I don't understand how AirBnB can pivot to events - the locations managed through their site tend to be quite small... Can you clarify?
I think he was referring to "Experiences" section on Airbnb where you can go surfing, kayaking and stuff like that.
Ah got it, thanks for the clarification. Might be a good way to backfill a portion of lost revenue, but I still don't think travel is going to pick up in Q3/Q4 as much as AirBnB is forecasting.
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.
AirBnB was really a leader in these types of consumer-to-consumer payments. While AirBnB has also changed their strategy WRT their mobile apps, I think it's certainly commendable how they were leading with the technical approaches they took.
I can only hope this leads to a backlash against high growth companies staying private for so long. Along with their jobs, I imagine many AirBnb employees have lost a majority of their (paper) net worth because they were not given the opportunity to sell and diversify.
I think if any employees were relying on that paper wealth... that's the problem.
IMO People need to understand what that really is (usually not much) rather than blame the company.
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.
Not sure how relevant Airbnb equity really is at this point going forward.
While Airbnb is clearly going through a rough patch right now, there is a clear bull-case argument for why Airbnb will emerge stronger than it's ever been after this: - Airbnb has sufficient cash in the bank to survive the crisis. - A significant % of hotels and budget chains will not survive the crisis --> decreased competitor supply - People will be looking for budget options when traveling --> increased demand for…
Airbnb hosts converting properties into 6-month or longer term rentals --> decreased supply for Airbnb
And, hopefully, just hopefully, governments will actually step in and stop the supply from going back to AirBnB, helping alleviate some of the housing crisis in their country (I know AirBnB is a huge issue in Ireland, and several of my Irish friends are praying it fails to force all those apartments and houses back on the market; I am myself, as I'm possibly moving there this fall for a masters.)
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 c…
Agree with you but....
4x12 = 48 weeks of compensation disbursed by the entity. Restated compared to some nightmare no severance scenario meant they effectively terminated 4 FTEs to achieve slightly less than 3 FTEs of cost savings (adjusted for healthcare costs).
I'm not arguing against AirBNBs approach btw. Their CEO had a wonderful podcast on the Masters of Scale pod roughly two weeks ago.
However the Rawlsian philosophy on that marginal employee that got terminated effectively to fund the severance for herself and her colleagues is a tricky ethical consideration.
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.
It would be nice if you could just hand over a percentage of the options to the government as a tax, instead of having to pay in dollars at a guess of the value.
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...
Additionally, this policy has been modified since COVID arose to only apply to 1.5 months out.
In the past, and in fact when I booked my airbnb (late last year), extenuating circumstances would have easily covered an epidemic 2 months out.
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.
Dumb question here, I don't really understand what an option is in this context - can you just think of it as a call with a expiration of the vesting date and strike price at whatever they set? So they're giving you calls, with a $0 premium?
They are definitely doing right by their employees, which is commendable.
Agreed. Shoutout to AirBnB management who made the best of the tough situation and did the right thing.
I'll agree with that, even given how much I hate AirBnB as a company for what they've done to local housing in cities. They're at least doing the right thing here.