Citing revenue declines, Airbnb cuts 25% of workforce • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by keiferski » Tue, May 05, 2020, 8:11 PM UTC

markdown wrote: post #165

keiferski wrote: post #10

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…

> Separated employees Separated? Is this American english?

Sounds like a weird new euphemism for laid off, designed to make it seem less negative.

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

#172

Post by saiya-jin » Tue, May 05, 2020, 8:12 PM UTC

elhudy wrote: post #156

keiferski wrote: post #10

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…

Glad to see the money they are stealing from those of us who can't cancel our summer airBNBs is going to a good cause.

How come you can't cancel? Did you book at place with strict cancellation policy or is there something else?

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

#173

Post by ryneandal » Tue, May 05, 2020, 8:12 PM UTC

user5994461 wrote: post #152

Predicted that weeks ago. AirBnb is super bloated, they have a similar amount of employees as the other major travel groups but only serve a fraction of the products and customers https://thehftguy.com/2020/03/23/will-airbnb-go-bankrupt-and... Good to hear that they are giving a decent severance package.

> the company said that 1,900 employees will be laid off, or 25.3% of its 7,500 workers

Thought I misread that the first time through. What did those 7,500 do?

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

#174

Post by PNWChris » Tue, May 05, 2020, 8:12 PM UTC

jameslevy wrote: post #88

sokoloff wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you started working at Boeing exactly a year ago and were leaving today, would you rather have been granted RSUs at a notional initial value of $371.60/sh or been granted options at a strike price of $371.60/sh?

Wouldn't you pay income tax on the RSUs based on the notional initial value, and only pay tax on the options if you exercised them?

At my employer they withhold taxes from the RSUs themselves as they vest (taxes are withheld at the bonus tax rate using integer multiplication, I believe).

E.g.: you'll get Math.floor(x * (1-bonus_tax_rate)) shares and will owe no income tax (unless your marginal tax rate is over the bonus tax rate). After that point, you'll only owe taxes on possible capital gains from price at the time of vest to the time you sell.

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

#175

Post by _2d30 » Tue, May 05, 2020, 8:13 PM UTC

conradfr wrote: post #143

_2d30 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s an example of a country where this isn’t generous?

In France "cadres" (managers, most devs etc) will still be payed for three months (while you can work another job at the same time and get double income then), plus of course all accrued vacation days, and some amount based on your seniority at the company and its activity sector. After the three months most people will qualified for regular unemployment. And until you start working at another company you still get h…

> edit: as it's weeks and not days for Airbnb I guess it's pretty similar then.

You mean France's is significantly worse (12 < 15 at a minimum of 1yr or less)? Did you see the accelerated vesting as well?

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

#176

Post by spacefearing » Tue, May 05, 2020, 8:13 PM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #10

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'm not a fan of Airbnb's business but this is highly commendable.

The severance package is the core metric to judge a company that is doing layoffs. In this case, it sounds like Airbnb did the right thing. Airbnb fired people well in advance of when they were actually forced to. This enabled them to provide an ethical severance.

Some companies wait until the last minute and then provide two weeks or similar. These companies should be publicly shamed for all time.

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

#177

Post by elhudy » Tue, May 05, 2020, 8:13 PM UTC

saiya-jin wrote: post #172

elhudy wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad to see the money they are stealing from those of us who can't cancel our summer airBNBs is going to a good cause.

How come you can't cancel? Did you book at place with strict cancellation policy or is there something else?

Yes, strict cancellation policy. For those following the drama, they keep extending their extenuating circumstances policy out but it doesn't cover most of the summer yet. Apparently the circumstances are only extenuating for the immediate future.

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

#178

Post by ulfw » Tue, May 05, 2020, 8:13 PM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #10

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…

Totally agreed. Those are very generous terms, no matter where in the world. Well done AirBnB.

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

#179

Post by alfalfasprout » Tue, May 05, 2020, 8:13 PM UTC

tempsy wrote: post #73

actuator wrote: post #19

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.

There's a great deal of recommendations, fraud detection, global payment complexity, etc. behind the CRUD app.

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

#180

Post by [deleted] » Tue, May 05, 2020, 8:14 PM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #10

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]