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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

#301

Aw and you went to coding school to learn Ruby of Rails for the IPO and are now stuck with an irrelevant skillset. AirBnB is the only reason the bay area uses Ruby. All those startups stuck maintaining old code bases can only find talent because of attrition or rejects from AirBnB.

Doesn't Airbnb use Ruby because Twitter uses Ruby?

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

#302
post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Apples and oranges. Hotels.com is a middle-man. When you have a problem with your stay, you talk to the actual hotel, which has its own front desk, customer service, legal, engineering, business, marketing, blah blah blah, teams.

My family vacation house which we let got a visitor through hotels.com through expedia and we don't have anything you mentioned. My guess would be whatever something is called be it Hotels or AirBnB they are working with everyone in the business in some capacity

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

#303
post #21

Does anyone know what percentage of the call centers are not actual employees but contractors? The contractors are usually demand based, therefore "invisible" in these stats.

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.

I know a few people who work over at airbnb, they are very generous with who they call an employee. Unless things have changed in the past year or so security guards and food staff(people who make meals onsite) are all full fledged employees who I assume get stock, I think this is awesome as a lot of these folks come from low income backgrounds and having full insurance and a extra bit of cash via salary and stock options goes a long way towards improving their lives.

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

#304

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…

I personally suspect that travel related industries will be one of the last to recover, both due to consumer reticence and due to lower levels of disposable income during the recovery.

Maybe but Im guessing there will be 1 to 3 months flights are open in summer and there will be lots of crazy partying and spending. (in Europe)

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

#305

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.

[deleted]

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

#306

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 roughly equivalent to what anyone in France would get if they get fired

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

#307
post #12

There are going to be a lot of tough decisions for people who have to decide whether to buy their Airbnb options or lose them. I bet a lot of people at Airbnb are wishing they went public before all this.

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…

Would be interesting to know what % of AirBnb Hosts do it on a semi-professional basis. I get your arguments for the mom-and-pop opening your house and all that. But everytime I've been to Europe, or to big cities, the AirBnbs were almost always part of a bigger operation. And then there's all the people who bought rental properties to operate their own AirBnb rentals.

Anyway, my hunch is that the percent % of AirBnbs that are actually people utilizing their excess space (initial AirBnb model) is small vs more hosts entered via owning and operating their own hotels through buying leveraged rental properties and the AirBnb platform....

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

#308
I had a guest that destroyed thousands of dollars of property at my house weeks ago and it's still going through their claim process. They've been stalling for a while now and it's been extremely frustrating since no one in support seems to have any idea what's going on.

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

#309

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…

I personally suspect that travel related industries will be one of the last to recover, both due to consumer reticence and due to lower levels of disposable income during the recovery.

> lower levels of disposable income during the recovery.

There's also going to be a lot of pent-up demand from people who didn't lose jobs and had no outlet for leisure spending during the quarantine. I'm not sure which will win out.

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

#310

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 think they're going to poach a ton of business away from hotels once things start opening back up. It's way easier to maintain social distance in an AirBnb (hotels have check-in processes, hallways where you have to pass other guests, etc), and I think more people will be travelling to rural areas where Airbnbs have an advantage.
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