Enjoyable, but deeply political - Anonymous employee Airbnb Employee Review

4.0
Jun 24, 2013
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Some of the best and most talented people I have ever worked with. The connections I made there will help me for the rest of my career, and I believe I made friends for life. The opportunity and experience I was offered to make a genuine contribution was far greater than I imagined when I accepted the position, and I really felt I made a difference to the company's direction. Fast-moving - although if you had been there for as long as myself (around 2 years), you could see the slow-down.

Cons

Hugely political. If you're friendly with the right people, regardless of how useless you are, or how well-known that fact is, you will be protected and rewarded disproportionately. I honestly felt like the harder you worked, the further you dropped in the pecking order. The startup vibe is completely dead. Airbnb is now a corporation. There is no such thing as a flat hierarchy anymore, whatever that was supposed to mean in the first place. None of the advertised perks are available to anyone outside of San Francisco Despite being a "people" company, many decisions have recently been made for completely the wrong reasons - and they're just plain stupid to the average bystander. It was very difficult to ever have full faith in the senior management team - in typical startup style, this was made up of mainly of 20-somethings with only a year or two of work-experience. In the past year, I noticed the average quality of new hires dropping significantly - to the point where several "IT specialists" were unable to understand BASIC IT principles. The "Culture" of Airbnb is regulary trampled all over by the senior management.

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5.0
Jun 8, 2026
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Pros

Laid back, strong mentorship/training, and good team chemistry.

Cons

Online only, they had summer branch offices, but nobody went in.

5.0
Jun 4, 2026
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Pros

Airbnb's mission of creating a world where anyone can belong anywhere strongly resonates with me. I'm excited by the opportunity to build products that operate at global scale and directly impact millions of users. My background in full-stack engineering, distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, and AI-powered applications aligns well with Airbnb's focus on innovation, reliability, and exceptional user experiences. I am particularly attracted to Airbnb's engineering culture, emphasis on ownership, and commitment to solving complex technical challenges while delivering meaningful value to hosts, guests, and communities worldwide.

Cons

One challenge of working at Airbnb is the complexity that comes with operating a global platform at scale. Engineering teams must balance reliability, performance, compliance, and user experience across many markets and stakeholders. While this can make development and decision-making more complex, it is also one of the aspects that makes the work technically interesting and professionally rewarding.

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