Airbnb reviews

4.0

78% would recommend to a friend

(2,378 total reviews)
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Brian Chesky

86% approve of CEO

66% positive business outlook

Airbnb has an employee rating of 4.0 out of 5 stars, based on 2,378 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Airbnb employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

2K reviews
2.0
Nov 2, 2017

Former "Best Place to Work"

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Really great people who are driven and passionate about their work - Excellent benefits, so-so compensation - Looks great on your resume - Coffee

Cons

It's currently almost impossible to get anything done at this company. Fast growth means that people who took a risk and joined the company at the beginning have now been promoted to middle/upper management even though they have no experience managing outside of Airbnb, and it shows. The result is that everyone feels the need to have an opinion about everything, and to have their voice heard and amplified. This slows things down to a snail's pace. You can get to the final stage of a project and then someone who wasn't even involved will have an opinion that sends you back to square one. The constant cycle means you end up working a lot of unnecessary (and unpaid) hours of overtime to meet deadlines that were unrealistic in the first place. In terms of work/life balance, if you bring up concerns about mandatory overtime, you'll be told to set clear boundaries and stick to them... until those boundaries are inconvenient to someone in management, at which point you just have to take one for the team and throw the boundaries out the window. Another thing worth mentioning is that they say there's no gender pay gap, but multiple men have publicly stated they know they're being paid more than their women counterparts, even when women have more experience than them. On the same front: women are often told they're "too aggressive" or "too opinionated" to be promoted into leadership roles, while men with those same types of personalities are elevated. Over time, the Founders have gotten out of touch due to exponential growth, and they've got a team of "yes"-men/women between them and the underlings in the company. They're extremely far removed from the very real issues plaguing their company's culture.

5.0
Jun 11, 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- They're doing a great job at bringing in engineering talent to shore up their infrastructure. Over the last 6 months, they've brought in top talent from companies like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google. It really shows when you see what's planned for the next year. - Some great tooling. The development environments leave something to be desired, but their core infrastructure (esp. some of the backend services) is really impressive. Tons of companies in SV are using many of the tools Airbnb has open sourced and this is only a fraction of what's been built. - They're aware of technical debt. Current stack is very ruby heavy and monolithic and they're migrating to well-defined java/scala microservices which is great. - Very little red tape to actually deploying code. - The culture is a thing. If you're a "gilfoyle" you'll probably hate it here. Thankfully, they do a good job at bringing in people that actually want to be there and care about the product. - Food is amazing. Better than Facebook. Also great benefits and fantastic compensation if you're on the more experienced side. - Massive potential. The exec team is focusing on the right projects to get to a point where we can IPO. We're not quite there yet, but it's an exciting time to be here. - They actually care about their customers. - Brand new hardware - Epic office. This place is an interior design marvel. - Health insurance, etc. are excellent. - You can pick your team as an engineer! This leads to better chemistry and keeps all teams focused on making themselves appealing.

Cons

- Last year or so they promoted some people to management that really need more training. So on some teams, you're not going to have a great time. - If you're not an engineer, YMMV. I've heard the food team, facilities, etc. is largely being phased out for contractors. - Tiny 401k match. But this should probably change when they IPO. - You really have to carve out your own path here. If you want a clear progression this is not the place for you.

2.0
Nov 16, 2016

Very easy to get lost in company's chaos.

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

-- A great business model -- Excellent brand -- Talented individuals -- Soft culture -- Great design team

Cons

-- Mostly inefficient middle and lower management -- Inspite of large and mature teams there is a lack of clear vision and structure for individual teams -- Feedback only means appreciation. There is practically no concept of hard conversations. -- A company could achieve so much more if the management and leaders show more passion, listen to employees and most importantly being 100% transparent on their priorities and vision.

Viewing 94 - 96 of 2,378 Reviews

Glassdoor has 3,261 Airbnb reviews submitted anonymously by Airbnb employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Airbnb is right for you.