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Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

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411–420 of 736 posts

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Introversion/extroversion isn't a distinctive feature of Myers-Briggs - it shows up in more scientifically-respectable personality measures, like the five-factor (OCEAN) model.

Isn't it the very first letter?!

I mean, Myers-Briggs is bollocks anyway so we shouldn't be using it for anything but funsies.

I have a dream that one day we will shit hard on that sort of stuff instead of validating it. See also "alpha male".

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#412

>Most companies don’t do this because of the mountain of complexities with taxes, payroll, and time zone availability, but I hope we can open-source a solution so other companies can offer this flexibility as well. I think this is a genius growth play for Airbnb. Make it easier for _other_ companies to operate in a similar way so that _their_ employees can travel and live in an... Airbnb! Next, they should lobby to g…

> I think everyone wins here. Everyone except the cities that have already lost a quantity of apartments and offices that have been repurposed as AirBnBs...

Build more apartments.

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, AirBnb helped destroy housing for citizens where I live. It's now almost impossible for a local to find decent housing in my city. I know this is also fault of the administration and the landlords themselves, but I won't certainly ever feel any pity for this multinational. AirBnb is basically another mean of accruing wealth in the hands of landowners, while people who don't own anything are now in an even har…

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…

>but they're driving their own property values down.

Property values don't matter when I get a return of 2-4x my mortage by using AirBnB.

The income you are able to generate through AirBnB is very enticing.

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#414
post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beware, I can't speak for this exact one, but in my (pretty significant) experience these companies take a 35-45% cut of your gross income.

Their fee is some hundred dollars, and on top of that they need to pay local taxes.

I will check it out, but to be honest, I am extremely skeptical. I have been using companies providing similar services for over a decade. Not only they have consistently all been very expensive (35%-45% cut)†, but they all required MASSIVE amounts of paperwork, both from the contracting company and from the "employee". Employee enrolment took at least a month, and this was when the employee was already a resident, and when we already had other employees in the same country. Otherwise it took much longer because specific contracts in the local language had to be written and approved.

Employee resignation took months, and relocation also took months.

This all sounds too good to be true.

This is with US parent companies and EU employees.

† The least I've seen was 20%, and it was a horror show so bad that it was worth it to switch to a 40% competitor.

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What it is that leads you to believe the 3-6 months thing is so significant? There are (a very small proportion of) AirBnB guests who are awful. There are (a very small proportion of) longer-term tenants who are awful. At least with AirBnB, the awful guests are gone after a couple of nights. I know some AirBnBs are used as party destinations, and that's different -- but it's a problem with those hosts, not with the p…

I think the fact that the 3-6 months was negotiated directly with the landlord is more significant than the length of time itself. They essentially had to take their listing off Airbnb and rent it as a regular furnished apartment. This enforces a mutual sense of responsibility and respect on myself and them which is perhaps even more than would exist in a typical lease agreement, because it's done under "special circ…

that sort of respect for a place and a host just is not possible when everything is done through a giant corporate medium

I find the claim that you can't respect someone else's property just because you rent it through an intermediary... strange.

Whenever I'm in an AirBnB, I'm well aware that this is someone else's stuff and that (at least) common decency requires me to treat it with care and respect.

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#416
post #9
post #4

Really cool system. >If you move, your compensation won’t change. Starting in June, we’ll have single pay tiers by country for both salary and equity. I wonder how that will look like in practice, countries differ enormously in required pay for a decent living, especially within the US. Wouldn't states/regions for a few countries work better?

What they are saying is if you move to a different country, your salary will absolutely change.

This is the part of universal WFH I just don't get. If you can work from anywhere, then why does the value of your work change depending on what country you're in?

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#417
post #59

For 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?

The article explicitly says they’re paying everyone the same pay across localities now. But for the many company’s that don’t, the justification is simply that the cost of Human resources is not based around output but around market dynamics like other resources. Fresh fruit in Japan costs more than it does in California not because the Japanese fruit is better per se, but because the cost of production is higher.

It says they're paying the same within countries, not between.

In what sense is the cost of production of a programmer higher in the USA than in the UK?

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#418
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…

I’m all for talking about tax policy but stop comparing our modern workforces to slavery (unless you are referring to the actual slaves of today). Slavery was/is barbaric and nothing even close to the relative bliss that is the modern workforce. I happily pay taxes, after stuffing every penny I have into tax advantaged investing accounts. At the end of the day I see a lot of government waste, but I also see the necessity of government. We can reign in government spending and taxation but don’t give me this garbage about how I’m in slavery.

If you want a perspective on how bad slavery was, search for this: Hardcore History Ep68 - Human Resources

Also, I knew immediately you were some libertarian/right, red pill person because I see this kind of talk all the time from old friends. Ya ya, the ruling class is so bad. Why are you preaching your gospel on HN? Do you want some ruling class VC money for your startup or not?

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangent, but it turns out terms like "third world" are no longer accurate. If memory serves, this is explained in the book Factfulness. A highly recommended read, by the way. A few decades ago, there was a group of wealthy countries, a group of poor countries, and a large gap between them. Back then it made sense to see them as 2 separate groups, first world and third. Right now however, they're no longer separate gr…

Weren't the terms used to connote alliance with the US (first world) or the USSR (second world) and third world meant non-aligned?

I stand corrected, thank you!

To clarify, I misremembered Factfulness. The book actually talks about "developed" versus "developing". In my memory I jumbled that up with "third world".

Re: Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere

#420
post #50

For 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?

> what’s the justification for paying less in e.g. London than USA You mention it in the next sentence - the local labor market. UK developers earn a fraction of what US developers do. We can debate the root causes but it seems irrelevant why it's true, only whether or not it is true. I'm not sure why cost of living should factor into comp at all. I can have a much higher COL than you, but if you bring more value to…

Of course, I'm talking about comparing equally skilled and experienced employees. Can you rephrase your answer without conflating employee aptitude and CoL/local Labor market?
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