn't adapted nearly enough to changing attitudes about workplace priorities. I'd imagine it's difficult for someone to hear that their personality was what failed to get them the job after 30 mins - 1 hour of interaction where skills are still supposedly the number one priority.
scelerat 13y ago
After a handful of times of getting burned, I've come to interpret any official executive statement on values or culture as a sign that things are seriously screwed or about to become that way, and that it's time to bail out. To me, culture is something that happens organically and not via directive. Leaders can shape company culture but only through their own personal demonstration of it and not by decree. Once I hear someone saying "this is how it shall be henceforth," I'm gone. They're either hopelessly naive or trying to construct a happy edifice while behaving badly.
- 6cxs2hd6 13y ago
  Exactly, it's about walking the walk -- non-self-consciously and without artifice. It's a product of negative verbal space: The actual values/culture are communicated by what isn't said, because they're presumed to be self-evident. Therefore, not to be flippant but a great way to fuck up the culture is to write a memo about not fucking up the culture.
  - bnjs 13y ago
    Walking the walk and talking the talk aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.
- abbasmehdi 13y ago
  I beg to differ. As an example, Hacker News has a culture, as laid out by Paul Graham [1]. It is not only shaped by his and moderators' personal demonstration, but also by decree [1]. Those who violate it are chided (publicly and/or systematically). Granted this is an anonymous internet forum [2] not a company, but the general principal is the same - clearly defining expectations and punishing [3] unacceptable behavior. This could perhaps go to explain the HN culture versus another online forum or the comments section of a public site. [1] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html [2] Considering which it should be even harder quality control. [3] I use the term loosely.
  - xerophtye 13y ago
sgustard 13y ago
If the culture is one of arbitrary profanity, sign me the fuck up!
pags 13y ago
"fuck" is an edgy word.
yoamro 13y ago
10/10 love the point of this letter. As evident by the comments here, culture can mean different things to everyone. More accurately, I would just say its the belief in the product and same passion that every one should have in a start up. Thats the "culture" IMO.
Trindaz 13y ago
In case any first time founders out there are basing some of their own management ideas on this letter, please remember: "Families and tribes" (a) get by fine without explicit processes because they are small groups, or (b) they do have the processes but they don't need to be written down because they are taught implicitly from birth. Arguments of the form "We don't need [insert any concept from management text books] because we are smart, technical people" are the flags on areas of your company that will break the worst.
owensmp 13y ago
Are there any associated blogs which outline the core values of AirBnb culture? What do they consider the tenants of this culture?
Beliavsky 13y ago
Nowadays there is a lot of talk about "inclusion". What about "including" people who dislike profanity? "Don't mess up the culture" would have conveyed the same message without the bad language.
- teacup50 13y ago
  I have no qualms with profanity, but I admit I had a negative reaction when I saw "fuck" so prominently leveraged in a blog post about company culture. For someone who wants to have a certain level of professional decorum at work, the use of "fuck" in your CEO's blog post about your company's culture would certainly be exclusionary. It's also quite likely to drive away even-tempered contributors in favor of a "bro" audience. Perhaps that was the point: http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Airbnb-Reviews-E391850.htm http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Airbnb-Reviews-E391850.htm
  - jusben1369 13y ago
    Ben Horowitz has an interesting chapter in his recent book "The Hard Thing about Hard Things" that talks about profanity. Apparently early on at LoudCloud (or Opsware) at a company meeting some employees raised the issue that there was too much profanity in the office. Ben acknowledged that he was the worst culprit so this was most likely aimed at him. He slept on it and decided that it could be used but never in a sexist or bullying way. He rationalized it based on the assumption that it was already an inherent part of many tech companies and not allowing it might restrict their access to the best talent. I thought that weird. Either way I think the end result is that it does seem to be an important part of the culture and as a future or current employee it should factor into your decision to work there.
    - newtle 13y ago
      That book is 80% great, but his opinions about profanity are part of the other 20%. There's no meat to it. All we learn is Ben's belief that adding the word 'fucking' to a sentence communicates intensity more effectively than any alternative, and his belief that great employees want to work amongst torrents of profanity. To put it in a way that Ben might understand, it's fucking bullshit. It's not the worst part of the book to be sure, but there's no value to it, the reasoning is weak, and the evidence is non-existent.* * The worst thing is when he espouses the importance of work/life balance for the CEO, and then talks proudly of a death-march that he put his employees through. A death march which he says must be good because a grand total of one employee told him it was a great experience. A death march which didn't result in the loss of all his employees not because Ben is a great leader (he ain't), but because the economy was such a catastrophe that even a shitty, abusive job working for a profane and self-congratulatory motherfucker was better than the alternative.
krosaen 13y ago
> The stronger the culture, the less corporate process a company needs and > Ever notice how families or tribes don’t require much process? That is because there is such a strong trust and culture that it supersedes any process. I think both the above are more related to being small than having strong culture. > Culture is simply a shared way of doing something with passion. having a shared way is natural and easy when you're small. Trying to continue that as you grow is a good goal, but it's just hard, which is why there's so much thought and research around how to lead, manage and how to make organizations thrive. It's not an easy problem, and saying, "hey everyone, just be vigilant and keep the same small company family culture even though we're growing" likely won't cut it.
jpasmore 13y ago
As a person who is not white, I look at these efforts curiously. They seem generally like a way to hire people like "us", people who like the same music, people who will go to the same bar after work, fundamentally people we are comfortable with...people who will not change the culture. Fred Wilson's blog had a related topic; The Role Of Personal Chemistry In Investment Selection -- http://avc.com/2013/10/the-role-of-personal-chemistry-in-investment-selection/ http://avc.com/2013/10/the-role-of-personal-chemistry-in-inv... There is a slippery slope of exclusionary behavior associated with this line of thinking -- where some way of being that is foreign or different doesn't get hired or potentially doesn't get funded.
_pmf_ 13y ago
> “Don't fuck up the culture” Bro-Investor

