I read a lot about the culture at google/fb/amazon/Uber but I never read about Airbnb. Could someone give me an idea of the expected culture there and how they’d compare it to other FANG companies?
What about work life balance compared to others? Or is it all really just the same?
There’s a difference. Disgruntled blind users aside, the “asshole genius” type doesn’t really exist, people are surprisingly really nice and social. It makes the working environment really pleasant and fun on most teams. The culture has definitely gotten a little diluted as the company has grown dramatically in the last couple of years but it’s still the nicest I’ve seen anywhere. What else do you want to know about culture?
People are either genuinely kind or genuinely nasty people are good at faking it. Either way, you only experience kindness, which works for me. Getting things done is a bit of a struggle as you have to over communicate, which feels like a waste of time at times. On my team, I work very closely with other non-engineers which rarely happened at other places, so collaborative culture is awesome across functions. My team is diverse in terms of race, and gender, and at the company, we make a lot of effort to be inclusive of all kind of people.
It’s similar to Google. And people are more nice apparently.
People are nice and great. Many smart people. Leadership is improving. I don’t compare it with google at all though but closer to Facebook.
Had informational interviews with a couple engineers there. First was a girl that was so anxious to leave within a few minutes of arriving that she was quite rude, while ironically telling me how welcoming Airbnb people were due to the focus on hosting. The second guy was really nice and some VIP engineer there, but never submitted my resume like he promised. He could've just gotten busy, but there's only so many times it's acceptable to bump an email. Basically I've gotten super mixed signals from folks there. The one constant thing seems to be their high opinions of themselves.
So the recruiters set up interviews with engineers just to tell you about the company, before you went through the normal interview process at all?
Our culture is great! And we are hiring!
Haha could you elaborate?
You sure they're hiring?