Every startup I ever worked at was like a family until the money started to run out; then you very quickly realize this “we’re a family” rhetoric works exactly one way and those 60 hour weeks you were pulling for free lunches and a significantly below-market salary were never going to be rewarded by anything.
I've seen them stick with the family talk. "Due to the current markets we are going to have to pull together as a team ( no bonus, no retirement, no Christmas party, prepare for pay cuts)." Then when people quit they get blamed for the failure of the company for not being team players.
That’s because you can’t buy culture. Bigger business has never been good at that and the youthfulness of the tech leadership world over the last 15-20 years is why this is a thing. We’ve attached the pretty-ness and warm feelings of realism to a hollow/fake implementation idea. Catered meals matter to those that haven’t quite grown up yet. What really matters is your boss dropping by the hospital when your child is born, you showing up and standing quietly by his side when some one he loves passes away, colleagues poking fun and reminding you how old you are your birthdays, dropping their tasks on a dime to come rescue you when your broke down on the side of the road. That’s life baby and they’re by your side as we all trudge through it.
You don’t build “the family” on the concept of it’s value is purely what you’re getting out of it. You base it on sacrifice and the understanding that the work part is only the mission, the team is the reason you’re there and is probably what matters most.
We have forgotten that the things that matter most in life and the things that build that kind of culture everyone mocks as “not real”, its all built on necessary sacrifice and substance that can not ever be quantified on profit & loss spreadsheet.
Maybe the issue is that people SAY they want a culture that cares, but really it’s just not something you really want to work for. Do your job, collect a paycheck and go home. Maybe people should just be ok with the fact that in reality, that’s all they want. Otherwise, move to a rural area, take a job that pays a little less on a team that has these family qualities. We do exist, I think it’s just not something g you REALLY want or value.
Sure, we all understand why it has to be this way. Doesn't change the fact that I'm never going to feel emotional loyalty to a startup that I know is giving me as little equity as it can get away with (and what there is will probably be whittled away by dilution, sketchy clawback terms, etc.) Loyalty is a two-way street.
Money and equity are not culture or especially family. You find out your real family when you are down and out. Those that still care for you when they have no incentive to are your true family. Not the people who only stick around when things are great and glorious.
Generally speaking, there is never a "family" in a business. You are all there to make money, period.
I’ve never found the idea of a business being like a family to be appealing at all. I don’t want my work to be prying into my personal life in any way.
I do want to work for a business that cares though. They can show me how much they care by paying me well, treating me with respect, not intruding into my personal life, and by giving me a reasonable level of flexibility in how I organise my working hours and time on site.
The people who say their companies are like families generally fall into two camps in my experience. Those who have no idea what they’re doing and want to signal their supposed intentions (no matter how bad their execution is), and those who want to emotionally pressure their staff into doing more than they’re paid for. If I make friends with some colleagues, well that’s nice. But I don’t want my boss to think of me as family, I wouldn’t even want to be friends with my boss. People are usually aren’t good enough at compartmentalizing for that to work.
Agreed. Parsons Technology sold some software in early PC days with great success. They ran on the founder's charisma. He'd stroll through offices telling folks they were doing well and that he'd always find a place for them and do right by them.
One day he got offered big money for a buyout. Took it, ran, left employees to be laid off etc.
But the kicker: the ex-employees still talk of him as a great guy. They brag about how the big man told them he'd always take care of them. Even though he actually screwed them and left them to rot.
So no, I'm not a 'family company' kind of guy. Because I think its emotional leverage and not professional. I understand some folks thrive on that, and not for financial reasons. They seem to need the emotional connection to be happy. Whatever works for them.
In 13 years at 5 companies, I have literally never had the experience you're describing. Workplaces were always mainly adversarial and extractive with a thin veneer of "we're a family" and "I work with the most amazing people" BS spread on top. I think my coworkers have all generally been fine and competent people, it's just that the workplace is a hostile environment where everyone is either trying to swim with the big fish or at least keep from drowning. My parents are retired now, but describe the work place in your terms of real human connection. I can't help but feel that world is gone. One of their older friends was shocked that I worked from home and couldn't understand why I'd want to separate myself from people like that and forgoe all the friendships. But again, I think that world is mostly gone, chewed up by toxic businesses culture which is why so many people would rather sit at home than deal with it.
If AirBnB is so certain in its "we are family" speeches: Why not give every current employee who has to be laid off because of the current situation an option to get back to AirBnB as soon as the economic situation of AirBnB improves again?
