Live data from Hacker News

Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

news.airbnb.com

301–310 of 736 posts

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#301

I'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…

It is also not clear who will pay for travelling, if you can work from anywhere but must be in a very specific place and time then travel cost can be significant. Assume I want to work from a small town in North Sweden where housing is really affordable while internet is still fast how will I get to SF?

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole city suffers in the long run, as business get torn up to make a quick buck with rents, and the city becomes an empty fun park for tourists. The problem obviously exists beyond AirBnB, but AirBnB massively escalated the problem.

If you want to enrich locals at the expense of tourists, the straightforward way to do that is just raise property/sales taxes and payout the revenue to locals.

That's fine if you want to punish people who manages to get out of rent slavery.

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#303
post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an immigration/tax lawyer and could be completely wrong but if you're from EU/US/UK/AUS etc I'm fairly sure you can work in another one of those countries for up to 90 days (and sometimes upto 183) without paying tax there or getting a work visa - as long as you're still resident and being paid in your home country under the Visa Waiver program. I've worked in NY offices and got paid in UK (admittedly a while…

You can visit for 90 days but what you're allowed to do is restricted to tourism and "temporary business". The US substantial presence test is actually something like 31 days in the current year, and ~180 calculated as a weighted sum of presence over all visits in the preceeding few years. That's just to determine if you should pay tax, and note that vacations to the US contribute. Whether you can legally work in the…

90 days is the number agreed upon by company lawyers. Company lawyers do not have a sense of adventure, so this is a relatively watertight figure for most countries in the world and not dependent on your honesty.

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#304
My employer (FAANG-like Fintech) settled on a really similar policy just a couple of days ago, really glad they did it.

> Starting in September, you can live and work in over 170 countries for up to 90 days a year in each location.

This looks particularly great, currently for my company is "just" 20 days, but this seems fantastic!

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#305
post #279
post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, the entire city. In e.g. Amsterdam (a relatively tiny area, high tourism density) or Venice, in areas things have been pushed over. It's a spiral. E.g. something simple as "pharmacies" or "supermarkets". They leave/close because of less demand. Which decreases liveability, causing more locals to move out, causing more such businesses to close etc. These effects come next to "increasing house prices". It reall…

> You are certainly no longer allowed to have AirBnBs for the sole purpose of renting out to AirBnb. That's a ridiculous requirement. Owning real estate for the sole purpose of renting has been an income source for ever. Just because Airbnb exploded this practice in popularity doesn't give governments the right to say what purpose owners can use their property for. If Airbnb is causing issues, then address those spec…

they are addressing those issues in limiting short rent rentals. long term rentals are allowed and regulated.

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#307
Sooo.. w/o getting into my history too deeply, my ex and I left the US in 2006 and worked freelance/remote. Wired did an article about us in 2008 living in a solar van when that was, like, unheard of. It seems like every few years a new batch of people want to try this approach, and it's always popular with the press to write about it. Sometimes it works out. I think it's a great way to live, and it teaches you a lot about yourself.

We used to just find vacation rentals. One of the key tricks I used when AirBnb came out was figuring out who the owner was and contacting them directly with a cash offer for 3 months rent with ~25% (sometimes 50%) knocked off if I pay in USD up front. So I'd say most of the places I lived from 2009 on (about 20 places?) I found on AirBnb, thanks guys, and then paid cash to the owner. Only once or twice, for a couple days at most, have I ever actually used AirBnb to run a transaction for me.

Not for nothing, I now live in a house I own in Portland with an AirBnb right next to me whose owners are off living in some other AirBnb out of the country, and I'm pissed as fuck that I'm living next to what's turned into a goddamn motel. But it's wonderful that the AirBnb staff now get the same in-system privileges that unionized airline employees have had for decades. It would be better if it wasn't literally gutting every city from Amsterdam to Bangkok in the process and turning them into hipster slums.

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#308
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha thanks, gives a whole different meaning.

Thanks for the chuckle!

>the real productive time in a daily 8 hr shit

I used to take my PowerBook into the bathroom stall at work when I needed some alone time to concentrate, but it was embarrassing to get busted when it crashed and made that reboot sound so everybody else in the bathroom knew what I was up to.

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an immigration/tax lawyer and could be completely wrong but if you're from EU/US/UK/AUS etc I'm fairly sure you can work in another one of those countries for up to 90 days (and sometimes upto 183) without paying tax there or getting a work visa - as long as you're still resident and being paid in your home country under the Visa Waiver program. I've worked in NY offices and got paid in UK (admittedly a while…

Nope, unless your country has a special arrangement with the country you are visiting, you cannot work with a tourist visa, at all. Does not matter if the company is local or not. No work visa = no work.

This is a legal loophole for digital nomads. If I am connected to my work via a VPN, I am technically still working in the country of employment. I am not producing any commercial output in the country I am staying that I or my employer benefits from beneficially. I am 100% confident this has been reviewed by well paid lawyers at AirBnb who have zero sense of adventure, and that this is all water tight.

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#310
post #278
post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do. Actually the amount of taxes in some countries if you end up messing up and staying over 180 days is significant. And then there is health care. Maybe not an issue in those third world countries with private one, but with public systems real question for them.

Is health care really an issue? They'd really only need to cover emergency issues? Everything longer term I would assume you'd have to go back to your home country to get covered.

Healthcare tourism is real. People come to Spain for that.
Post reply on HN