Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Citing revenue declines, Airbnb cuts 25% of workforce

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 936 posts

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

#401

Post by hilbertseries »

r00fus wrote: post #381
uptown wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI - They're already gone.

Jeebus how is this possible - is our supply chain that fragile that things like hand sanitizer (that you can make with alcohol + aloe gel) and freezers run out? Why is there no increased demand-driven supply on these things?

There are plenty of places where you can buy hand sanitizer currently. Any sort of manufacturing takes time to ramp up. There’s a usual demand for freezers and that’s how much is typically made. If everyone decides they want a freezer there’s not enough. Why is this surprising? Sure they may start manufacturing more freezers now, but it’s going to take time and it’s not clear if demand will stay high, so who knows how much will be made. These things continue to be made, so our supply chain is not breaking, it just can’t massively scale up production instantly. I don’t know why this would be surprising.

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

#402

Post by dan-robertson »

rb808 wrote: post #338
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…

As a European, that isn't great. (options excepted). Usually I thought you get 14 weeks plus a month for every year of service, not a week.

I feel like this is a bit of a sweeping generalisation. Certainly many countries in Europe would not give this. And others would have maximums which are lower than typical Airbnb pay.

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

#403

Post by mdamore »

duxup wrote: post #213
mdamore wrote: post #161

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.

We're talking about a decade-old company with billions in revenue. If your job at AirBnb was your first chance to build any wealth, you never had the option to diversify. I don't think it's fair in that case to blame the employee.

I don't necessarily blame the management either. I do hope this reminds employees of private companies that their equity is only on paper until they are able to sell, and they should pressure management to give them the option.

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

#404

Post by rubber_duck »

r00fus wrote: post #358
conanbatt wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And typically much higher unemployment numbers

Not these days. Europe is doing much better than the US in terms of unemployment - wonder why?

As a European I wouldn't be too fast to gloat - the EU is trying to keep jobs on hold but it's not clear to me what will come out of this - it seems like the restrictions are going to be here for a long time and keeping businesses afloat artificially could end up blocking restructuring. My biggest concern right now is that migration restrictions are going to kill seasonal manual labor migration and government unemployment subsidies will prevent local population from taking up that work - we could end up with major issues in things like crop harvesting.

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

#405

Post by cactus2093 »

r00fus wrote: post #367
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…

I have heard of people taking a luxury Airbnb near where they live for a month since kids can be remote from school along with parents, and I just don't trust hosts or previous guest enough to ensure that the place is clean.

All indications at this point are that the virus spreads a lot more through the air than via surfaces. And it only stays active up to 3 days on plastic and metal surfaces, and that's in ideal conditions.

If you bring cleaning supplies and just wipe down high-contact areas like counters, doorknobs, refrigerator handle, etc. when you arrive, it doesn't really seem any more risky than something like bringing in groceries from the grocery store, which may have been touched by other people, the cashier, etc. Or to be extremely cautious, you could pay for an extra 3 days prior to arriving to make sure nobody has touched anything in that time. If you're gonna be there a full month anyway, what's another 3 days added on to the cost.

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

#406

Post by afjl »

r00fus wrote: post #373
IkmoIkmo wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's quite obvious that tourism isn't going to recover back to 100% where they were in 3 months, no... Note that '100%' includes the growth prospects that Airbnb still had in January 2020. 'startups' like airbnb hire for growth. 25% workforce cut is roughly the growth prospects (20-30% per year) that airbnb had last year. So no, that recovery won't come in just a few short months. For one because there's stil…

> Or professional airbnb companies which purchased real estate that's only economic with large revenues, financed with leveraged mortgages, many of these companies are set to collapse in a 3-month shutdown, let alone a 6-month low-activity industry. A lot of these will be folding and selling their properties. I wonder how this is or will impact the real-estate market? Are enough people going to foreclose without inte…

I think it's highly unlikely...but I'd be very happy to be wrong, too.

These highly-leveraged "new" companies and individuals make up only a portion of AirBnB-rented homes, which themselves are only a small portion of the entire housing market. There was a very recent interview or article with AirBnB's CEO where he (I'm sure he was fudging the numbers a bit) said only 1/3 of AirBNB homes are actually owned by these kinds of speculative home-buyers. The remaining 2/3 are split evenly between traditional real estate leasing companies and homeowners with only 1 house.

Also, worth considering that short-term rentals can easily be transformed back into long-term rentals. In any case, I think a national housing market plunge is highly unlikely.

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

#407

Post by user5994461 »

booi wrote: post #390
sachdevap wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is revenue per employee some sort of standard measure in the industry?

In general yes but obviously nuanced. Gives you a sense of scalability

Well, it's a philosophical conundrum.

If a business has enough money to hire more people (revenues per employee is proxy). It should do so as long as it can recoup the investment.

If a business already has thousands of people sitting around doing nothing, should it continue to hire more?

There are a near infinite amount of small optimizations and extensions in global businesses that can pay for themselves, so technically it should always hire... but should it really?

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

#408

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

jdminhbg wrote: post #309
ashtonkem wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The pandemic doesn't end simply because quarantine is lifted. People will seriously question flying or passing through airports, especially as case counts are getting worse while the restrictions are being lifted.

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

#409

Post by jzl »

dilyevsky wrote: post #234
fapi1974 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone recall if Airbnb were one of the firms to institute more employee-friendly exercise windows? If so that takes some of the pressure off the decision.

They are probably double trigger rsus with 10y expiration

You mean if you're still an employee? I've read their RSUs have 7y expiration, which is part of the whole Airbnb IPO problem because the ones from 2014 will start expiring next year.

But what's the window to exercise once you leave the company? I doubt it's until expiration.

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

#410

Post by tlrobinson »

actaeon169 wrote: post #341
arcticbull wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds amazing, I wish someone would lay me off like that, damn. Four months PTO with healthcare?!

As I recall, COBRA is pretty expensive.

I believe it's just the full cost of the plan you were already on, the sum of what you and your employer were paying for it.

So it can be expensive if your employer was paying a lot for it.

Post reply on HN