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

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

#201

Post by johnnyb9 » Tue, May 05, 2020, 8:23 PM UTC

julesqs wrote: post #100

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…

it's generous by startup standards, but laid off kickstarter employees are getting an even better deal because they unionized: four months full pay for everyone, up to six months of paid (not COBRA healthcare), recall rights if the jobs open back up, release from non competes https://twitter.com/ksr_united/status/1256382357311012871

How is this an even better deal? About the same amount of pay, half the healthcare paid (COBRA healthcare is same plan). As for recall rights and release from non-competes, these are slightly better than nothing I suppose.

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

#202

Post by notJim » Tue, May 05, 2020, 8:23 PM UTC

airstrike wrote: post #37

yojo wrote: 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.

Options are awful. Exercising them can trigger AMT, where you get to pay taxes on money you don't have yet (and cannot get) at a time when you probably just spent a lot of your savings to purchase the options.

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

#203

Post by bogomipz » Tue, May 05, 2020, 8:23 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?

It's actually an HR(human resources) term. There's a standard document employees sign called a "separation agreement." See:

https://gusto.com/blog/people-management/employee-separation...

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

#204

Post by FireBeyond » Tue, May 05, 2020, 8:23 PM UTC

vkou wrote: post #22

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…

Back in the day, severance packages for white collar workers were close to one month per year served. My father received that from Kodak (Not once, but twice... He had the rare privilege of being laid off (From the same team, no less) in 2009, and then again in 2016. The severance package did not change much between each of his stints of employment.) With that schedule, anyone who worked at AirBnB for four years or l…

My brother (in Australia) got that this year. 14 months severance after 14 years.

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

#205

Post by keiferski » Tue, May 05, 2020, 8:23 PM UTC

chadlavi wrote: post #187

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…

At first I misread this as 14 days and was wondering why everyone is calling this such a "lavish" severance. Now I get it.

Somehow 14 weeks also seems less than 3 1/3 months, even though they’re the same.

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

#206

Post by julesqs » Tue, May 05, 2020, 8:24 PM UTC

tpmoney wrote: post #190

julesqs wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's generous by startup standards, but laid off kickstarter employees are getting an even better deal because they unionized: four months full pay for everyone, up to six months of paid (not COBRA healthcare), recall rights if the jobs open back up, release from non competes https://twitter.com/ksr_united/status/1256382357311012871

Since COBRA is always available to terminated employees, this announcement reads that AirBnb is paying for 12 months of health care.

ah you might be right. wording confused me.

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

#207

Post by user5994461 » Tue, May 05, 2020, 8:24 PM UTC

dangwu wrote: post #192

ryneandal wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

hotels.com managed just fine with only 500 employees in their headquarters.

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

#208

Post by kube-system » Tue, May 05, 2020, 8:25 PM UTC

MattGaiser wrote: post #72

godzillabrennus wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They can't all work at Starbucks :D

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

#209

Post by redshirtrob » Tue, May 05, 2020, 8:25 PM UTC

daseiner1 wrote: post #153

redshirtrob wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd expect the options might be under water based on recent funding announcements. Probably still expensive to exercise, but I can't see how there would be a tax liability if they are under water.

i’m not super in the know here, but why would corporate financials be relevant to the tax obligations of individuals?

It's pretty much impossible for us to say in this case since the terms weren't disclosed that I know of. They've been described as debt and equity. It's reasonable to assume the equity component would imply a certain valuation, and that valuation could be down from previous valuations.

If you received options at a strike price at the peak valuation, then the current valuation may be below that level.

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

#210

Post by julesqs » Tue, May 05, 2020, 8:25 PM UTC

pb7 wrote: post #189

julesqs wrote: post #28

for everyone praising the severance package, laid off employees at kickstarter are getting even more severance and full healthcare (not COBRA) because they unionized: https://twitter.com/ksr_united/status/1256382357311012871

Doesn't look like more to me. Roughly same salary duration (would bet a pretty penny that Kickstarter doesn't pay nearly as much as Airbnb to begin with), significantly less health insurance, nothing about equity. That's what a union came up with for such a microscopic layoff compared to Airbnb? Sounds like the free market is better off deciding these things.

oh I might be confused about the COBRA situation actually. I can't tell if Airbnb is actually paying for COBRA.

aside from that, assuming that non-engineers get paid better at Airbnb than elsewhere is a big assumption.