196 points by LukeB_UK 13y ago

Too late for that. I don't live in my AirBNB's. I don't want to be friends with all of the people who stay at my places. I am running hotels where maid service is your responsibility, or you can pay an additional fee. I have really nice places. They are cheaper than hotels, and you get way more space. I would love to stay at their equivalents in other places. But I don't want to make friends with all the people who stay at my places, or the places I might stay. If AirBNB is going to work, it needs to be looking at ways to be more like TimeShares that you buy on a moment's notice, and less like a couch surfing site. It needs to be mainstream, not more hippy. Yes, it needed that hippy core to get started, but to really grow it has to transition from the hippy core to mainstream. You can't be a $10B company with a target audience that is only people who all want to be friends. That may be sad, but it is the truth of business.

EricDeb 13y ago
I think he meant culture of the workplace. It would have been interesting if he would have described the core components of the workplace and what character traits the average airBnB employee possesses.
babo 13y ago
How is that related to the content of this article?
- joeblau 13y ago
  They obviously didn't read the article, just the title.
  - drakaal 13y ago
    I read it. Have you talked to the support people there? My phone support people have sounded stoned, made inappropriate jokes, and been horribly unprofessional. They are slow to respond, and worthless if anything goes wrong. How many changes have you seen to the website over the last 100 days? How many of those had a positive impact? AirBNB needs to grow up, they need to think mainstream, and they need to learn how to deal with real people at scale.
    - logicallee 13y ago
      It sounds like you need to be using Hyatt or DoubleTree's online franchised timeshare offering. What, there is none? Then be thankful that the culture you hate has created something you value. You sound like the complaints that Google doesn't offer phone support, just correct software and a knowledge base. If you want to deal with a traditional, huge, corporate juggernaut, feel free to check out their offerings. Let us know if you find anything.
      - drakaal 13y ago
        The difference is Google mostly works. And yes I hate that Google has lousy support. AirBNB's corporate culture is based on the idea that nobody will care because the users would do it for free but it is nice to get paid. When you raise 500M on a 10B valuation, people start to care more that your stuff works. If you get a moldy muffin at a bake sale you say, "no big deal that was a nice guy". If you get a moldy muffin at Starbucks you get a lawyer. I am now a "Starbucks Franchisee" and so people expect more. I am also betting big on AirBNB with multiple properties, so I need them to do their part. As to the "dig" that I should be using Hyatt or Doubletree to do this... I expect I will soon. You don't expect them to stay out of the market do you? I expect Expedia to be in the space in the next 3 years as the legality of running a hotel (and that's what I do) gets shaken out in NYC and SF.
        logicallee 13y ago
        Well, you are clearly doing more than they communicate to you. I read you as being a franchisee in a franchise program that doesn't exist. Do they actively support buying apartments to lease out using Airbnb? So while I understand that you are already using them, that you see that they've raised money, and that you expect more from their franchise program than non-existence - indeed, you've set your stake down and established yourself in it - it strikes me as less than fair that you would show this level of entitlement toward a non-existent program. It's a bit like complaining to a bakery that your customers no longer wake up to the nice fresh smell of croissants in your apartment upstairs from them, now that the bakery get their croissants delivered from another baking location. Well, okay. But that's not their model. This is what your tone sounds like to me: "Dear airbnb: I've taken it upon myself to set up as a franchisee in your non-existent franchise program. And as an airbnb franchise owner, boy am I pissed. Your level of support for what I'm doing is appalling. Orders of magnitude worse than what I would get from a program that exists. As a $10B company, you cannot afford to stop supporting what I'm doing. It's a travesty. Make no mistake, I am upset and fully intend to abandon you and start using your competition - just as soon as it starts existing. Your days are numbered." I understand that you think they should go in the direction of supporting you (which may not even be legal!) but I would seriously consider the level of entitlement you show when making these requests. At the end of the day, you're not entitled to be a franchisee if they don't have a franchise program.

hkmurakami 13y ago

Not to mention that having a toxic culture is the fastest way to lose your very best people.

