Since I first used Airbnb 7 years ago, the only real change I can think of is when they added experiences (which is awesome don’t get me wrong), surely at some point you begin to wonder if we are utilising this talent effectively.
Engineers with 5 YOE are making $500k+ a year at these companies because they are generating much more than that in revenues and profits for the companies. Airbnb is worth $110B.
It's not all blinking cursors, there are thousands of little experiments going on all the time. Increasing the number of bookings by 2% here, 3% there. Increasing the average price of bookings. Random extra features here and there to close that one whale of a client. Expanding into corporate accounts. Improving performance by 5% to take a big chunk out of the tens of millions of dollars infrastructure bill.
From a 10,000 foot view looking at the product, it always looks like it's 90% done in the first couple of years and then things just coast along lazily. But from a profit point of view, that last 10% can generate hugely outsized returns. It's the power of exponential growth, all those extra late nights and tiny improvements that move the needle just a little bit all compound over time.
Another reason to have in-house expertise in various areas is that they easily pay for themselves, which is a special case of the generic argument that large companies should be larger than most people expect because tiny percentage gains are worth a large amount in absolute dollars. If, in the lifetime of the specialist team like the kernel team, a single person found something that persistently reduced TCO by 0.5%, that would pay for the team in perpetuity, and Twitter’s kernel team has found many such changes.
If removing a blinking cursor has a 1% chance to increase the booking rate by even 0.1%, , then it's worth it for AirBNB to pay an engineer to implement the change.
I've always felt that there is a dilemma in this space. Any number of small UI features can claim a small increase that are often just noise and curated data (assuming no malicious baking), the cumulative increase isn't even close what the claims stacks up to.
The only fundamental way for a business to make more money is to invent actual, new feature and business models. Shifting a box here and there, enlarging an icon just creates a generation of glorified engineers and PMs who are placing their attention entirely on the wrong thing. Yet the success reporting often rewards this behavior and eventually drown the business in fruitless 'noise' endeavors that favors short term gains over actual innovation.
AirBnb lost billions of dollars last year, and it has rarely made positive quarterly earnings. Based on your example, the engineers are highly overpaid as there efforts rarely generate a profit. They are being paid by funds from speculators (stockholders and venture capital) that are betting on huge profits in the future.
In reality, these engineers are being paid due to labor market forces and extremely focused recruiting policies (eg only hiring those with degrees from top engineering schools or poaching workers from other companies that have similar policies).
In a big company belief that something is worthwhile is better than actual value because market forces, that care about actual value, cannot act on each sub-project out of thousands of projects in the same company independently; but managers, which by definition can only care about their beliefs (idealism rears its ugly head again) do very much act on teams independently. The engineering department will pay $500k+ to engineers who exist only to pervert insufficiently representative metrics just as readily as the market would stop that from happening if they weren't hiding in an autocratic structure hundreds of times larger than the limits of their own abilities to be wasteful.
Indeed, there is no reason to think that the market has a greater ability to eliminate waste within a company worth $100B than it has within a communist country (which exists as an entity in international markets) worth the same.
Employees get so aligned with these experiment systems that obvious faults in statistical approaches go unnoticed. At the end of the day it becomes just a way to put something on your promotion case.
In most cases, core product stays the same over the years without significant innovation.
Leaving a review has become a huge bloated mess. The sight is slow as heck. And driving prices up just makes me more likely to look at alternatives. It’s still good, but it feels increasingly less fast and cheap.
Sure, the major shareholders might see their wealth increase noticeably, but anyone else (even small shareholders through option programmes) will generally not see a big effect.
Now, is that additional shareholder wealth really worth the years of engineer effort going into that?
Don't get me wrong: airbnb is an amazing service that has improved the lives of myself and other regular people.
I'm just arguing that maybe most of the benefit from society happened within the first couple of years plus maintenance and critical innovation as needed, and the rest is suboptimising for the benefit of the few.
That's because capitalism is a winner-takes-all game.
Spending 1000000 manhours to get 0.001% improvement in quality pays off, for exactly this shitty reason.
