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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

#191

Post by ramimac »

pwned1 wrote: post #162
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.

Is it just a certain time period? I've cancelled two stays and have received full refunds, but both were in April and May of this year.

They're gradually pushing the time period back, as of a couple days ago I believe it was end of May. As of right now it's for "stays and Airbnb Experiences made on or before March 14, 2020, with a check-in date between March 14, 2020 and June 15, 2020"

Of course, events as far out as late July are cancelled due to COVID-19

https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/2701/extenuating-circums...

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

#192

Post by dangwu »

ryneandal wrote: post #173
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?

Tell us why you think 7,500 employees is too high, in order to implement, maintain, and grow an online lodging and experiences marketplace in 191 countries.

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

#193

Post by gonehome »

cyan_atrus wrote: post #183
gonehome wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't necessarily get taxable income from RSUs [edit: when they're granted] if they're structured in a 'Facebook Style' RSU which has an expiration if the company does not IPO within a certain time frame. As long as there's a real risk of loss you can avoid the taxable income and private companies with high valuations will do this to help employees avoid the bad tax situation on an illiquid asset (without need to…

i think you're saying this, but just to clarify: RSUs (even facebook-style) are definitely taxable. With options, you're in control of when to take the tax hit. With facebook-style RSUs, the tax hit comes when the stock gets distributed (taxed as ordinary income) -- usually in the form of withholding some amount of shares. --- Important to remember with RSUs in pre-IPO companies: even though you might get shares dist…

Yes, thanks for the clarification.

My understanding is they're taxable, but only after they're liquid which makes it easier for the employee. I think most companies doing FB style do something fancy to avoid the distribution tax lockout issue (witholding some to cover tax or direct listing to avoid lockout).

The situation where you have a huge tax bill and no cash to pay it (or worse a huge tax bill and your illiquid stocks have crashed to $0) shouldn't happen, though I guess there's still a chance in the pathological case you describe? Not sure if that's avoidable.

The other thing I forgot to mention is that if you do risk all this cash on option exercise/taxes and your company does go to $0 you do get to take a $3000 AMT tax credit each year until you die (but maybe only if you don’t have kids or something, can’t remember) - it’s not great.

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

#194

Post by tempsy »

alfalfasprout wrote: post #179
tempsy wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

All solved problems. Or at the very least not problems other companies don’t face as well.

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

#196

Post by dubcanada »

ryneandal wrote: post #173
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?

Not that this hasn't been talked about like 15 thousand times.

AirBNB is a big company, and big companies have lots of employees.

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

#197

Post by justaguyhere »

pedrosorio wrote: post #77
justaguyhere wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, during normal times. But these are not normal times - like, who is hiring now? If I were a top performer, I'd take a salary cut if it means saving my colleague's job.

I get what you are saying though. They are a business and I guess they're doing what is best for their business. The severance package is generous (relatively speaking), so there's at least that.

Edit : I guess I didn't word this properly. I was saying they'd lose top performers if their salaries are cut, during normal times.

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

#198

Post by tinyhouse »

mason55 wrote: post #62
tinyhouse wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought RSUs are only given by public companies. Anyway, they would be crazy not to exercise.

Hopefully they have cash to cover the exercise and the taxes! Tough choice to make right when you just lost your job. The tax bill could be tens of thousands of dollars or more.

If they don't have the money they can take a loan (maybe hard without a job) or try to raise it (lots of people will be happy to invest). Let's not forget that many of these individuals have been making top dollar. Airbnb is known to be very competitive, even with FANNG level salaries.

I don't see it as a tough choice. Airbnb will IPO, it's just a question of when. It's a safe investment to make. This is a company operating all over the world that had $4.3B in revenue last year. If not COVID-19 they would've probably IPO'd very soon. They will get through it.

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

#199

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

ryneandal wrote: post #173
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?

Ugh, to be honest I get tired whenever I see the "Why did company XYZ need so many people, they're just a website!"-type comments. While it is definitely possible AirBnB was bloated, it's not hard for me to imagine at all what all these people did.

AirBnB is a relatively high-touch business, so I imagine a huge number of those people were in customer support/customer relations, both for travelers and for property owners. AirBnB also operates in a huge number of countries, and each of those countries need (a) marketers, (b) people with regulatory knowledge (often at a level much more granular than the country level - and to head off any 'but AirBnB ignores the regulations!' comments, while that may be true, I guarantee they still have people that know what they are), (c) again, customer service people knowledgeable with the local language and customs.

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

#200

Post by FireBeyond »

KoftaBob wrote: post #60
speedgoose wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

"In many countries, the severance pay is a lump sum that increases with the employee’s tenure in the company and their wage level. In the Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia and Spain, employees with service of up to one year are entitled to severance pay (in most cases one month’s pay), while in Luxembourg employees have to have a minimum of five years within the organisati…

My brother (in Australia, where I grew up, before moving to the US) recently got laid off from his firm (actually, I believe they were going out of business due to retirement or such). Their policy was 1 month severance per year. He'd been there 14 years, 14 months severance.
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