Because “we are family” was never meant literally. Companies will day and do a lot of things to get the most out of their employees, including emotional manipulation.
Explicitly, the mechanism for that would be a furlough.
Not so explicit, but most laid-off employees are "eligible for re-hire". That assumes, a) the company re-opens your same position, b) you still want to work for the company and haven't found a job in the interim, and c) that "economic situation" improves quickly to allow for the above, which it probably won't.
"Then came the May 5 layoffs. To blunt the shock, Airbnb’s severance packages included three months of salary and a year of health benefits, which was more generous than many other start-ups doing layoffs."
It's really not terrible. I'm having trouble finding the controversy here. The article makes it sound like it kind of was a family atmosphere before the pandemic hit.
So the complaint is that a travel and hospitality company was not able to weather the storm long enough to keep everyone employed as if it wasn't happening?
Yes, the severance package is decent, but that’s not what this is about.
Startups have been creating these cultures of “family” for years in order to have a closer relationship to their employees than ever before. This closeness, as many other dynamics of the current labor system in the US, benefit the companies far more than the employees.
The culture of “startup family” made it possible for companies like Theranos to lie to investors for so long while keeping their employees quiet.
The “startup family” culture made it possible for companies like Uber to devolve into a misogynistic, harassment-driven behemoth coming from the top.
The “startup family” culture convinced millions of employees to take lower salaries with the hope that their dead-last-liquidation-preference common shares would turn into a nest egg someday, while 99% of them never did. Most people never even ask or understand the terms of these agreements. That doesn’t sound like family to me.
Startup family culture has some truth that you spend more time at your workplace than at home. But some SV companies take it way too far.
At the end of the day every company gets your skill and in return compensate with stocks and salary. That’s all there is to it. If they don’t value your skill, you’re fired.
You don’t disown your kids because you don’t value their skill. Family is for life (mostly). Jobs aren’t.
Heh. The severance package I got from NCC Group was 0 weeks of salary and 0 days of health benefits.
Seriously zero days. The HR person emphasized, in the meeting, that my health benefits were good through the rest of the month. Which came off sounding pretty tone-deaf, since that day was the 31st.
Hate for Airbnb aside. I have to commend the CEO for directly addressing everyone in a meeting. Giving bad news like layoffs is extremely hard unless you are a sociopath.
My current CEO left it for all the directors to tell the rest of the team, a trend I've seen several times in my career. I wish there was a name for a CEO who only gives the good news and leaves the bad news for middle management.
I was one of those director people who had to give the bad news once. The big boss chickened out of firing everyone, except his brother. So I got left with the task of letting go of the guy with the pregnant wife, as well as the whole rest of the team. In addition, he didn't call to apologize to any of the investors (he'd blown up a hedge fund), he had our investor relations guy go that. Some of those investors literally said "ok I'm gonna lose my job when I tell my boss about this".
So yeah, we need a name for that kind of abdication.
“Part of the compensation is being part of this family,”
I grew up in the 80ies and communities were much stronger then. We had a community run iceskating course during winter, community run 'neighbourhood'-house with games, music etc. We supplemented our schools budget by collecting old paper every six weeks, people just showed up and did the work together ( teachers, parents & kids ).
Our municipality had a very nice pool-complex and library. All gone. Somehow this is all too expensive now.
Why can't Airbnb do furloughs - take the amount they hope to save through a layoff, and have all employees not work for some x number of days each (staggered so as to not disrupt operations), so that the pain is shared, rather than borne by the laid-off few?
I know a bunch of companies doing that. Two of my best friends in good paying software jobs both have unpaid Fridays off indefinitely so that the company can lay fewer people off. It's just inconvenient for AirBnB to care about its employees.
It would be easy to argue that a furlough is worse. It gives this false sense of hope that airbnb might be able to hire them back. However, travel is likely not going to recover until next year at the earliest since a lot of countries have severe restrictions. People are also likely not traveling much so maybe Christmas travel might make things better.
Unless airbnb was raking in the money, they've probably got a huge loss on the books now and they won't be making money any time so even a six month furlough would seem unlikely long enough to be able to hire back all of the people laid off.
It's actually better to say, start looking for a job now, and here's a three month severence package, then say hold off on looking, we might be able to bring you back.
It reminds me of one of my first jobs. "We're a family" yadda yadda yadda... They told me my contract wouldn't be renewed during a meeting which was initially planned to talk about a salary raise. Adding insult to injury they waited until they were legally obligated to tell me even though they knew much earlier that it was going to happen, what a great family.