If you think about it, both are true. If you don't think these are true, you are far too caught up in a hamsterwheel to notice.
You're grossly misrepresenting the problems being faced and what forces engineers to work into the wee hours of the morning.
Just because stuff seems done to you or you notice no change, that does not mean nothing is being worked on.
Let's take basic A/B testing. To you, it's a blinking cursor. For the company, it's a bunch of business metrics being reported from N different components feeding into a data lake, with different versions of the same feature being deployed simultaneously to specific subsets of all customers based on their profile. But the cursor blinks differently depending on the market, and needs to comply with accessibility guidelines, on all X supported browsers regardless of their quirks. Some markets might not even have a cursor at all. Perhaps your cursor is only expected to show in a specific geographical location.
But you see a blinking cursor, and as you are oblivious to everything then you think it's just a tag somewhere. To you that's just a line of HTML, right? How hard could that be?
This isn't just a personal opinion. I've heard it spontaneously from various friends and acquaintances.
Granted we're mostly a similar demographic in a single market.
But even so.
I don't think engineers at AirBnb are overpaid or wasting their time but I do think most engineering leadership doesn't understand the idea of _true_ reliability where a service can run itself for long stretches of time.
As a company hires more and more people, modern development and devops can create as much unnecessary complexity as needed.
Basically a common tactic of corporations is to espouse "we are a family" but it is just a manipulation tactic for employees to work long-hours and to give their all to the company. The "we are a family" mantra would be fine if it was coupled with a healthy separation of work and life; with the biggest indicator being that healthy working hours (around regular 8 to 9 work hours only) is maintained.
In contrast, something like Netflix culture which is "we are a team and not a family" seems like to be more of a healthier alternative. On a last point, the "we are a family" (i.e. we care about our employees as persons instead of just means or cogs) mantra is fine but it usually turns into "we are a toxic family" (i.e. give your all to the company) instead of it being a "we are a healthy family" (i.e. our company values each employee).
Also look at what a company does instead of what it says.
Whether it is a "family" or a "team," you can be assured that the company will be looking out for itself first and foremost, potentially to the detriment of the employees. I don't think that's necessarily bad, but you as an individual need to watch out for yourself no matter what rhetoric the company uses.
Considering the same labour laws apply to Airbnb and Netflix, yes it's a far more honest approach. Not admirable, not right or fair, but a lot less manipulative.
If Netflix wants to fire half their engineering team every year, that's fine, as long as everyone walks into the arrangement with the mindset of a contractor, or a mercenary who's only there for the paycheque.
Netflix pays well, has a generous severance package, and is honest about its culture. I think there is nothing wrong with them making it easy to fire.
Take care of yourself.
I guess a lot of people in tech have gone through the experience of getting a job straight out of college, working yourself to death trying to prove something (whether that's to yourself or your employer) and getting burnt out to some degree, or not seeing any dividends for it. These companies do a very good job at blurring the lines between expectations and what's realistic through the "perks" of the job and whatever flavor of culture reigns.
For all other companies always reciprocate their loyalty. If there is none from their side, don’t invest in the company.
When you are just starting out fresh from study you still believe in the “we can do this team if only we work a bit harder.” , but that’s usually a myth.
I had great managers who, if up to them entirely, would have my interests at heart (as demonstrated by decisions fully under their control), but hey, they don't call the shots in the end.
You're a cog in a machine and you may be the golden child while they need you, but once they don't, you're out. And all the talk of "family" is just that, talk. It's why the fake "we care" stuff gets under my skin - it's a lie - they care about "you" in the theoretical employee sense, but they don't care about you as an individual. Individual relationships do matter, but "the corp" in the end is an emotionless machine.
And it doesn't matter whether you're a desk analyst or a CEO, I've seen both go from "calling the shots" to "not aligned to where the company wants to do" really damn quick.
In my job I deal a lot with low and middle management in lots of companies. Unfortunately I did not find any exception to the general observation that today's low and middle management is a bunch of incompetent impostors with their career as the only concern, occupation and reason in life. That includes technology companies that I cannot name, but known by various acronyms. And I am saying this as a lower level manager myself.
