from Hacker News

Airbnb to Halt All Marketing, Most Hiring as Losses Mount

by justswim on 3/30/20, 3:45 AM with 24 comments

• by Fission on 3/30/20, 4:02 AM

  I think there was a previous discussion on this article a couple of days ago at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22707365

  The link there is non-paywalled.

• by blackoil on 3/30/20, 4:04 AM

  It would be surprising if marketing wasn't already down by 99% a month ago. Travel industry is going through an existential crisis. Even when the pandemic is controlled, it would take atleast 1-3 quarters for consumer confidence to be back enough to sustainable tourism industry. Corporate will also reduce travel because of scare and in general financial pressure.

  Places like Maldives, Bali, Hawaii will be badly hit, as most of the economy is based on tourism.

• by kensai on 3/30/20, 4:00 AM

  I wonder, in such moments is it better to layoff completely or put the employees in perhaps pre-aggreed 20 to 25% work regimes, in order to be flexible when the times are good again? Because eventually, they will.

• by gurtgurt on 3/30/20, 10:58 AM

  It's going to be interesting to see what they do about their IPO, it seems like their RSU's "are set to start expiring in November 2020 and in mid-2021" [1]

  [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/20/technology/airbnb-employe...

• by sdan on 3/30/20, 4:12 AM

  Say bye to that projected 2020 IPO

• by jcims on 3/30/20, 4:08 AM

  Ironically the amount of people that want to get out of town for a weekend is likely higher than ever. Was just looking at flights tonight, $42 round trip from Columbus to San Diego on Spirit (pack light!) and $200 on pretty much any airline to any spot along the west coast. I'm working from home, my kids are either unencumbered or schooling remotely, really never been a better time to book a place for a month and get out of this undecided Ohio weather. Tis a shame...

  Edit: I'm not really going to travel folks, lol.

• by fermienrico on 3/30/20, 4:04 AM

  "Start up" companies need to also cut down their frivolous expenditures such as office deco, unhealthy snacks, company boondoggle trips...and a long list of pareto tail items that if added can be a significant recurring cost to the business. It almost feels like when economy is good, instead of capitalizing on efficiency and perfection; the choice is instead to ship broken products and waste insane amounts of money - reminds me of pre-dotcom bubble when people were spending VC cash like there is no tomorrow. Use capital to increase business leverage. Employees are also at fault - startup folks demand such cool places to work because that's what everybody does. The effect compounds with no one looking at it from the bird's eyes perspective - not company leaders, not employees and not investors.