Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky on Thursday announced the company’s 5-point plan to enable employees to live and work anywhere, anytime.
Supposedly because “The world has become more flexible“, and “We also had the most productive two years in our company’s history, while working remotely.(presumably, also: massive decrease in operating costs; consequent increase in profit margins).
More highlights from Chesky’s Thread include the ability to travel anywhere in the United States without any change in compensation; in-person team meetings held quarterly; and the establishment of a multi-year roadmap with two product releases per year, to “enable us to work in a highly coordinated manner”.
This remote policy will impact the lives of Airbnb employees 15,000 employees – around 6,000 of which are based in the United States – and comes more than two years after the initial wave of pandemic-induced remote work policies implemented by many other multinational technology companies, including RedditTwitter and drop box.
What sets Airbnb’s announcement somewhat apart is its decision to standardize wages regardless of location. As Mitchell Clark noted for The edge“Employees at Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta and Microsoft will have to take a pay cut if they want to move to an area with a lower cost of living, according to reports like this from the BBC.”
Some online forums are predicting a mass exodus of employees from the more expensive cities to Nashville, for example – where Airbnb salaries at San Francisco levels would be “game-changing”. [sic] – signaling, once again, the sustained influence of this now powerful scaling on global housing and migration trends.
If there are any lessons to be learned from this story for startups, it’s probably in the positive press you can generate when you give laptop-bound adults the freedom to choose where they want to live and work. Moreover, with more countries understanding the idea of ”Digital nomad visas »it’s easier and more cost-effective than ever to build your dream team, entirely remotely.
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