Pros
If you want to learn about the branding, community, and messaging parts of customer experience Airbnb is a good place to be. Airbnb was able to shift a paradigm of how people think about the space where they live and how they travel, and that's no small feat.
Cons
Airbnb design culture resembles a college design course, which isn't completely surprising because this was the founder's first job and success out of a design school. There's very little looking at real data, qualitative user feedback or real user empathy. Airbnb has forced out all of the best people who think deeply and holistically about interaction problems. The designers who are most successful are the ones who can quickly create multiple iterations of visually compelling ideas. As the result the design is beautiful but still disjointed, unintuitive and arguably results in a much less successful bottom line for the company.
