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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

#871

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need to approximate: https://data.oecd.org/rd/gross-domestic-spending-on-r-d.htm Germany is at 3.4% of GDP spending on R&D and the USA at 2.8% France is also right up there at 2.2%

Spending on research and development is an awful proxy for results delivered by said R&D, which is what we would actually want to measure if we're looking for innovation relative to GDP.

Also highly dependent on the laws of the individual countries as to what counts as R&D spending.

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

#872
post #858
post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider this a downside, it makes it harder to become factory owner. You want to balance the power? Make it easier to be an employer, not hinder it.

Here in Sweden we don't see it as making things harder for employers, but making them act in fairness. Swedish worker unions sees the success of the business as success of the employees and will help get there for example by fair to both sides collective agreements. This means for example that unreasonable demands from employees will be blocked, and if the employer needs to cut down employees cannot refuse.

But there is no inherent reason the business itself is the locus of responsibility to the worker (other than obvious things like worker safety on the job.)

Why not, for instance, make the loss of a job be covered by saved union funds that are generated by the union as a whole? The only reason the business is tagged as the responsible party in Europe is historical cruft.

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

#873
post #751

Earlier quoted context omitted.

£300k, how much would that be in base salary?

Less than half. Tbh I found the whole "guaranteed" bonus thing quite confusing. London finance attracts a crowd that I had very little in common with. To be honest I only interviewed to see what it was like. It wasn't for me.

Yet to find the first company in London which really offers a guaranteed bonus ️

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

#874
post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't know what fraction of AirBnb's business still consists of indies renting out rooms to vacationers for short-term stays. But that market is simply hosed for the foreseeable future, if not forever. Complete lack of enthusiasm from guests and hosts alike. Driving strangers around in your car or having them stay in your home is never again going to seem like the great idea that it once did.

I think this is spot on. Every time I've been to Europe to stay in an Airbnb in the last 4 or 5 years, it's been a professional operation. Same with most of the properties in the states. These weren't people leaving their house for a weekend and trying to get some extra income. These were people who invested in real estate to get into the side-channel of psuedo-hotel business. They obviously have mortgages, likely no…

> Every time I've been to Europe to stay in an Airbnb in the last 4 or 5 years, it's been a professional operation

my experience is the exact opposite, but maybe because I travel with family and rent bigger houses- do you ?

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

#875

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if you count rent / mortgage, car & car insurance or kindergarten. And you medical coverage might still cover less than the European one.

>Not if you count rent / mortgage Depends where you live. There's no reason the 175k employee can't live somewhere "bad" or suffer a long commute. Most major western european cities and their suburbs are by no means cheap to find housing in. >car & car insurance Most white collar Europeans with families own cars. Owning and operating a vehicle is astronomically cheaper in the US, even in California which has insanely…

> Depends where you live. There's no reason the 175k employee can't live somewhere "bad" or suffer a long commute. Most major western european cities and their suburbs are by no means cheap to find housing in.

I don't think there are many "bad" places that are cheap around Silicon Valley.

Most western European cities have neighbourhoods that are drastically cheaper than the well-off ones.

> Most white collar Europeans with families own cars. Owning and operating a vehicle is astronomically cheaper in the US, even in California which has insanely high costs compared to the median or mean state.

New cars in America are twice as expensive as the average in the EU.

Average car insurance in America is five times as expensive as the average in the EU.

> Part of the free (at the point of use, obviously it's paid for by taxes) public school system in the US.

Sorry, I meant nursery.* Kindergarten is free in the EU as well.

> I don't want to have a healthcare debate but the cost was addressed higher up the thread and the difference in coverage between what American BigCo employees get and what Europeans get (and both those classes of insurance are diverse enough to make comparison impractical without sweeping generalizations) is not going to be meaningful except in the edge cases.

Well that's convenient. Based on the American medical debt lets go with a lesser coverage for the American workforce. Also it's not taking into account the cost of opportunity of having medical insurance event when you won't be employed anymore in case of an accident or other reason.