Theodores 13y ago

Also unrelated What happens in small tourist towns when all of the available property gets bought by outsiders wanting to 'Airbnb'? Let's face it, 'Airbnb' isn't about letting out the spare room or the flat whilst one is away for some pocket money (whilst helping some weary traveller out). Airbnb is about buying places specifically for rental. So, what happens? The few real 'Bed and Breakfast' hotels have a hard time of it and local people (not on big city wages or the money for a deposit) get pushed even further down the housing ladder. So, even if the culture is not messed up in the hip Mac-book Air stuffed office of AirBnb, the culture could be messed up in some far off town.

guelo 13y ago
That describes startup companies in general. It's about taking over a market that is run by small companies and driving them out of business by using Wall Street money to generate efficiencies of scale.
- JumpCrisscross 13y ago
  So a pox on those who seek to reduce costs through scale and redundancies? It appears there is a lack of short-stay housing supply. AirBnB facilitates that market. Short-stay property owners should seek to spread their operating costs across multiple properties. This will drive out mom-and-pop operations - that is good business. The added wealth from leaner short-stay operations should make up for the temporary displacement. The displacement is a process our political process has to manage. But spitting on markets for eroding the incumbent's edge is an old game for tired societies.
  - vacri 13y ago
    It appears there is a lack of short-stay housing supply. AirBnB facilitates that market. AirBnB undercuts existing hotels by sidestepping required regulations. There isn't a lack of short-stay supply; AirBnB just works more cheaply because it has fewer expenses. The added wealth from leaner short-stay operations should make up for the temporary displacement. The point of the parent comment is that that wealth is not kept in the town, but siphoned off somewhere else.

joeblau 13y ago

That's great advice. I've been to the AriBnB offices a few times (before their most recent move) and I definitely noticed a distinct culture. Most of my cultural experience from AirBnB was though their tech talks. You get speak with engineers, other team members and you get food from their amazing executive chef. Even though their engineering team was relatively small, they created a great resource for engineers to meet and talk tech. It was something that I tried to create at the company I worked for at the time, but it was a totally different culture.

zacharycohn 13y ago
Free food is not culture.
- ftay 13y ago
  It's a cultural practice.

msoad 13y ago

According to many Glassdoor reviews their culture is fucked up I guess. http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Airbnb-Reviews-E391850.htm http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Airbnb-Reviews-E391850.htm

ilyanep 13y ago
Is there a single company that has primarily positive Glassdoor reviews? I've only ever heard of companies having lots of negative reviews, and I think it might just be the same as apartment buildings, where nobody actually bothers to go on Glassdoor to write a review unless they're unhappy and looking for another job.
- msoad 13y ago
  Let's look at Square that is very similar to Airbnb for example. http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Square-Reviews-E422050.htm http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Square-Reviews-E422050.htm It seems that good companies really have good reviews in general.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
tim333 13y ago
If they read a few of those out and dealt with them at the meeting it would be an entertaining one. "When started was friendly and open, now its gotten so big that those at the top have no connection with their employees, if you have a problem its now passed on to customer service and you receive a generic answer. middle management manage by threats and I doubt those at the top have a clue whats happening." for example.
eqdw 13y ago
Sometimes I feel shitty about the fact that I don't work at a glamourous, name-brand company. Thanks for making me feel better :). I should read these reviews for more companies.

dropit_sphere 13y ago

I have this pet theory that the best companies in the future will be those that act more like cults (putting the "cult" in culture) than companies. As the jobs that actually need doing become more and more ambiguous (how specific is the job description of a "growth hacker" compared to the median job in the 50's?), companies will have more and more trouble hiring for specific skills(reading anything about hiring developers will evidence this). So the differentiating factor will be culture fit rather than specific skills. Does this sound like it will have problems? Yeah, I think so. But does the current system have problems? (Left as an exercise for the reader) There's one more tidbit that comes to mind: what happens when the "core values" indicate that it's time for the company to close up shop? I'm not sure there's a catch-all answer, but this is a question for anyone who pays lip service to the idea of culture to ponder.

schrijver 13y ago

EDT: To me, this post comes across as vacuous and pompous because it does not explain at all what ‘culture’ means in this context. An IMHO great reply has already been written before this post appeared: ‘What Your Culture Really Says’: https://medium.com/about-work/e8ab06c3b75f https://medium.com/about-work/e8ab06c3b75f > Let’s examine popular startup trends that are being called “culture” and look beneath the surface to find the real culture that may be playing out beneath it. This is not a critique of the practices themselves, which often contribute value to an organization. This is to show a contrast between the much deeper, systemic cultural problems that are rampant in our startups and the materialistic trappings that can disguise them.

comrh 13y ago
> The critique of startup culture that came in large part from the agile movement has been replaced by sanitized, pompous, dishonest slogans. You and that article nailed it for me.