This guy's story is not a rare one, and it points to a larger spiritual crisis in modern life I think.
The perfect worker for them oh god lol.
The term "airfam" is such a weird thing, people saying 'Thanks fam!" these days... I am not your family, I will not lend you 20,000$ if you in a rough spot, I will not take care of your kids if you die. Maybe I just take the word 'family' too literally hah, maybe a bad habit from expecting variable names to do what they are called
“Families” can be wonderful.
But blood families can be just as abusive, as manipulative, aggrandizing and as toxic as the “work” family.
- If you are an engineer, your total comp is easily north of $200,000. At that pay scale compared to other careers, I expect (and I did) to burn through the night as needed. That's a lot of money for anyone to expect to have a comfortable work/life balance. I always compare myself with doctors residency, accountants, or labor jobs, who would do a lot more work for a lot less. Tech pay, benefit, and work/life balance are outrageously good in my opinion.
- I have worked at AirBnB, Stripe, and Robinhood. And between the 3, AirBnB actually has the chillest work culture. It's known to be "too much democratic debate vs work output". But your experience may be different.
- Most importantly: Just as much as you can quit the company whenever you like, companies can also lay you off whenever they want. My main takeaway is to take care of yourself. Don't buy into Airfam or company family. You do what's right for you and company does what's right for them. (I can't comment on the specifics if Airbnb layoff was the right business move).
How are other careers relevant? You take the best offer you can get in the (SWE) market, and if avoiding burnout is a choice criterion for you, you avoid the corresponding companies. Many of them are willing to pay the same compensation or more with a reasonable work-life balance, especially once they realize that they also benefit from it one way or another.
One benefit of a free market is to help optimize resource allocations, and telling yourself "it could be worse" rather than asking "could it be better?" is counterproductive.
The US is mixed, and frankly leaning heavily to command-by-committee, same thing that caused the commies to fail. Our committee is the FOMC. Low rates increase valuations on anyone who promises 'the future'. High tech salaries are almost certainly a distortion of their meaningful value.
- I get flexibility at other times to make up for it.
- It isn't super frequent or for very long.
- It is for a good reason.
I don't think even 300k or 400k (or whatever the going rate is for 20 YoE) would be enough for me to deal with regular death marches to help someone meet their OKRs for that quarter. I've happily worked until 3 AM a bunch of nights in a row on something that was important, but I've also busted my ass for things that could have been delivered later or not at all and it wouldn't have really mattered, and those ones are a real punch in the gut.
This isn't true at all. In my last job (not tech) a "brutal" week might be 50 hrs and people were making double that, albeit in more senior roles (10+ years of experience).
SWE is a high paying profession and rightly so because companies get to make millions off our backs.
Regarding that, there was an excellent business editorial in a recent Economist issue that wrote on that exact topic: "Company or cult?" [1]
His LinkedIn also says he joined Airbnb in 2016 which means his stock is worth multiple millions since IPO.
Perhaps, the contractors had a better gig? At least they might have felt less pressure to please the corporate ethos, and they were hopefully paid hourly overtime during the silly death marches.
This stuff is sickening and toxic.
Wow, incredible, and insulting.
I can't imagine getting played out by Bill Withers.
When I started, I didn’t even have a manager for a few months. I actually burned out within my first 3 months there, and my Director personally helped me navigate the leave process —- I wound up taking a 3 month fully paid leave (they topped the difference between what the STD insurance they provided me paid and my full salary). When I returned I had a great manager!
I worked with a lot of contractors too, but my department converted well over half of the ones I worked with, and eventually the others churned out until they hired people full time. Mostly we started with contractors because it was easier to hire them but very difficult to get headcount (we sure did try).
Anyway it was a pretty wild ride but I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Things were definitely uneven though. One thing that really made me sad was when they replaced the food team who we all loved with contractors (who we also all loved). After I left they really screwed over the Portland office too. But it wasn’t all bad and I cherish the friends I made there.
At the end of the day, you have to prioritise your own well being.
As one anecdote goes:
Patient says that he recently made it up with his mother.
