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

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

#641

Post by baby » Wed, May 06, 2020, 2:17 AM UTC

cletus wrote: post #514

I'm kind of surprised it took this long, honestly. It does suck if you're one of those affected so you have my sympathy if you're one of those. On the bright side, at least by US standards, this does seem to be pretty generous. That aside, if this whole pandemic manages to kill or mortally wound AirBnB, I won't be upset. What AirBnB does to cities, neighbourhoods and the long-term rental market is atrocious and it ne…

I’d be extremely sad personally. Airbnb has allowed my family, my friends, and I to travel all around the world and feel like home everywhere I went.

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

#642

Post by baby » Wed, May 06, 2020, 2:18 AM UTC

xwdv wrote: post #46

actuator wrote: post #19

It feels bad that this happened to one of the companies with a very good engineering culture. The stuff they have put out in the open either on GitHub or through their blogs is a testament to that. I think any company will be lucky to have these folks.

Good engineering culture, bad company, user hostile.

Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. I love travelling with Airbnb but they are lying to users with displayed prices.

There are plugins to see the real prices btw.

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

#643

Post by JohnTHaller » Wed, May 06, 2020, 2:21 AM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #625

cecilpl2 wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You own a factory. Your employees don't. There's a power imbalance in the employment relationship. Most people (who don't own things like factories) need a regular, predictable, stable income to survive, and finding new employment is not always easy. Therefore, people in most developed countries have agreed that by taking on an employee, it is contingent on the employer to provide some guarantee of stability. This is…

> You own a factory. Your employees don't. There's a power imbalance in the employment relationship. You make it sound like employers are all fat rich people smoking cigars while everyone else is in a sweatshop. The reality is that 99% of businesses are very small in size (as in, one owner and very few employees) and it's often much more a partnership than the power imbalance you are talking about. Yet the same laws…

More Americans work for large employers than small or mid-sized ones.

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

#644

Post by dx87 » Wed, May 06, 2020, 2:21 AM UTC

louisswiss wrote: post #539

cecilpl2 wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You own a factory. Your employees don't. There's a power imbalance in the employment relationship. Most people (who don't own things like factories) need a regular, predictable, stable income to survive, and finding new employment is not always easy. Therefore, people in most developed countries have agreed that by taking on an employee, it is contingent on the employer to provide some guarantee of stability. This is…

> even the workers seem to value the rights of the employers far above the rights of the employees. I'm not sure why this is. To paraphrase a famous quote, in the USA the workers don't see themselves as workers, but as temporarily down-on-their-luck owners.

That quote by Ronald Wright is actually paraphrasing part of a John Steinbeck book, where he's using it to describe people who wanted socialist governments, but were dissapointed that everyone ended up poor instead of a utopia where everyone has everything they need.

It's funny how it started out as a criticism of people who think that the government should have more control of how businesses operate, but has been paraphrased so many times that it's now used as a way to criticise people who want to minimize government involvement in business.

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

#645

Post by what_ever » Wed, May 06, 2020, 2:22 AM UTC

eru wrote: post #595

mav3rick wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It happens at both F & G in FAANG.

I had a first year cliff at Google a few years ago. But they might have changed that. Facebook definitely doesn't have a cliff in 2020.

Changed in latter half of 2017.

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

#646

Post by unishark » Wed, May 06, 2020, 2:22 AM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #625

cecilpl2 wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You own a factory. Your employees don't. There's a power imbalance in the employment relationship. Most people (who don't own things like factories) need a regular, predictable, stable income to survive, and finding new employment is not always easy. Therefore, people in most developed countries have agreed that by taking on an employee, it is contingent on the employer to provide some guarantee of stability. This is…

> You own a factory. Your employees don't. There's a power imbalance in the employment relationship. You make it sound like employers are all fat rich people smoking cigars while everyone else is in a sweatshop. The reality is that 99% of businesses are very small in size (as in, one owner and very few employees) and it's often much more a partnership than the power imbalance you are talking about. Yet the same laws…

There's often (though not always) some size cutoffs in various benefit requirements for small businesses to relax the rules a bit. Such as 50 employees for the ACA I believe.