robert_tweed 13y ago

In my experience, this is the first sign that a company culture is about to be fucked up. The reason is that a company culture is organic and highly dependent on the people that make it. When a company is very small, it's easy to have only the best people who also happen to fit in to the same culture, because those people naturally gravitate together. In the beginning, the company is small enough that they are not hiring for very specialised and disparate skills so much as "a bunch of smart people that work well together". As teams get bigger, inevitably things get more structured and by trying to hold on to that initial culture, you inevitably kill it. Personally I believe the best thing is to have small autonomous units within the business that have a set remit and are allowed to have their own culture, with the company as a whole acting to promote cross-pollination between units. There really doesn't have to be one single "culture" guided by the "core company values" because those are two different things that invariably do not mesh once you get past about 30 people. So when companies hit that awkward "teenage" size and try, they usually fail. I also find that the claims about company culture made by most mid to large sized company are inevitably false. There might be a particular culture within individual teams (the IT team in the basement, for instance), but usually it does not permeate the entire business to the extent the HR team wishes it did.

dshah 13y ago
I agree that company culture's are organic (changing) and highly dependent on the people that make it. Having said that, the people that are there are determined by the culture. If the culture of a company is well known, articulated and understood, there's a self-selection process that happens. A given culture attracts certain kinds of people -- so it becomes self-reenforcing. I also disagree with the notion that a culture cannot permeate across groups. There is certainly a sub-culture that can (and does) exist within groups (this exists everywhere people of like mind or activity aggregate), but that doesn't mean there can't be an overarching culture that is shared organization wide. I've given a lot of thought and calories to this topic. My company (HubSpot) has grown from 2 people to 800 people and like Brian (OP from AirBnB), we think about this culture thing a lot. Just because you hit the "awkward teen" size doesn't mean you are predetermined to fail at trying to have a functional , shared culture.

bronbron 13y ago

> Ever notice how families or tribes don’t require much process? That is because there is such a strong trust and culture that it supersedes any process. In organizations (or even in a society) where culture is weak, you need an abundance of heavy, precise rules and processes. I think it's disingenuous to say tribes and families don't "require much process." The processes are just more implicit than explicit. When you ask your parents for a new toy and they evaluate whether to say 'yes', that's a process - just an informal one. The only reason that's really possible is because the relationships are much more intimate and fewer. When you start to scale into numbers where it's just infeasible for "everyone to know everyone" then formal processes have to take the place of those informal ones. I can't evaluate Jim's request for 10 additional storage disks informally because I don't know the first thing about Jim. Coordinating lots of people is really hard. I would guess Airbnb is getting about the size where keeping the culture intact will require a sizable time commitment from the top level. Airbnb keeping that same culture at 20,000 employees would probably be a sociological feat all on its own.

judk 13y ago
Implicit? Tribes invented religions (over and over again) with complex rituals governing every aspect of daily, yearly, and generational life.
- bronbron 13y ago
  Excellent point! I actually wasn't even thinking about religion. I was thinking more broad (e.g. Dowries), but you're absolutely right there are tons of explicit processes as well.
  - Noxchi 13y ago
    So in summary, if you want your company to be the size (employee wise) of a family, you don't need processes (a written down instruction of how to do something). If you want your company to be the size of a religion, you do.
    - 13y ago

impendia 13y ago

> Ever notice how families or tribes don’t require much process? Interesting, I've observed the opposite. As someone single, I've been surprised at how much process there is among many married or cohabiting couples. Lots of discussion and planning around everyday routine chores, such as going to the grocery store. These couples have assured me with confidence that this is very important to the health of their relationships.

stavrianos 13y ago
My own anecdata suggests that while there may be a lot of back-and-forth, it's very free-form, rather than strictly codified and formalized. I assumed this was what was meant.
sockgrant 13y ago
You're comparing someone single to someone in a relationship. Two people need "process" to get along, whereas a person on their own does not. An analogy fitting to OP's point is comparing two people from Hollywood and Ethiopia living in the same apartment versus one of the cohabiting couples you're talking about. In one case, you'll need expressed rules for each to abide by since they're culturally quite different. Comparatively the other case will have very few rules, because of the cultural similarity. The cohabiting couple will more naturally work towards similar goals without painstakingly negotiating them and laying them out.
nostromo 13y ago
My personal experience is the opposite. I feel like dysfunctional couples need a lot more talking and planning and negotiating than more functional couples. "Hey, do you mind helping me clean the kitchen?" "Sure." Also, my favorite working environments have been similar to a family of peers. "Hey, do you mind pushing your changes this morning?" "Sure."
- yukichan 13y ago
  I feel like many men sometimes aren't aware of how little they help around the house with chores and taking care of the children, so I am proactive and plan stuff with my wife. I don't wait for her to ask me. That isn't dysfunctional. There's also a lot of process in families. Some you can automate now, like paying the bills. Some processes are routines. Getting up, getting our child dressed, walking her to school, picking her up, taking her to her after school activities. Doing her homework with her. There's also process with checking things around the house. Checking the fire alarms regularly, scheduling dentist appointments, making plans for seeing family. These are all processes. The whole original article came off as ignorance and out of touch. As someone with an academic background in Anthropology and Sociology the author doesn't seem to understand what culture is or how hierarchy and unbalanced power relationships in the office place work. It's not a very sophisticated treatment of the topic in any regard. And in that vein, my opinion is that as long as the times are good and you're not hiring a bunch of dickhead managers your culture will be fine. If you take your culture to mean don't hire old people because they don't play the video games your 20 somethings do then your shit is fucked. In the end, when things go bad in the business, culture will sour.

