I like that he specifically mentioned open floor plans. This is the number one reason why I don't want to return to the office. I kinda do want to go back. But I need my privacy and some quiet. I can't do the open floor plan ever again.
Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere
71–80 of 736 posts
Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere
#72AirBnB has to do this just to recruit employees since there are plenty of other companies with the same or better comp (and equity not on the downhill).
Airnbnb is not in the downhill. Why the hate? They had a very tough 2020, but after that it is all been looking better and better for them.
City after city is either severely restricting or eliminating AirBnB entirely. It's golden days are behind it. It's trying new approaches, but nothing unique there.
Why work for AirBnB? You could work for another big tech company that actually has room to grow and produce some solid equity returns.
Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
It just defies basic logic. The reason most central areas became so expensive was the need to cluster close to them for work. And in some areas, leisure, but that's the exception. Residential real estate prices skyrocketing has more to do with government interventions. I fully expect ex tech hubs such as the Bay Area to trend down in prices in real terms over many years Foreclosure moratorium, eviction moratorium, st…
What you don’t seem to understand is that people move to hcol areas for leisure. There is a fundamental reason they are expensive in the first place. Seattle for instance is surrounded by ocean, national parks, mountains. Same thing with the Bay Area. It’s not gonna get cheaper. Nebraska is not going to magically spring up natural beauty and culture.
Yes, every city has a work component and a leisure component. The work component of a given city was largely irreplaceable, while leisure can be substituted by many cities.
If you worked in tech, SF was the pinnacle location to live for your career. If you were in Finance, it was NYC. There was no exception to this. You can live in any of dozens of cities and still get an enjoyable life/leisure. It's not equivalent at all.
So in this new world, an SF home will be worth $4m while an equivalent San Diego one $2m? No way. The disparity in amenities between the two is not big enough to justify that kind of spread, once you remove the work component. The entire reason SF became so expensive was relocations to work for big tech and the concentration of VC money. Not because it was unambiguously the most desirable city in the US or even CA.
So you take away the component that made it expensive to begin with and ??? it goes higher still ???
Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Eventually - and it might take a recession - the downside of “work from anywhere” will be that companies can “hire from anywhere”. That means the Bay Area salary you previously enjoyed may be knocked down through greater wage competition.
And then another company will pop up and pay more. The thing is, we're used to the high pay now. Cut that and you're gonna cut efficiency. It's going to be hard to justify it. Create bad will with your money makers good luck getting anywhere realistically.
Don’t take for granted the power of someone to undercut you at every turn. IT thought they weren’t replaceable. But oversea workers on visas and outsourcing to other countries began taking their jobs and pay
Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere
#75I've been working like this for the past year and a half. I'll never go back to a "normal" office environment. Winners in this new paradigm: Owners of real estate in lifestyle towns like Boise, Boulder, etc. I also think borders between the US and Latin America (same/similar time zones) will become a lot more fluid. Why not work in Mexico City or Buenos Aires during the winters, for a fraction of the cost of living i…
Boulder real estate has been a huge winner for a decade already, and had a big in person tech scene for a while.
I agree though about Boise. And all of Florida... etc.
Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere
#76For companies like this that profess to care about their employees (and I believe them), what’s the justification for paying less in e.g. London than USA given London is just as expensive? Will progressive companies start adjusting pay according to cost of living rather than the local labor market?
For companies like this that profess to care about their employees (and I believe them)
That's your problem right there - you believe them.
Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere
#77This is a newly released book, Effective Remote Work: For Yourself, Your Team, and Your Company by James Stanier, now with 50% discount:
Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
It happened before, in living memory, it's hardly impossible. It gets easy to justify by employers when enough people lost their job that every job opening is flooded with candidates. There are basically two schools of thought: the "software is eating the world" one says that requirements will continue to be more and more specialized, for every advance in tooling there will be advances in complexity we can tackle, an…
Both these views are incorrect. Software is one of the only professions in the US where non executives have managed to enjoy a sliver of the increase in compensation that executives do in most other sectors of the economy. The spectacular rise in productivity has generally been funneled to the top; except in specialized fields like software, which requires highly specialized skills to be effective. The “crazy VC mone…
Your second paragraph sounds like the same thing I meant, essentially "specialization and skill will continue to be required as software continues to be highly influential all over the place."
For the latter, I think stuff like Facebook's whole "metaverse" money-loser, Google's random-other-non-ads-project stuff, a bunch of Netflix efforts beyond "just show the damn video," would be at risk in a major recession. Couple that with an implosion of a bunch of "growth" companies and it would hardly surprise me to see hiring get a lot easier for the money-making Big Tech projects.
(I don't actually believe that, I lean to the former, but I think it's a much more credible idea than you do. I've had a lot of coworkers the last decade who've never worked at a profitable company but passed FANG-style interviews and were making near-FANG money.)
Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere
#79I like that he specifically mentioned open floor plans. This is the number one reason why I don't want to return to the office. I kinda do want to go back. But I need my privacy and some quiet. I can't do the open floor plan ever again.
you don't like doing PDD? Panopticon-driven-development?
Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere
#80I like that he specifically mentioned open floor plans. This is the number one reason why I don't want to return to the office. I kinda do want to go back. But I need my privacy and some quiet. I can't do the open floor plan ever again.
It always annoyed me that they couldn't even be honest and say it was save rent, they had to make it seem like open floor plan was a positive thing because it "increases collaboration"
It's not enough you want to be cheap but you want to make it seem like you're doing it for our benefit.