Airbnb Dethrones Google As the Best Tech Company To Work For In the US 89
An anonymous reader writes: Career website Glassdoor today released its eighth annual Employees' Choice Awards, a list of the 50 best companies to work for in the coming year. Airbnb was picked as the number one tech company to work for in 2016, displacing Google. Airbnb didn't even make the list last year. Google, meanwhile, placed sixth in 2013 and 2014, and first in 2015. As with Google last year, it's worth noting that Airbnb hasn't just taken the top tech company spot: It is the top company overall.
Really??? (Score:2, Funny)
Airbnb was picked as the number one tech company to work for in 2016
It's not 2016 yet?
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How quickly do you think the interview process will go?
How about best company w/ lower selectivity? (Score:2)
It's nice and all to have a company that's highly rated. It is even better to have a (non-staffing agency, non-MSP) company that gives citizens a favorable chance at long-term work.
Hipsters are Hobos (Score:4, Funny)
Hipsters are hobos and companies like Airbnb are the certified proof that we are living through another Great Depression. But unlike the 30s, we have all been convinced to be happy enough about this to give out prizes to industrial leaders in the race to the absolute rock bottom. Cue the upcoming Airbnb integrated Tindr service with Vine monetisation, because why stop when you're on a downhill roll?
Re:Hipsters are Hobos (Score:4, Informative)
... give out prizes to industrial leaders in the race to the absolute rock bottom.
Airbnb allows normal people to earn money by renting out spare rooms, at the expense of big corporate hotel chains. It is silly to say they are a sign of rampant corporate domination. They are the opposite. They are an enabler for the common people.
Disclaimer: I have been both a room renter and a room rentee on Airbnb. It was a good deal in both directions.
Re:Hipsters are Hobos (Score:5, Insightful)
Airbnb allows normal people to earn money by renting out spare rooms,
It doesn't "allow" it. Either the law has already allowed it, or it's outlawed, and no private company changes that.
In places where it's allowed, people have been doing this since pretty much forever. In places where it's regulated, people have also been doing this since pretty much forever - sometimes staying within regulations, and sometimes not.
at the expense of big corporate hotel chains.
If you think the two alternatives are "Airbnb room" and "Big Corporate Hotel Chains", either you're incredibly lazy or you have something to gain from getting people to believe this. Since you say you've rented out on Airbnb, it sounds like the latter.
It is silly to say they are a sign of rampant corporate domination.
A dominant, leeching middleman which doesn't actually do anything but act as an agent or transaction processor is the epitome of corporate domination.
They are the opposite. They are an enabler for the common people.
Again, "Airbnb room" and "Big Corporate Hotel Chains" are no dichotomy. "Has a spare room to let out" is hardly the position of "the common people", either! although I suppose everyone likes to think that the dividing line crosses through them: they can either be common or elite, depending on which way helps their argument.
Disclaimer: I have been both a room renter and a room rentee on Airbnb. It was a good deal in both directions.
k, maybe it's your thing to stay at someone else's home, but N.B. Airbnb rooms aren't actually cheaper in the US on average than mid-range hotel accommodation. Airbnb, like e.g. Uber, is primarily a marketing company, so I understand that it's great at selling of superior quality in every case, when in fact you're buying a different product, and value for money may depend a lot on the when and the where.
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... give out prizes to industrial leaders in the race to the absolute rock bottom.
Airbnb allows normal people to earn money by renting out spare rooms, at the expense of big corporate hotel chains. It is silly to say they are a sign of rampant corporate domination. They are the opposite. They are an enabler for the common people.
Bullshit.
The entire business model of companies like Airbnb and Uber are based on exploiting people who are desperate for work.
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The entire business model of companies like Airbnb and Uber are based on exploiting people who are desperate for work.
Giving work to willing workers is not "exploitation". I don't feel exploited when the Airbnb rental income hits my bank account.
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But you can get that income without Airbnb. All it's done is be one of a few companies to provide a central location to advertise the services on phones. The short term rental market has existed for ages. Yes, it may be handy for those who never look up from the phone but it's certainly not very innovative.
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All it's done is be one of a few companies to provide a central location to advertise the services on phones
Explain! How is that supposed to work?
I want a "private rented room" ... how I should find one via a "phone" is beyond me.
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Guessing this is a generational thing.
Read phone = smartphone = computer.
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Craigslist? This stuff all existed before airbnb, before the internet, etc.