danielweber 13y ago

One of the indications that I was going to have to quit a company (that I co-founded) was when a new person was brought on to "maintain company culture."

colinbartlett 13y ago
"VP of Culture" sounds like a dystopian business card title.

nirmel 13y ago

"The stronger the culture, the less process a company needs." This sentence finally made it click for me. Culture is not about making people happy. It is the set of principles on which you convince people to base their decisions and actions that affect the company. If those principles can be made uniform without hierarchy and approval processes, that makes a company unequivocally more efficient.

krapp 13y ago
Culture is, to a degree, about harmony, and therefore to an extent also about making people happy, in providing a sense of belonging to and identification with a group and a purpose greater than oneself. I believe there's a fundamental difference, however, between culture as an emergent property, subject to its members' needs and changeable by its desires, and 'culture' as a set of metaphysical properties determined by a company's founders, to which one must either conform or find themselves terminated. A culture which you have no influence over isn't really a culture to which you can belong.

judk 13y ago

AirBnB's culture is to do whatever it takes to get (er, "hack") what you want, rules and agreements be damned, so they certainly should only make rules for the purpose of giving people practice bending them.

prodigal_erik 13y ago
Why would known spammers feel the need to put their employees through a charade of having values? Surely they've noticed how our industry fails to deter sociopathy.

dkarapetyan 13y ago

Culture obsession is a little silly. If you hire smart individuals then the culture will work itself out as will pretty much everything else. Plus, whenever anyone mentions culture they either can't define it or it ends up being the definition of the hive mind, i.e. it is all around you and within you but you can't really know what it is until you are part of it. In other words I have learned literally zero things from this post other than Peter Thiel invested in Airbnb and told them to not fuck things up. Which I guess you can do when you give someone $150 million.

sockgrant 13y ago
> If you hire smart individuals then the culture will work itself out as will pretty much everything else Culture is about people getting along, being motivated towards the same goals, and working in the type of environment that they enjoy. Not all smart individuals have the same culture desires. Google is the posterboy for culture discussions, and they are very open and blunt about denying some extremely smart interviewees. They very carefully prune for cultural fit, and it has a large impact. Google's culture is a multiplying factor on the productivity. A bad culture fit for an employee or employer is an < 1 multiplier to productivity.

leoc 13y ago

It should be said that maintaining a corporate culture that brought success isn't always sufficient for continued success, and sometimes isn't even compatible with it. HP and DEC both had a strong and much-admired culture and way of doing business and then wallop.

tim333 13y ago
You could argue HP lost the culture first, at least at the top when Carly Fiorina who was a marketer rather than an engineer put into run a company that had always been about great engineering. Then wallop as you say.

lexcorvus 13y ago

Nitpick: "to Joe, Nate, and I" should be "to Joe, Nate, and me."

Myrmornis 13y ago
This is starting be very widespread and it is embarassing because the primary cause is a vague idea that it is "more educated" to say "I" than "me", which of course backfires horribly when you reveal publicly the fact that you don't know that "I" should only be used as the subject of the sentence.
- dmourati 13y ago
  Agree. See this tweet from before reading this: https://twitter.com/dmourati/status/457641268525289472 https://twitter.com/dmourati/status/457641268525289472 Hint: remove Joe and Nate from the sentence and then pick I/me, you'll get it right every time.
- lexcorvus 13y ago
  Exactly. As you may know, the general phenomenon is called [hypercorrection](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection).
  - Myrmornis 13y ago
    ...linguists Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum claim that utterances such as "They invited Sandy and I" are "heard constantly in the conversation of people whose status as speakers of Standard English is clear"; and that "Those who condemn it simply assume that the case of a pronoun in a coordination must be the same as when it stands alone. Actual usage is in conflict with this assumption." It may take me some time to calm down after reading that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection

inopinatus 13y ago

It's a fine sentiment but blunders over the meaning in a rush to confirm the wisdom of the original epigram. I don't know if this because the author of this memo doesn't understand culture analytically or felt that explaining what was meant didn't have a place in this memo, but dismissing process was a mistake. A more nuanced perspective breaks culture into multiple domains: # Values # Norms # Routines Notice I didn't say processes. That's because processes are a subset of routines. They are the routines written down. The author seems to be terribly proud that AirBnB's routines aren't written down. I was left cold by this. It doesn't matter that much. Values are the fundamental beliefs that people cherish. The thing about values is that they are, as a result, near impossible to change quickly. Five to seven years and you'll have to change the CEO and the hiring policy to achieve it. Norms are the units of behavioral control. Norms are group-level social pressures such as bringing a plate for morning tea or writing good commit messages. These are the real interesting pieces because they shift readily in response to incentives. (If you're ever looking for easy goals in an organisational change effort, fiddle with the norms) Norms generally help keep routines-that-aren't-written-down (some might say "the unwritten processes") steady and reify new ones in response to externalities. So when Thiel was saying "don't fuck up the culture" I take away two things: * Don't bother wittering about values. You're stuck with them anyway. * Don't fuck with the incentive structure But contrary to a major point in the article, you can write down the routines as processes if you like, just remember to capture the why as well as the what.

