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Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

news.airbnb.com

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Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#391

Post by Cthulhu_ »

noduerme wrote: post #368
amelius wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar van sounds nice, except if you're well over 6ft tall :/

Actually the guy we bought the van from before we added the solar panels was this suuuper tall Swiss guy, like 6'4 at least, and somehow he fit in there with his girlfriend and a whole six boxes of survival kit, maps, cooking equipment and such, neatly stacked under the bed platform. I always wondered how he handled it, but you can do a lot of things for love ;)

In my experience having gone on vacation in a caravan, generally you don't live inside the van for very long; it's where you sleep or take shelter from the weather, the rest of the time you're outside, or (in the case of a caravan) in a tent attached to the front that's usually 2.5-3 meters high up.

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#392

Post by noduerme »

pastacacioepepe wrote: post #379
noduerme wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just your city. It's happening everywhere. I'm a homeowner and I absolutely hate it. It destroys daily life and livability. I would never rent my house on it - or, frankly, to anyone who wasn't like me and wanted to stay a long time and live there and respect the place. People see a quick buck and take it, and don't give a shit, but they're driving their own property values down. [edit] What I mean is, I don…

I see yes, in the long term it might even be harmful for landlords.

Here at least in Portland, we sort of differentiate between people who live in the houses they own, versus people or companies who own property for speculation/rent collection. Most of the homeowners I know are simply happy to finally own a place they live in and stop paying rent.

It's still somewhat possible here; for example, last month, a friend who's a 42 year old bartender and just had a baby finally bought a house only about 30 blocks east (east is cheaper); if he'd had enough money for a down payment 5 years ago we would be living on the same block. I make about twice as much as he does. I want him to be living on my block. That's the kind of city that I want to live in, that's why people want to live in Portland in the first place. That's why I decided to buy my house here.

Airbnb is extremely corrosive to a "working city" environment where people of different social / income classes are able to live and work in the same neighborhoods, because it encourages petit homeowners like me to take a paycheck to abandon our properties so the hoteliers extract rent. Yet it's exactly the mixture of working class life which made Airbnb's most attractive tourist cities like Madrid and Lisbon, Portland and Amsterdam so popular with tourists.

IMHO Airbnb is a blight for landlords and renters and there's a very good argument to be made that no property outside a city-bonded hotel should be rented for less than 3-6 months. I said this about taxis not being driven by civilians back when I was a cab driver and Uber showed up, so, I can see I'm on the wrong side of history...

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#393

Post by Cthulhu_ »

noduerme wrote: post #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…

I mean, this is the way; I don't believe people actually want to go through companies like AirBnB, Uber and Uber Eats, all those in between parties if they can help it; if they can skip the fees, and especially if they can get long term tenants, then great. And if by paying with cash you can avoid taxes as well, great.

The only thing there is that it's a risk, e.g. what if they thrash the place, but airbnb may not even give a shit about that and accuse you (the owner) of fraud. That risk is also mitigated by paying up front like you said.

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#394

Post by bitschubser_ »

hocuspocus wrote: post #385
bitschubser_ wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 20% rule only applies to Switzerland and the "Doppelbesteuerungsabkommen" with the neighbor countries or EU. This was the reason I quit my job in switzerland and moved back to germany (without taking a huge pay cut ;), more vacation days and only 35hour/week), now the 183day rule for social contributions and tax apply as long as I live in germany. So now I can work from portugal during winter :)

Not only Switzerland, no, see Luxembourg. Most employers won't allow what you're doing. There's no EU-wide 183 day rule for social contributions. If you stay more than 3 months in a country you need to be registered as a posted worker, and there are some legal implications.

you're right, depending on the country/company there are some additional implications, in my case it helps that we have a subsidiary in most EU countries, so it can work via an "entsendung". I really hope that these things will change (social and tax wise) in the future within EU to make it easier for work setups like this.

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#395

Post by r_c_a_d »

asiachick wrote: post #133
vmception wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of founders and their friends are using the office as a replacement for a healthier separate social circle and social life that they lack (a lot of people lack that, and they do too), so for them they're really just hanging out and like the potential for “increased collaboration” for that reason

(1) Healthiest = great social circle at work that bleeds into social circle out of work (2) Less healthy = great social circle at work, separate great social circle outside of work (3) Even less healthy = no social circle at work (just a job), great social circle outside work (4) Worse = great social circle at work, no social circle outside of work (I never seen this situation. If you have a great social circle at wo…

Are you under 40? I think when I was in my 20s and early 30s I would agree on (1). But when I got married and had kids case (2) became optimal, because my social circle filled up with people who had kids of the same age / went to the same school.

The pandemic then pushed me between (2) and (3) - good social circle at work etc.

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#396

Post by noduerme »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #393
noduerme wrote: post #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…

I mean, this is the way; I don't believe people actually want to go through companies like AirBnB, Uber and Uber Eats, all those in between parties if they can help it; if they can skip the fees, and especially if they can get long term tenants, then great. And if by paying with cash you can avoid taxes as well, great. The only thing there is that it's a risk, e.g. what if they thrash the place, but airbnb may not ev…

Well as the renter in these situations, at least with cash you can see the place first. If you pre-pay into a dirty airbnb, good luck getting your money back.

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#398

Post by noduerme »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #391
noduerme wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually the guy we bought the van from before we added the solar panels was this suuuper tall Swiss guy, like 6'4 at least, and somehow he fit in there with his girlfriend and a whole six boxes of survival kit, maps, cooking equipment and such, neatly stacked under the bed platform. I always wondered how he handled it, but you can do a lot of things for love ;)

In my experience having gone on vacation in a caravan, generally you don't live inside the van for very long; it's where you sleep or take shelter from the weather, the rest of the time you're outside, or (in the case of a caravan) in a tent attached to the front that's usually 2.5-3 meters high up.

Yeah, it was a bit like that. We lived in/out of it for a year, it was a little Mitsubishi box van from the 1980s; and pretty much we lived outside it with tarps and tent-poles, set up camp out the side and slept inside. It was in Australia, so you wouldn't want to sleep on the ground, and occasionally kangaroos would come through and tear down the tent..(I got into a stand-off with one that knocked over our table in the middle of the night once, thought someone was going through our stuff, jumped out bare naked in the desert with a samurai katana I kept under the bed - but I was drunk enough I saw the beast and retreated into the van and let the thing be)

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#399

Post by bprasanna »

Companies rely on memory of people to overcome the bad PR they had. It's been just 3 weeks this post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30926834 made headlines in HN. Now we will see Airbnb as a company making meaningful change, invalidating the claims from ex-employee's post.

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#400

Post by robertlagrant »

frankfrankfrank wrote: post #333
joshvm wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I propose people start reconsidering this imposed situation that exists between the people who do the work and the government, i.e. the parasitic ruling class. And to clarify, I say that as someone who is not at all “leftist” oriented, even though it may seem so at first glance of reading that to some. This situation we currently essentially globally have, at least in the west, is quite an abusive system that is real…

> that exists between the people who do the work and the government, i.e. the parasitic ruling class. And to clarify, I say that as someone who is not at all “leftist” oriented, even though it may seem so at first glance of reading that to some

I definitely wouldn't say that criticising big inefficient government is a leftist talking point at all.

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