Have laws caught up for this new way to work yet? Last ai checked there are non-insignificant legal and tax issues for small businesses to have employees in other states.
Add to that health insurance in the US.
Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere
111–120 of 736 posts
Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere
#112I'm kinda of curious how this works if you are remote:
"Most of you should expect to gather in person every quarter for about a week at a time. Some roles, especially senior roles, will be expected to gather more often. We’ll do our best to define windows when most large team off-sites will occur and give you plenty of notice so you can make it work with personal and family plans."
Is this like just plan to be in the SF office during normal 9-5 work hours for a week every 13 weeks or is this like plan on a week long 24-7 corporate retreat away from your family every 13 weeks.
If its the former, then that seems sort of like hybrid work just 1 week per 13 week versus 2-3 day per 5 day where you should probably stick to within 1-2 hour commute of your local AirBNB office.
If its the latter then that seems like it might be a non-starter for people with families.
Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
The reverse is also true. At the beginning Airbnb employees will be making SF level salaries. As Airbnb continues to hire and churn employees, average salaries will come down since they won't be paying SF salaries for new positions. They might pay better than other companies, but won't keep SF as baseline.
I doubt this will be the case, unless they're willing to substantially shrink their labor pool by not competing with large tech hubs.
I am happy for you if you can play a FAANG salary against another offer, and many on HN can, but for the vast majority of tech employees _and_ employers, those numbers are nothing like a baseline.
Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere
#114Sounds nice in some ways. The stickler here is the focus on working in PST still. You’re not gonna get to travel to the EU and work async it sounds like. Which - while making sense - isn’t going to make a good portion of people who want this particularly happy. After all - remote but stuck in one time zone for working hours isn’t really a huge win. It’s dangling a carrot. In other news - sounds like comp is going dow…
I really liked working from Hawaii. I kept pt hours. I woke up at 6 with the roosters crowing. I felt a like code farmer. Then I'd be done by 2 and felt like I had a whole day to enjoy. It was awesome. I'm actually a night owl in my pacific tz non traveling life
Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere
#115When does the definition of talent extend beyond developers and system architects and product delivery? Airbnb’s support organization, particularly with respect to guest advocacy, is abhorrent. I was just recently in a situation where a host rejected the rental price after booking, and convinced the support team that i agreed to the adjusted price, which was then charged against my card. (To be fair there was some me…
I think more people need to be aware of how much they suck as a company
I've had nothing but excellent experiences, going on 70+ distinct trips now. Many of them wouldn't even have been possible without Airbnb. Sorry it hasn't worked out so well for you
Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere
#116I know some people are very excited about that, and some think that is going to be a new norm. I have not worked for the corps for at least 4-5 years, but before that I always assumed there are only small amount of people who can really work for company remotely. I definitely saw people calling that they are going to work from home, but saw very little work to be done that day. Which probably means that people used t…
>You are at new place, you going to work like 4-6 hours instead of 8-9 hours.
Literally nobody is productive for 9 hours straight. You end up doing low-value make-work projects because in a culture that values "time in seat" the work expands to fill the available time.
Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere
#117I know some people are very excited about that, and some think that is going to be a new norm. I have not worked for the corps for at least 4-5 years, but before that I always assumed there are only small amount of people who can really work for company remotely. I definitely saw people calling that they are going to work from home, but saw very little work to be done that day. Which probably means that people used t…
> I definitely saw people calling that they are going to work from home, but saw very little work to be done that day. Which probably means that people used that as excuse, as they had some business to do outside work, and they did not want to take PTO.
Remote manager here. This is definitely a huge problem with people new to remote work.
I actually don't care at all if people are doing something else during the day and getting their work done at night or whatever they want to do. However, a significant number of people really struggle to get work done at all when they first go remote and lack a repeatable schedule and the feeling of social pressure to be working like their peers. It takes a lot of coaching and mentoring to get these people back on track with their remote-ready peers.
Many other people have no problems working remote, though. IMO, the key to success of a remote team is to coach and mentor all new remote workers very intensely in the first months or year, but then also to be willing to remove people from the team if they just can't get work done remotely. You absolutely don't want a few bad apples to ruin remote work for everyone else.
Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere
#118I know some people are very excited about that, and some think that is going to be a new norm. I have not worked for the corps for at least 4-5 years, but before that I always assumed there are only small amount of people who can really work for company remotely. I definitely saw people calling that they are going to work from home, but saw very little work to be done that day. Which probably means that people used t…
>You are at new place, you going to work like 4-6 hours instead of 8-9 hours. I remember some studies mentioning that the real productive time in a daily 8 hr shiFt was 4-6 hours. If that's so, then it's completely doable. Hopefully someone has a fresh link to one of those studies.
If anything I’ve been seeing lots of articles lately saying that because there are fewer boundaries between life and work when you’re remote lots of people are working far more than they did when they were in person. Idk the numbers but that’s definitely what happened to me.
Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere
#119> Everyone will still need a permanent address for tax and payroll purposes
I spent a lot of time outside US while waiting for my wife's visa to process and quickly wrote some advice on maintaining US domicile & "permanent address" while abroad:
https://www.kylehotchkiss.com/blog/domicile
Sorry about the misspellings and slightly ugly personal site but I hope that this helps somebody who may be considering working or staying from abroad for a bit!
Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere
#120When does the definition of talent extend beyond developers and system architects and product delivery? Airbnb’s support organization, particularly with respect to guest advocacy, is abhorrent. I was just recently in a situation where a host rejected the rental price after booking, and convinced the support team that i agreed to the adjusted price, which was then charged against my card. (To be fair there was some me…
I think more people need to be aware of how much they suck as a company
AirBNB is pretty awful to use as a customer. It's so shady and packed with hidden fees, at least speaking as someone who's only used it a few times.
Unfortunately, hotels have been massively deteriorating in quality these last few years.. the hotels I've stayed in over the last few months weren't cleaning rooms more than once a week (and doing a half-assed job then), the front desk, kitchen, and room service were all massively understaffed, and they were more expensive than ever while still having the same awful internet/TV setups.
If AirBNB eliminates the ruinously large cleaning fees, I'll probably just stop staying in hotels for good