Psychiatrist ask what happened.
"She died" answers patient.
And we all know a lot of those families who meet once a year because of the need. And companies then want to call themselves "families".
It is sometimes just too hard to wrap your head around this. How what is basically a website requires such a workforce? I get that it is much more than a website, there are various aspects of platform and etc. I understand that my comment might seem off. However 7000 is really a lot people.
Hey now what’s wrong with being in the East Bay?
"I could have left Airbnb before things got so bad. But despite all that I observed and experienced, I truly loved my job."
If I love a job, I hesitate to quit just because some of the management is terrible. As a point of reference, many people on Hacker News have read my book "How To Destroy A Tech Startup In Three Easy Steps":
https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Easy-Steps/dp/09...
If you go read the reviews on that book, one of the most common sentiments is "Lawrence should have left that job much earlier than he did." And yet, I really loved the work and I had a lot of fun, in many ways. Maybe I didn't emphasize how much fun we had along the way, but I think, getting to work on great tech while being well paid is a relatively rare gift to an engineer, so I don't think many of us really want to walk away from a job too soon. I do understand why an engineer might stick with a place like AirBnB, even if the burden is heavy.
How insulated from the rest of society in the US do you have to be to find that shocking?
How can this person even say this when they don't touch any financial data? A quick look at Q4 2020 results for Airbnb shows a $1B loss on net income ex. IPO costs and a $21M loss on the financially engineered/hacked "adjusted EBITDA". An unprofitable company is not in a position to be keeping jobs for the sake of it.
> These material conditions bled into work-life - while some of us took Ubers to work and shopped at Barney’s, others maxed out credit cards or could only afford to live in the East Bay
Oh no, customer support can only afford to live in the East Bay. This person needs to get a grip. A customer service agent is not making 200k+ in any world. That is a recipe for running a failed business. You know what does let people live where they want? Building more housing.
> a clearer non-product career ladder
There is no "ladder" to being a customer service agent. Experience doesn't scale your value to the company, so there's no reason for there to be a ladder. And with the advent of gig platforms there's no reason for there to be a manager either. Saying that customer service agents need a career ladder shows how delusional this person is with respect to running a business.
This person needs to realize that life is about working for yourself, never for the "Airfam". Loyalty means nothing. If they're burned out (it sounds like they are) then they can leave with their multi-million dollar stock options and free up a job for the rest of us who would gladly get paid half a million dollars a year to complain about "inequities". Corporate won't care they left and they shouldn't feel bad about it either. Sometimes some people just aren't cut out to keep going hard day in and day out for 5+ years. And that's okay, because if you worked at Airbnb then you can easily get a cushy job somewhere else.
What? It absolutely does. As a dev the more senior customer support people are often the first people I think of when trying to solve complex business logic related issues in legacy code. Also, customer support are sitting between clients and dev, and the more problems they can solve without passing along the chain the more time you save. There's a tonne of value in experience in that role.
One of my friends was on the food team. She was an amazing musician and won our talent show. She wound up transitioning to work on music partnerships until the pandemic hit.
Starting looking for a job doing manual labour. Working with a computer no longer an option. Had 2 engineering degrees: electronics & embedded.
Yeah, this is wrong. I have a good friend who developed his understanding of the customer in that role, and leveraged it to become, gradually, a director. He was good, and he was recognized, and he was promoted.
Okay, but only if you promise to write a similar essay after you yourself are burned out by the company, for the edification of the public.
I am so glad to see people speak out about their experience, especially at companies which claim to uphold a certain set of values. Such as Amazon or Airbnb.
I recall at Twilio, I was emailed by an HR person ... from the email account of a Director of Engineering. An HR person impersonated a Director of Engineering in order to recruit and have a better chance of getting the attention of software engineers, to attempt to persuade those engineers to join their team.
Yet, one of Twilio's principles is/was "Transparency". Yet, there they were-- their HR people engaging in practices which are deceptive.
We must hold companies to their supposed principles, and to a reasonable expectation of professional ethics in general. \
Bravo, I say, to the author of this article.