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But you can get that income without Airbnb. All it's done is be one of a few companies to provide a central location to advertise the services on phones. The short term rental market has existed for ages. Yes, it may be handy for those who never look up from the phone but it's certainly not very innovative.
Yeah, and all Google did was provide a central location where you could find content on the Internet. Web site directories and even tools like phone books had existed for ages. Certainly not very innovative either.
Providing a market place for people to easily engage in trade is still massively useful. I wouldn't call Airbnb a revolutionary company, but they certainly provide a very useful service. I have rented out apartments there on two occasions and it was great to have a reasonably prices place with a l
re: AirBnB cutting into hotel chain profits? (Score:5, Interesting)
I do I.T. support for a company that's heavily involved with the hotel and travel industry, and just got back from the annual company meeting. One of the discussion topics given to a panel of experts there was the impact of AirBnB. The consensus was that it ranges from "not a concern at all" to "relatively helpful to business".
While admitting that the details depend a lot on which city you're talking about, there was definitely the opinion that in many good markets for the hotel industry, they have no problems achieving maximum (or near maximum) occupancy whenever corporate events come to town, or it's "tourist season" in the area. That's really what these guys live for. (It's not such a big deal if your big corporate hotel is relatively empty sometimes, if it rakes in big bucks for 3 months each summer, plus every 3-5 days or so in a row that some big convention is in town, and a few other key times of year like New Years' Eve or the Thanksgiving holiday.)
The smaller hotels/motels that are really worried about Johnny Q. Public who wants the cheapest room deal possible, and would happily go the AirBnB route to save a few more bucks are in a completely different category. In other words, AirBnB competes with the seedy family-owned motels more than the big corporate chains like Marriott.
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YM: AirBnB allows people to rent party houses on busy weekends, while the owner can skip out on paying hotel bed taxes, nor have to worry about hotel regulations to host large amount of people in spare rooms.
HTH.
Yes, you can make money when you can skip out on taxes and not have to handle regulations. However your neighbors will start to hate you, and that isn't a good thing, especially with more and more municipalities and HOAs banning AirBNB because of abuse.
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Airbnb allows normal people to earn money by renting out spare rooms, at the expense of big corporate hotel chains.
You mean: "at the expense of cute girls who believe it's really a woman that is renting a room and not a creepy guy planning to have her sleeping with him in his bed"?
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Yeah, it also allows business to lock up housing away from residents of that town.
Re:Hipsters are Hobos (Score:5, Insightful)
we have all been convinced to be...
Who has been convinced? Just because some website I've never visited says so, doesn't make it true. Part of being a critical thinker is not believing something just because you read it.
Re:Hipsters are Hobos (Score:4, Funny)
I only know of the Air one because it has been here on this site. I have no idea what the rest are. I've never actually been to the site of the company that I do know of.
I'm not sure what to make of that. I've seen Tindr before but I've no idea what they do. Vine is something grapes grow on. It's the only real word of the three.
I'm usually pretty decent with my technical jargon. I understood the concept of what you were saying but it's like speaking Spanish and still being able to understand Italian well enough to get the gist of it. The difference is, I expect you're speaking my language.
I could Google or I could remain willfully ignorant. I'm not sure I want to waste more brain cells. Earlier I Googled a video of some Watch Me thing (it had something resembling music but I'm not sure what *kind* of music it was). I'd always hoped their wouldn't be a generation gap but I think I've figured it out. We just don't want to keep up with all these things. Most of the time, they're words describing something that's neither new nor innovative.
From what I have read about the Air company, they're neither new nor innovative but "do it on a computer?" (Or, presumably, "with an APP!"?)
So, I'm going to assume that the bed and breakfast thing means you let someone stay in your house for a fee. Tindr means use them to kindle a fire. Vine means grapes, so you must then spread the word among your your friends and score points depending on how many Tindrs you get and you probably monetize it by betting. (Unless there's someone paying for charred remains?)
If that's not the case then, well, let me think it is. I'll be down in Florida soon and will be over at the club playing Pinochle and I want to have a good story to tell them what the crazy kids are doing on the newfangled internets these days.
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Damn it. I clicked it and, obviously, read it. That's okay, I smoked a joint about a half hour ago. I'll probably forget. ;-)
Best for who? (Score:1)
Not for transgenendered one-legged bearded leprechauns! Thats for DAMN sure!!