mruniverse 13y ago
The $150M imparts wisdom.
janto 13y ago
I enjoyed reading your breakdown of culture and its malleability. Any good books or links that discuss these ideas?

gavinh 13y ago

I hope AirBnb's other communications aren't as ugly as that heap of sentence fragments.

n72 13y ago

"Our next team meeting is dedicated to Core Values, which are essential to building our culture." Having meetings about culture and "core values" is a sure sign your culture's fucked. The fact that he thinks having a meeting about culture might in some way help fix some culture issue indicates to me he's really not the person to impart pearls of wisdom when it comes to company culture. tl;dr that's mba-speak, bro.

wpietri 13y ago
I think it's a sign, but not a sure sign. One company I consulted at, maybe 200 people, went through a substantial internal process to make their values explicit. I wasn't there for it, but I understand everybody participated, and there was a lot of discussion about what they really wanted in a mission statement and a set of values. When I was there, it amazed me to see employees at all levels actually pulling out the list of values when hard decisions were happening. They used it to remind themselves of what really mattered to them. Admittedly, I've only seen it once, but it really appeared to work. It's definitely something I'm keeping in my pocket the next time I'm at something that crosses Dunbar's Number.
- arghbleargh 13y ago
  That sounds amazing to me too. What you described is really the only way that making lists of "core values" could possibly achieve something useful. I just never thought it could happen. Usually people just remember the core values as a list of things that sound good, and they're too abstract to offer any real guidance for a concrete situation.
pm 13y ago
You can't really tell whether it's fucked or not - they could just as easily have decided it was time to codify the overarching values that have developed organically over time.
nostrademons 13y ago
Google's "don't be evil" motto came out of a company meeting on core values. I would hardly say that Google's culture from 2002-2011 was fucked.

001sky 13y ago

It's a fine sentiment but glosses over the details... Interesting, I've observed the opposite... I think it's disingenuous to say... In my experience, this is the first sign that [X] about to be fucked up... I hope [company X's] other communications aren't as ugly as that heap of sentence fragments.... ___________ These are the first 1-5 comment's on HN. Is this the work some 4chan Meme propogation software?

dclowd9901 13y ago

I'm of two minds here. Mind one: Cultures are stupid. They're artificial and require buy-in. This either alienates people, or indoctrinates them, and in either case, you end up with something artificial, stupid and derivative. Mind two: Cultures are organic and incredible. They "become" because they are reflective of a small (VERY small) subgroup of people and their own rarely synchronous core values. Because of how humans only accept the idiosyncrasies of others if they're reflective of more than one person, cultures help to expose idiosyncratic tastes and behaviors to people who might not otherwise be exposed to them. Now that that's out of the way, at some point, your company will not have the clout or draw to be able to pull in the talent you want 100% of the time. Candidate A might be perfect on paper, but maybe doesn't like surreal humor. Candidate B might be the best Javascript gal you've ever seen, but she's not big on noise rock. These sound like stupid and trivial things, but the heart of a culture is the enthusiasm that lives alongside finding people who all march to the beat of the same drum. Who, for whatever reason, all were fans of The Gilmore Girls or who have a weird fascination with whale sounds or maybe like fighting with broomsticks. You will lose culture, so long as you're willing to bring on people who aren't exactly like you.

mbrock 13y ago

Families and tribes can of course also be suffocating, difficult, dramatic, abusive, controlling, insular, xenophobic, and so on. Process is not a bad thing, as in e.g. the idea of "due process." It can be a way of making things fair and transparent.

whoismua 13y ago

Nice try but "culture," "family," "our values," and all that crap goes right out of the window when things go south or when the company decides to save a few bucks. Seen it a lot of times to make it a trend.

adamzerner 13y ago

I found this cliche and unoriginal. I would have liked to see more concrete examples of what they do want to do, what they want to avoid, and how exactly they're going to "execute" at getting culture right.

evolve2k 13y ago

Preserving the culture is about staying true to some of the core ways things are done right now, despite the pressures to adjust how those things are done as the organization grows. On the surface 'culture' is just the way things are done (currently). Deepen engagement and understanding of your values by collecting and writing down organizational folklore. The best way your can preserve your current culture is to, as the leader, document your thinking and define and explain in your own words key unique and important ways of doing things. Disney and Sony were both good at this. Both companies later experienced drift from their original core way of doing things. It was referring back to these early papers written by the fonunder (often many years after they were gone) that enabled these companies to constantly rediscover their roots when they got lost. Write as if you were about to die and wanted to leave instructions and guidance for the next leaders.

