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Citing revenue declines, Airbnb cuts 25% of workforce

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Re: Citing revenue declines, Airbnb cuts 25% of workforce

#71
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

~~Yes, because it's pretty shitty for Europe.~~ I didn't understand well, sorry.

What's the average for Europe?

afaik in some countries its not required (switzerland?) and in others it depends on the number of years the person worked in company. i think it depends on the country.

Re: Citing revenue declines, Airbnb cuts 25% of workforce

#72
post #21

Does anyone know what percentage of the call centers are not actual employees but contractors? The contractors are usually demand based, therefore "invisible" in these stats.

A lot of tech companies have relied on BPO (business process outsourcing) like TaskUs for call center workers. They try to take on fresh college graduates as employees in the Philippines for about $400/salary + benefits and try to resell them to companies as outsourced talent for about $1800/month.

College graduates? For call centres?

Re: Citing revenue declines, Airbnb cuts 25% of workforce

#73

It feels bad that this happened to one of the companies with a very good engineering culture. The stuff they have put out in the open either on GitHub or through their blogs is a testament to that. I think any company will be lucky to have these folks.

Good engineering culture...?

Airbnb is a simple CRUD app...it’s hardly a shining example of hard deeply technical engineering problems that are fun and interesting to work on.

Re: Citing revenue declines, Airbnb cuts 25% of workforce

#74
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m surprised they were still handing out options - don’t most later stage startups switch to RSUs? I’d hate to have to decide whether to exercise today, cliff or no cliff.

Why would you not want optionality? Optionality always has carries an intrinsic positive value.

Bc you lose your optionality after leaving the company - terminated employees would need to decide whether or not to exercise their vested options within some post-termination window (typically 30-90 days)

Re: Citing revenue declines, Airbnb cuts 25% of workforce

#76

Separated employees will receive 14 weeks of pay, and one more week for each year served at the company (rounding partial years up). The firm is also dropping its one-year equity cliff so that employees who are laid off with under 12 months of tenure can buy their vested options; Airbnb will also provide 12 months of health insurance through COBRA in the United States, and health care coverage through 2020 in the res…

I found COBRA to be extremely expensive. I instead enrolled in obamacare via job loss exception.

It sounds like it's saying that Airbnb will pay for COBRA for that duration.

Re: Citing revenue declines, Airbnb cuts 25% of workforce

#77
post #7

I can only imagine how much it sucks to be laid off and what a difficult decision it must be for Airbnb executives. To me, the severance and exit benefits do seem to strike an employee friendly tone. Kudos to the leadership to striking a good balance on keeping the business alive and doing right by their people.

These are abnormal circumstances. I wonder if it is possible to delay the layoffs by cutting salaries - maybe instead of firing 5 out of 10 equally paid people, they can cut the salaries of all 10 people by half (or something like that). Any which way these are hard decisions :(

Cutting salaries in half guarantees they lose all the top performers, and probably more than half, instead of the 5 they pick. I don't believe that is the goal.

Re: Citing revenue declines, Airbnb cuts 25% of workforce

#78

Separated employees will receive 14 weeks of pay, and one more week for each year served at the company (rounding partial years up). The firm is also dropping its one-year equity cliff so that employees who are laid off with under 12 months of tenure can buy their vested options; Airbnb will also provide 12 months of health insurance through COBRA in the United States, and health care coverage through 2020 in the res…

Deleted

In parts of countries like Canada, the last part isn't particularly important, but it's not nothing. Typically, white collar employers cover, in part, or in full, medical insurance premiums that every resident is expected to pay. In BC, prior to the recent phase-out, it was ~$900/year. (That money now comes out of income taxes.)

Employers paying for that kind of benefit is either tax-advantaged, or just consistency of policy between their US, and Canadian offices. Not sure which.

Re: Citing revenue declines, Airbnb cuts 25% of workforce

#79
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m surprised they were still handing out options - don’t most later stage startups switch to RSUs? I’d hate to have to decide whether to exercise today, cliff or no cliff.

I haven't seen RSUs outside of publicly traded companies.

RSUs are common in late stage startups. The share price at the time of grant is calculated based on an estimated valuation. If I remember correctly, in the year or two leading up to IPO, Uber issued RSUs to employees at a valuation of $49/share so the IPO price of $45 was already below grant price for many that joined late.

Re: Citing revenue declines, Airbnb cuts 25% of workforce

#80
post #57
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why when a yet another aspiring startup wants to hire me, I ask for a high sign on bonus as an insurance, monthly vesting cycle, at least 200k in base pay and high severance upon termination. Never been given that, but I don't regret: looking back, all those "just 1 year till IPO" companies are underwater.

Anybody accepted those terms?

He literally wrote "Never been given that"
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