No kidding? (Score:2)
Crazy how a company that conspired with one of its competitors to rob its own employees of billions (that's with a b) in salary isn't at the top of the list...
How is airbnb a tech company? (Score:5, Insightful)
How is airbnb or many of these other startups tech companies?
Sure they use technology, but so does the grocery store down the street. Should we start labeling grocery stores as tech companies that have websites? If your main product isn't technology and instead you use some inhouse custom built website/app to sell some other product or service then your company isn't a tech company but a company that uses tech to enable your business model.
Lyft/uber/airbnb/ aren't tech companies They are something else. I wish they would stop masquerading.
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Possibly not. But Google actually builds stuff. They have phones and tablets. They went and built up their own servers instead of renting space from a cloud company, and they were even innovative about how to build those servers.
If airbnb is a tech company then the term has been dumbed down so much that it is meaningless.
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you use some inhouse custom built website/app to sell some other product or service then your company isn't a tech company
One could argue that by your definition Google is not a tech company.
They aren't They are an advertising company. More than 90% of their revenue comes from selling ads. Just like newspapers and magazines -- and nobody calls them "tech companies."
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Yes, anyone can write a competent search engine over the weekend. Not! However, any script monkey can write a website that can connect supply (rooms for rent) with demand (tourists).
Will AirBnb, Uber etc. be able to maintain market dominance, since any competitor can replicate their service and charge a lower commission?
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By that definition, Amazon isn't really a tech company either, since they just have a website that connects supply with demand, though they also do their own warehousing (which isn't tech).
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Correct, just because you use a telephone to operate your business does not mean you're an electronics company. Maybe creating a website to sell products was revolutionary back then, it's not new anymore.
If there's more software to the website than just linking buyer and seller, then it's a tech company. If a street-corner florist has a website with the photos and prices of the flowers
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so has walmart, another technology startup in your mind
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Thank you dear airbnb employee!
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They are all only pimps. They manage other people's resources end get their cut. They are not just a middlemen, they decide your part of the business and filter your clients.
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Now I know where I heard of them! Ha! I don't think it was here. I think it might have been on Voat. I think... I think this is the same company?
Didn't they have some guy stay at someone's house and that someone was a crazy, transgendered, rapist who threatened them with a knife and stuff? Actually, I think the owner was the crazy dude's mother or something. Anyhow, another mother was oddly involved and she was the mother of the victim and she called the company trying to rescue her son because he'd called
Re:How is airbnb a tech company? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not so sure about this. I see your argument that technology is not the core product, but the fact is that their entire business would not be possible without their technology. It's not the same as a grocery store that can run their business just fine if their website goes down.
My test is thus: how freaked out does the management get went when the network has an outage at 3:00 in the morning. If they are full on incontinent then you have a tech company.
Perhaps this puts a lot of companies under that umbrella, but in 2015 is it even possible to treat technology of secondary importance to your business? Such companies are now few and far between.
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>My test is thus: how freaked out does the management get went when the network has an outage at 3:00 in the morning. If they are full on incontinent then you have a tech company.
So every newspaper and magazine qualifies as a "tech company".
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I would say so, yes. Whether or not it is intuitive, I think this is the mentality that a newspaper organization should have when approaching their business because their business could not exist without the tech.
Re: How is airbnb a tech company? (Score:2)
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How freaked out did wall street companies get in the 60s when the phone lines went out? Did that make them telecommunications companies or just companies that used telecommunications?
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This difference in this example is that wall street does not own the mechanism used to make the calls. This is more akin to a manager getting pissed at the company that they outsourced the development to.
It might not be the best analogy, but if tech (and phone lines) are mission critical then I believe you have to approach them as if they were a core part of your business not just a product. You have to take steps to ensure that this part of your business is running optimally, and that means investing in
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How is airbnb or many of these other startups tech companies?
Sure they use technology, but so does the grocery store down the street.
They're a tech company because that's what they do: provide technology to facilitate the people actually doing the renting.
The company I work for is similar. We provide SaaS/IaaS for a specific industry (real estate/multi-family rental), but we don't participate directly in that industry. So, we're a tech company, not a real estate company.
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What technology? A phone app is not technology. The phone is the technology.
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Agreed here. This is mass media, they think anything that involves a computer or an "app" is tech. It's stupid.
Is everyone who makes a pod cast a tech worker? How about the person who takes off her clothes for money on the internet, is that a tech worker?