dredmorbius 13y ago

TL;DR: Dunbar's number

dasil003 13y ago

After reading the article I wanted to come and comment that it sounds good but I couldn't tell if it really meant anything. Then I read the comments and they make a lot of good points, but they are all conflicting and it's hard to distill any real takeaway. At this point I'm convinced of only one thing: company culture is magic. Everyone influences it, but there is no controlling it. When you're a tiny little startup of course the culture will reflect your values as a founder or early employee, when you're bigger it will change on its own. You can hire for culture, and you can talk about it, or even wax poetic, but ultimately it's a chaotic interaction of individuals and you're a fool if you think you can control it.

stevedc3 13y ago

It would have been much more helpful if he had actually defined Airbnb's culture or shared some values. While I admire the note to employees and I'm sure it spurred a discussion at the company, there was no reference to what their culture was before or after the letter.

mikeg8 13y ago
Its's an internal letter, hopefully everyone who received it already knows the values and has a sense of the culture. Having to spell it out for everyone (assumingly again) would have meant things were much worse off.
- ftay 13y ago
  It's being published externally, so it's a fair criticism.

lazyant 13y ago

"Passion"? check. "Core Values"? check. Not a single specific of what those core values or culture is? check.

EGreg 13y ago

I have a simple saying: "People live lives. Companies build products." To me, maintaining a free lifestyle is an important goal, more than money. If the company is building something worthwhile, it will eventually get there. That's why I am a big proponent of setting up clear autonomous systems and processes, and placing less blame on people. As long as things get done, I don't care who the person dates or where they live. If things aren't getting done, then we review what the problem is. Half the time it's not the person, but the process. One thing this article gets right: there are tools and there are culture. Tools determine the process, which has an effect on the culture, but the culture develops organically depending on who's in the team. If you are super culture heavy, you'll hire A+ superstars (like the recent article about building a cult). But as for me, I don't want to be a cult leader. I want to build better tools to empower people to help each other and make their own decisions. Both in our company, and in the rest of the world.

harryh 13y ago

To me the most interesting thing about this blog post is that Brian doesn't actually say what defines AirBnB's culture. Perhaps he did so in some other internal document or meeting, but it doesn't make sense to say that you shouldn't fuck something up when you haven't clearly defined what that thing is. I much prefer Ben Horowitz's post on this topic: http://www.bhorowitz.com/programming_your_culture http://www.bhorowitz.com/programming_your_culture I like the fact that he makes it clear that there are many different ways to define a company culture and that, if possible, leaders should make a conscious choice to choose among them. * Move fast and break things. * Take pride in the work we do. * The customer is always right. Any of these (and many more) could be cornerstones of company culture, but they're all pretty different. If you're just defining your culture as "work hard and do a good job" then you haven't really said much. Everyone wants to do that.

xerophtye 13y ago
You have managed to articulately put what so many of us are pointing out that, he didn't really say what it is that he wants to preserve. Yes, culture doesn't need to be defined in a formal document, but it can be hinted at with a few words

fjk 13y ago

> Culture is not a good or bad thing. It’s a shared thing. I sometimes hear people say “they aren’t a culture fit” as if it’s a bad thing, or others feel bad pointing this out as if it’s an indictment on someone’s character. It’s not. I am not a culture fit at probably any other company, which is why I had to help start one! This (which is one of Brian's notes in the article) is one of the best ways to think about culture that I've encountered. A company can't have "good" culture or "bad" culture. It just has a certain shared way of doing things that may or may not vibe with you. On a related note, Tony Hsieh of Zappos believes what your culture is doesn't matter as much as having a strong identity. Just figure out who you, as a company, are and the rest will follow: "...one of the really interesting things I found from the research is that it actually doesn’t matter what your values are, what matters is that you have them and that you align the organization around them. And the power actually comes from the alignment not from the actual values"[1] [1] https://blog.kissmetrics.com/zappos-art-of-culture/ https://blog.kissmetrics.com/zappos-art-of-culture/

rmrfrmrf 13y ago
My main issue with the "culture fit" thing is that it's a very new-school style of business that has been shoehorned into an antiquated process (hiring) that hasn't adapted nearly enough to changing attitudes about workplace priorities. I'd imagine it's difficult for someone to hear that their personality was what failed to get them the job after 30 mins - 1 hour of interaction where skills are still supposedly the number one priority.

scelerat 13y ago

After a handful of times of getting burned, I've come to interpret any official executive statement on values or culture as a sign that things are seriously screwed or about to become that way, and that it's time to bail out. To me, culture is something that happens organically and not via directive. Leaders can shape company culture but only through their own personal demonstration of it and not by decree. Once I hear someone saying "this is how it shall be henceforth," I'm gone. They're either hopelessly naive or trying to construct a happy edifice while behaving badly.

