Style over substance - Anonymous employee Airbnb Employee Review

- Work/Life balance is non-existent. Good luck trying to have a personal life after you start working here. - The pay is pretty paltry, no bonus structure, equity package is nothing to write home about. - Decisions are frequently based on "feelings" rather than data, which can be infuriating. Data-driven decision making and overall rigor is not something that's naturally part of the culture. It varies team to team based on whether someone came from a company that was better at utilizing data in everyday work. - Airbnb likes to do everything their own way even if there are existing solutions in the market. Not very smart if they think reinventing the wheel is always the right decision. - The caliber of employees at Airbnb is not nearly as good as ones I've worked with at "Big 4" tech companies, but they sure think they are hot shots. A lot of arrogance fuels the company at every level. There's a lot of style over substance here. - The SF office looks great out in the atrium, but the desk areas tend to be dark, cramped and loud. Not the best environment for concentrating and getting things done. - Employees get their personal items stolen off their desks on a regular basis with little assistance from Security team. - This is very much a hospitality company first and foremost, and a tech company second. Quite a culture shock if you're coming from a die hard tech company (consumer/enterprise software, AR, VR, robotics, gaming, etc). I've experienced this numerous times: mentioning something marginally technical and being faced with blank stares. - The company is a hot mess internally. No standardization in software, minimal cross-team collaboration, no version history in the codebase (well there might be some but not for everything that gets committed), lots of politics and jockeying for position/visibility, teams are very protective rather than collaborative seemingly forgetting we all work at the same place for the same goals.