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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

#261

Post by blackrock »

schkkd wrote: post #44
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…

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.

What’s your batting average?

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

#262

Post by subsubzero »

I'm glad the employees got a generous severance package, hopefully ISO's was misreported and the employees received RSU's instead, as it would be a burden on the employee to have to come up with cash to exercise during such a time. Its important to remember that Lyft and Airbnb also Uber are all heavily tied to travel which isn't happening now due to covid. With states reopening and warmer weather, plus a drug that reduces the duration of covid-19(remdesivir) things will hopefully be getting better. If and when a second wave comes more drugs could surface that show efficacy against the virus so it won't be all doom and gloom.

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

#263

Post by nojito »

ifeedmartians wrote: post #246
asdff wrote: post #125

Good. The faster Airbnb pulls out of my local housing market, the better for everyone else who lives here.

seriously wtf. 1900 people lost their jobs and you think that's "Good". Check yourself

airbnb has devastated large swaths of America.

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

#264

Post by b212 »

jlbnjmn wrote: post #118
nsxwolf wrote: post #48

My initial reaction is "wow, nice severance package!" My secondary reaction is they must think things are going to be very bad for a very long time for this kind of payout to make sense financially.

Good point. If they're wanting to part ways with 25% of the workforce now, covering 3 months of full salary and 12 months of expensive healthcare, they must be expecting fundamental market shifts. Also, the debt they took on may have been partly to cover these lavish severance packages while also extending the runway. And yes, this is extremely lavish. Paying severance that appears roughly equal to the median annual…

"Good point. If they're wanting to part ways with 25% of the workforce now, covering 3 months of full salary and 12 months of expensive healthcare, they must be expecting fundamental market shifts."

Why? Can't they rehire the people they laid off during this period?

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

#265

Post by taurath »

ping_pong wrote: post #53

I'm shocked that 2020 revenues will come in only 50% below 2019. I don't think anyone will be travelling for the bulk of this year, especially with the looming threat of potentially getting sick in a foreign country or away from your home. It will take 5+ years for them to get back the same level of inventory/hosts/customers as they had in 2019. Many hosts will foreclose on their rented properties during 2020 or conv…

I have a potential theory of future revenue for them - as "work from home" becomes more accepted and popular, working vacations or nomadding even within the united states will become a lot more popular for couples looking to get away, singles looking for new locations to try out and even families on trips.

There's been this sweet spot with AirBNB where you can rent a place for 1-2 months for a relatively small monthly premium over a 12-month lease that I've been planning to take full advantage of this year, already having been remote. A lot of AirBNB hosts have started preferring these sorts of arrangements because people are less likely to cause trouble. I can't help but think the AirBNB that replaces hotels might drop by a lot, but the mid-term monthly rentals might bounce back a lot quicker as people become less location dependent on work. I know I absolutely am planning to go somewhere warmer in the winter months.

There's still a huge opportunity in a hassle free monthly rental experience. Month to month through almost any legacy property management company is an absolutely dreadful experience with huge up front deposits and being treated basically like a criminal. I have no idea how big this market is admittedly but its been a very interesting value prop for me.

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

#266

Post by ramraj07 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #199
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?

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 own…

While your points are valid, we can still consider the bloatedness hypothesis but just looking at the engineering team size.

Uber was similarly accused of being bloated and it definitely was on just the engineering team - several thousands of engineers for what is definitely a complex app but not that complex really.

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

#267

Post by user5994461 »

ThisIsTheWay wrote: post #239
user5994461 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Provide a source for that 500 headcount... Hotels.com lists 1100-1500 employees depending on where you look, and LinkedIn shows ~1600 employed by Hotels.com today. With that said, Hotels.com is owned by a multi-billion dollar conglomerate called Expedia, which employees ~24K people across multiple brands. AirBnB is operating on their own.

Worked there a few years ago. Should be double now since they've extended to and filled a new building.

The whole group with Expedia was something around 15k if I recall well. It includes more than a hundred independent brands and products, plus a few massive white labels, covering an order of magnitude more languages and currencies than AirBnb. So better not compare the whole conglomerate to AirBnb (except as an evidence it's bloated).

The last media reports put AirBnb at 12000 or 15000 employees, but the article is mentioning a total workforce of 7500, so either the media were very off or a whole bunch of employees are not factored in. Either way it's a lot, no doubt the business can run with half of that.

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

#268

Post by darkerside »

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…

Allowing former new employees to buy shares in a private company essentially at cost doesn't seem terribly generous to me.

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

#270

Post by amiga_500 »

supernova87a wrote: post #249

If Airbnb is willing to pay 14 weeks (3.25 months) of severance, they must believe this is going to go on significantly longer than that. Or they're using this as an opportunity to cut underperformers at the same time. Because if they believed things would start to recover by fall, wouldn't you just pay the people as normal and make a judgement call around then? You're spending the payroll money either way -- 14 week…

It's going to go on far, far longer than 14 weeks.

Airbnb are going to have issues, as the longer this drags on, the more landlords are going to be forced to sell or commit to long-term rentals, limiting the number of eligible places, even if there is some later snap-back (due to say a very effective vaccine).

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