6cxs2hd6 13y ago
Exactly, it's about walking the walk -- non-self-consciously and without artifice. It's a product of negative verbal space: The actual values/culture are communicated by what isn't said, because they're presumed to be self-evident. Therefore, not to be flippant but a great way to fuck up the culture is to write a memo about not fucking up the culture.
- bnjs 13y ago
  Walking the walk and talking the talk aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.
abbasmehdi 13y ago
I beg to differ. As an example, Hacker News has a culture, as laid out by Paul Graham [1]. It is not only shaped by his and moderators' personal demonstration, but also by decree [1]. Those who violate it are chided (publicly and/or systematically). Granted this is an anonymous internet forum [2] not a company, but the general principal is the same - clearly defining expectations and punishing [3] unacceptable behavior. This could perhaps go to explain the HN culture versus another online forum or the comments section of a public site. [1] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html [2] Considering which it should be even harder quality control. [3] I use the term loosely.
- xerophtye 13y ago

sgustard 13y ago

If the culture is one of arbitrary profanity, sign me the fuck up!

pags 13y ago

"fuck" is an edgy word.

yoamro 13y ago

10/10 love the point of this letter. As evident by the comments here, culture can mean different things to everyone. More accurately, I would just say its the belief in the product and same passion that every one should have in a start up. Thats the "culture" IMO.

Trindaz 13y ago

In case any first time founders out there are basing some of their own management ideas on this letter, please remember: "Families and tribes" (a) get by fine without explicit processes because they are small groups, or (b) they do have the processes but they don't need to be written down because they are taught implicitly from birth. Arguments of the form "We don't need [insert any concept from management text books] because we are smart, technical people" are the flags on areas of your company that will break the worst.

owensmp 13y ago

Are there any associated blogs which outline the core values of AirBnb culture? What do they consider the tenants of this culture?

Beliavsky 13y ago

Nowadays there is a lot of talk about "inclusion". What about "including" people who dislike profanity? "Don't mess up the culture" would have conveyed the same message without the bad language.

teacup50 13y ago
I have no qualms with profanity, but I admit I had a negative reaction when I saw "fuck" so prominently leveraged in a blog post about company culture. For someone who wants to have a certain level of professional decorum at work, the use of "fuck" in your CEO's blog post about your company's culture would certainly be exclusionary. It's also quite likely to drive away even-tempered contributors in favor of a "bro" audience. Perhaps that was the point: http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Airbnb-Reviews-E391850.htm http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Airbnb-Reviews-E391850.htm
- jusben1369 13y ago
  Ben Horowitz has an interesting chapter in his recent book "The Hard Thing about Hard Things" that talks about profanity. Apparently early on at LoudCloud (or Opsware) at a company meeting some employees raised the issue that there was too much profanity in the office. Ben acknowledged that he was the worst culprit so this was most likely aimed at him. He slept on it and decided that it could be used but never in a sexist or bullying way. He rationalized it based on the assumption that it was already an inherent part of many tech companies and not allowing it might restrict their access to the best talent. I thought that weird. Either way I think the end result is that it does seem to be an important part of the culture and as a future or current employee it should factor into your decision to work there.
  - newtle 13y ago
    That book is 80% great, but his opinions about profanity are part of the other 20%. There's no meat to it. All we learn is Ben's belief that adding the word 'fucking' to a sentence communicates intensity more effectively than any alternative, and his belief that great employees want to work amongst torrents of profanity. To put it in a way that Ben might understand, it's fucking bullshit. It's not the worst part of the book to be sure, but there's no value to it, the reasoning is weak, and the evidence is non-existent.* * The worst thing is when he espouses the importance of work/life balance for the CEO, and then talks proudly of a death-march that he put his employees through. A death march which he says must be good because a grand total of one employee told him it was a great experience. A death march which didn't result in the loss of all his employees not because Ben is a great leader (he ain't), but because the economy was such a catastrophe that even a shitty, abusive job working for a profane and self-congratulatory motherfucker was better than the alternative.

krosaen 13y ago

> The stronger the culture, the less corporate process a company needs and > Ever notice how families or tribes don’t require much process? That is because there is such a strong trust and culture that it supersedes any process. I think both the above are more related to being small than having strong culture. > Culture is simply a shared way of doing something with passion. having a shared way is natural and easy when you're small. Trying to continue that as you grow is a good goal, but it's just hard, which is why there's so much thought and research around how to lead, manage and how to make organizations thrive. It's not an easy problem, and saying, "hey everyone, just be vigilant and keep the same small company family culture even though we're growing" likely won't cut it.

jpasmore 13y ago

As a person who is not white, I look at these efforts curiously. They seem generally like a way to hire people like "us", people who like the same music, people who will go to the same bar after work, fundamentally people we are comfortable with...people who will not change the culture. Fred Wilson's blog had a related topic; The Role Of Personal Chemistry In Investment Selection -- http://avc.com/2013/10/the-role-of-personal-chemistry-in-investment-selection/ http://avc.com/2013/10/the-role-of-personal-chemistry-in-inv... There is a slippery slope of exclusionary behavior associated with this line of thinking -- where some way of being that is foreign or different doesn't get hired or potentially doesn't get funded.

_pmf_ 13y ago

> “Don't fuck up the culture” Bro-Investor