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

#876
post #156

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…

Glad to see the money they are stealing from those of us who can't cancel our summer airBNBs is going to a good cause.

If they won’t let you cancel, and you don’t want to go, I’m sure there are plenty of ER nurses that you could donate your booking to. I also keep hearing of hospital bed shortages.

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

#877

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pressu…

Or, don’t get lured in by a company offering you huge compensation that you can’t actually touch (without realizing it’s a gamble). To be fair, even the cash compensation at Airbnb was supposedly pretty high. But I’m not sure whether that’s much consolation now, after they’ve been dangling a golden carrot in front of employees for years.

Yeah that's kinda what I was getting at.

Education about what the value of something you can't sell seems a better route.

And granted, at Airbnb, maybe they all knew.

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

#878
Why not furloughs or temporary part-time? I thought this was a rocket ship. Why would they have even consider an IPO raise if they weren’t looking to massively expand? Are they going to rehire all these people when business picks up? Not that I disagree, but it smells like vanilla-variety cuts for efficiency/performance.

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

#879

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Not if you count rent / mortgage Depends where you live. There's no reason the 175k employee can't live somewhere "bad" or suffer a long commute. Most major western european cities and their suburbs are by no means cheap to find housing in. >car & car insurance Most white collar Europeans with families own cars. Owning and operating a vehicle is astronomically cheaper in the US, even in California which has insanely…

> Depends where you live. There's no reason the 175k employee can't live somewhere "bad" or suffer a long commute. Most major western european cities and their suburbs are by no means cheap to find housing in. I don't think there are many "bad" places that are cheap around Silicon Valley. Most western European cities have neighbourhoods that are drastically cheaper than the well-off ones. > Most white collar European…

>I don't think there are many "bad" places that are cheap around Silicon Valley.

They're not cheap relative to other parts of the country buy they're cheap relative to where most white collar employees are living. The janitor and the plumber have to live somewhere and you can pay what they pay if you don't mind living among them.

>Most western European cities have neighbourhoods that are drastically cheaper than the well-off ones.

And in American cities those neighborhoods are particular suburbs (often cities themselves). Cheap housing that is literally in the city is much less numerous.

>New cars in America are twice as expensive as the average in the EU.

You can't compare car prices without comparing the cars and the associated costs. Americans buy much larger more expensive vehicles because they can because the taxes are lower, the fees are lower and the insurance is cheaper. This topic has been beaten to death. Americans buy $30k crossovers because those $30k crossovers cost $30k out the door. Contrast that to the typical taxes on new cars in Europe and you'll see why Europeans gravitate toward lower purchase prices.

>Average car insurance in America is five times as expensive as the average in the EU.

Citation please. This flies in the face of all my anecdotal experience.

>Sorry, I meant nursery.* Kindergarten is free in the EU as well.

We call that daycare. In the US you have an entire range of options from a high priced daycare with a low child:staff ratio, located in a high end part of town, quadruple extra special background checks on all the employees, etc, etc all the way down to single person cash only operations that people run out of their homes. It's as expensive or cheap as you're willing to make it. Remember, the poor families have to send their kids somewhere too so it's not like options don't exist at every price point. It's rare in tech because the employee demographics result in low demand but many employers offer free/cheap on-site daycare or a voucher to a particular daycare as a job perk. That said, work from home perks that are common in tech can alleviate some of the demand for daycare.

>Well that's convenient. Based on the American medical debt lets go with a lesser coverage for the American workforce. Also it's not taking into account the cost of opportunity of having medical insurance event when you won't be employed anymore in case of an accident or other reason.

I'm done debating with you. I'm not going to get tricked into trying to defend the American system as overall better which is where you seem to be nudging the goalposts toward. All I am saying is that even with it's failings someone making 175k (a pay grade certainly not representative of the workforce in general) is likely better off with it than taking a 100k pay cut for the European system.

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