Why isn't the company that works on drilling technology for the oil industry called a "tech company"? If I make machines to put vegetables into cans on an assembly line, am I a tech worker because I am actually creating new technologies?
Imagine if they
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How is airbnb or many of these other startups tech companies?
Sure they use technology, but so does the grocery store down the street. Should we start labeling grocery stores as tech companies that have websites?
Grocery stores don't count as technology companies. Technology companies don't have a public hotline you can call, or if they do have a hotline, they don't have live human beings answering it (without at least charging you $120 an hour). Banks are very close to becoming technology companies, but most are not there yet. My bank for instance will still give me a live human being after 3 hours of wait time.
My bank sucks at technology. Sometimes, I wish it was more like Square, Pay Pal, or Google. Not having c
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Then Twitter and Facebook and Google are no tech companies either ...
Oh wait, they hire mainly software developers, run their own clouds, invent NoSQL storages, use the hippest languages like Scala (in case of Twitter) and have millions of concurrent users to deal with.
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it seems unusuable. (Score:5, Interesting)
I tried to rent a place through Airbnb. The process went like so:
Me: I'm looking for a room for next tuesday.
Airbnb: What's your Facebook login?
Me: Do I look like an idiot?
Airbnb: How about your G+ account?
Me: I must look like an idiot.
So that was that. I haven't given them a second chance.
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Re:it seems unusuable. (Score:5, Informative)
Either you are lying, incompetent, or things have changed recently (I've never used airbnb, so I've no idea what their policies used to be). Go to airbnb.com, click signup and you are presented with 4 signup options:
Facebook
Google (not Google+, just Google...lots of websites use google authentication, but I'm not sure I've ever seen one that required Google+)
American Express
Email
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Airbnb is pretty slick, but users are a serious problem. We typically go with VRBO now for vacation rentals since the rentees actually have their shit together. VRBO is ugly but if someone posts a house is available, it's generally available (or they confirm quickly if the availability is vague), and if you meet the posted criteria (no smoking, no pets, etc) you're good to go. With Airbnb, you have to do all this extra legwork to make sure the place you just paid for actually will work. There's an extra set
Re:it seems unusuable. (Score:4, Informative)
I tried to rent a place through Airbnb. The process went like so:
Me: I'm looking for a room for next tuesday.
Airbnb: What's your Facebook login?
Me: Do I look like an idiot?
Airbnb: How about your G+ account?
Me: I must look like an idiot.
So that was that. I haven't given them a second chance.
Not that it's necessary to "sign up" to search for a room, it's not, but you must have missed the "Sign up with Email" option [airbnb.com].
It's not very visible, but it's below the idiot-proof Facebook button and below the idiot-proof G+ button.
Glassdoor (Score:1)
Glassdoor may not allow companies to remove/modify reviews, but they do scrutinize negative reviews more written against paying customers. I say this as someone who worked for an 'engaged employer' on glassdoor who had that pitched to him in very certain words by GD sales team.This is a laughable conclusion using their data.
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They have an "app". This is just a complex piece of modern engineering that no one can understand how they work not even the people who create them. So complex that you can even earn certificates to learn how to make them.
To a journalist, "tech company" means two things. First, it's complicated and it would take too long to describe what it is to your grandma. Second, it's practically guaranteed(*) to make oodles of money any day now.
(*) Journalist is not responsible for monetary losses due to gullibili
"Tech Company" has lost all meaning (Score:1)
If Airbnb is a "tech company", then every company is a tech company now.
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Google is slipping in its ranking. In fact, you'll notice that many of the highest ranked companies are fairly new and relatively small. And that's not unexpected. As a company gets bigger and older, the chances of hiring asshole managers increases greatly. Notice that Microsoft, who has been in business for nearly 40 years never makes these lists.
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Best company I worked for was Netflix. Google not so much, more like a hit or miss in what group/team/role you are and who your political allies are. I liked Google a lot the first year while the cool-aid was still fresh, then after tat I though Palm was a nicer place with more respectful managers.
What Google has for it is that they are very profitable and they used to have perks and food that were top notch but that degraded at scale, especially when they got over 10k employees.
So tired of "tech" companies (Score:1)
A refreshing change (Score:3)
Nice to have a break from all the Uber pumping.
systemd (Score:2)
I'd rather work for systemd, they're on the up and up!