airbnb culture

Bad , unless you can say yes all the time to chesky

Airbnb culture = Chinese culture

They place a lot of emphasis on culture. Too much. To an annoying level. They do 2 rounds of "cultural fit" interviews, no matter what your target role is. And in cultural fit interviews, you are asked dumbass questions like, "what does success mean to you?". Apparently, in the earlier days, chesky used to ask job candidates "if you had only 1 year to live, would you still want to work for Airbnb?" Yeah, F no. They also have delusions that they are out to "change the world".. as in, they really want to believe that making commissions off of pimping out other people's property is the most altruistic thing anyone can do! What's interesting is that their engg team is like 90% Chinese! I really don't know how those guys get through their idiotic culture fit interviews. Anyway, having said that, they have a serious moat around their business model and I really don't see any competition coming up behind them. They are also generous with their stock comp because their last valuation was done a while ago. So if you can put up with the culture shit, and the Mandarin meetings, good place to make some dough when they go public.

I worked at FB prior to working at Airbnb. I was E5 at FB and now L6 at Airbnb. TC started around 450k and is now up to 550k with refreshers. A lot of similarities to FB in the processes (onboarding, team selection, performance reviews), but a lot of differences in the work and development environments. I wouldn't expect to become a better engineer here, but maybe treat it as an opportunity to develop soft skills. Tons of politics when working across teams. Quick and small wins encouraged over long-term impact. Long-term projects (more than a few months) fail quite a bit for various reasons. Management is not transparent at all, unlike at FB. Overall, WLB probably better at Airbnb. Airbnb has a nicer office, IMO. VERY limited food options. Dogs at work.