But I agree, people act like the economy is nothing but fortune 500 megacorps and push for laws that make it harder for everyone to survive except for such businesses and their employees.

And people always miss the hidden cost, even when talking about the fatcats. If you require companies to provide a year of severance, then everyone just gets paid (n-1)/n as much on average, where n is the average number of years an employee is expected to stay.

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

#647

Post by alvah » Wed, May 06, 2020, 2:27 AM UTC

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #553

verst wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure why you are being downvoted. It seems that much of HN has very little knowledge of (and interest in) business operations and employment law in other countries. I see your question as genuinely inquiring about this stark difference from what is common in Europe and other countries.

In many countries, there is no concept of 'at will employment'. It is not surprising that HNers from such countries would be incredulous. Employment law in Europe, for example, frequently requires the severance terms to be determined at the time the employee is signed up. The employment agreement is a contract, and will be signed by all positions in the firm. In many cases, the severance terms are based on law. Among…

"Among other differences, for example, a German President is personally liable for the financial obligations of their company. If the company goes bankrupt, so does he."

Not really. Directors are not generally held liable for debts incurred by their companies in Germany. However, they can be held liable if they are found to be in breach of their duties as directors. Also, the onus of proof is reversed in some cases (e.g. the director needs to prove he wasn't in breach of his duty).

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

#648

Post by what_ever » Wed, May 06, 2020, 2:28 AM UTC

llukas wrote: post #279

KoftaBob wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the original comment was specifically saying AirBnBs severance isn’t impressive compared to europe, which is not true.

AirBnBs severance package is impressive compared to rest of US. Twisting words a bit: most of Europe doesn't get much worse severance than top US corporation. That's impressive. IT in Europe also gets better severance etc. Also, not checked in other countries, but in Poland for example: regular salaried employees get 3 month notice if tenure is 3+ years.

But this is already more than 3 months even with 1 month of tenure?

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

#649

Post by haneefmubarak » Wed, May 06, 2020, 2:31 AM UTC

manigandham wrote: post #616

jashmatthews wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden and Germany, for example, are heavily regulated but have more innovation in terms of GDP% than the USA. If you're talking about why we don't see more visible commercial innovation from European countries then it's more about access to the enormous amounts of capital to build a big name startup like Uber etc. Nobody notices the legions of small bootstrapped or seed to profitable software businesses across the E…

How do you measure "innovation in terms of GDP"? I certainly don't see trillion-dollar world-changing companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon coming from those regions. What small business could replicate the impact of Windows, or Gmail or the iPhone?

(not the parent)

I would think that since innovation and growth (caused by innovative use of resources or increase in efficiency or novel products and services) in general should be relative to the population and its state to begin with, nominal GDP growth per annum would be a reasonable metric as a proxy for the wildly non-measurable "innovation in terms of GDP"; for reference, here's the data for 2018:

USA: 2.9% Canada: 1.9%

Sweden: 2.2% Norway: 1.3% Finland: 1.7% Denmark: 2.4%

Germany: 1.5% France: 1.7%

Ireland: 8.2% (not a typo, likely explained by expansion of business services from NA into EU) UK: 1.4%

Portugal: 2.4% Italy: 0.8% Greece: 1.9% Spain: 2.4%

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

#650

Post by dilap » Wed, May 06, 2020, 2:33 AM UTC

eganist wrote: post #68

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'm shocked that 2020 revenues will come in only 50% below 2019 This is a fair point, but it also suggests strongly that a significant minority of their business is month to month rentals, possibly in place of leasing. And hey, being frank, I wouldn't mind considering going somewhere else for a few months now that I can work remotely for a while.

I was also thinking about this, but I'm wondering if it's irresponsible. Thoughts?