A job is a job, that's it. You'll be treated like waste as soon as the money runs out.
> "Mr. Chesky aspired to a capitalism that had an “infinite time horizon” and was good for society."
"We are family" is only meaningful if everyone has a meaningful share of equity, and that does not scale very well. An actual family shares resources. I personally know that I will inherit some property from my parents. My parents took care of me when I was young, I have helped them in recent years. That is family. Among commercial relationships, the only thing that comes close is a partnership where everyone has some significant amount of equity. And that doesn't scale. A partnership of ten people is often like an actual family, in the economic aspects, and maybe you could stretch that to a hundred people. But you could you stretch that to 1,000 people? Or 10,000 people? At some point it is just not possible.
Also, many workers enjoy working from home, but in terms of approaching the feeling of true alliance that is implied by "We are family" the only places (that I've been at) that have come close have been small startups where everyone had equity and everyone was working in one office.
Mind you, when I say equity, I mean actual equity, not stock options. And to get actual equity, typically a worker needs to bring something to the table, other than a willingness to commit future hours. Typically they need to invest their own money, and become a true partner, or invest something else of value (one of my partners had inherited an old farmhouse and donated that, which became our office).
Nice ploy being used time and again by SV companies to lure kids by offering catered food, foosball and a beer tap, so they never feel grown-up.
Oh yeah add "unlimited vacation" to that as well.
Family my ass!
I've only worked for larger-sized companies, but it's funny how pervasive this strategy is. When you're negotiating for something (a raise for instance) the conversation is always a personal affront to the individual responsible for approving the raise. but... when they're negotiating with you it's a holistic-embodiment of citizens united.
I agree. I think it's bullshit that for me to get equity, I have to put hundreds of thousands of dollars in... But my hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of time is apparently worthless?
How much did AirBnB have to pay for this PR piece?
>it built a reputation as the polar opposite of its sharing economy peers such as Uber, which prized ruthless competition, and WeWork, which collapsed under a partying culture and its founder’s self-dealing.
>instead, Airbnb stood for earnest idealism.
As I recall, just like Uber, Airbnb created a platform that facilitated breaking laws and regulations in many jurisdictions...and ultimately caused damages to many owners whose property values went down as a result of their neighbors running illegal short term rentals.
>ultimately caused damages to many owners whose property values went down as a result of their neighbors running illegal short term rentals
Nobody is entitled to their property remaining a certain value. The same kind of argument is why NIMBYs try to stop the development of new housing, artificially propping up property prices and making it hard for new residents of a city to afford homes.
Airbnb absolutely increases home prices. Many cities did decide to allow it, but only after owners broke local zoning intent, visitors became used to Airbnb availability, and cities became used to increased taxes. As with many recent changes, this is all great for everyone except those without assets.
But they probably contribute _more_ to the local economy in terms of partying, dining out, shopping, etc. As someone who lives in a neighbourhood with great community, I wouldn't trade it for anything, but I could see how this might be a struggle for numbers-focused politicians.
That's why there are zoning laws and regulated properties called hotels. I mean would you want you neighbor to convert their residence to a auto body shop for example? No, and that is a major part of why commercial zoning laws exist.
I think we're saying the same thing. The point of zoning is to protect a commons— an area that we agree collectively will have a particular use even if that use might have lower direct economic value in the short term than some of the other potential uses.
Airbnb works actively to undermine that protection and permit extraction of the short term value, damaging the underlying communities. All I'm saying is that it could be a challenge for short-sighted politicians to look at the economic activity being generated and say "no, we don't want that, take your business elsewhere."
>Nobody is entitled to their property remaining a certain value.
That is not necessarily true. Sure if property values go down as a natural result of supply/demand there is no remedy at law for that, but people are legally entitled to "quiet enjoyment" of their property, which would include enforcement of laws prohibiting short term vacation rentals interfering with your rights and resulting in damages (loss of property value). And under the law violating one's quiet enjoyment to their property results in compensatory damages.
I think a big part of it is just culture and brand. If you go back and look at Kalanick's original "company values" [1] they included things like "toe-stepping", "hustlin", and "superpumped", while Airbnb tried to cultivate a friendlier culture (towards employees and users).
Of course, you can still have a bad effect on the world even with a friendly culture, but I think it's safe to say Uber's culture led to a lot of more toxic behavior (towards drivers, competition, regulation, and ultimately employees).
Oh dear. I wish people would get the "family" idea out of their heads when it comes to working a job at a company. I'm at X company to offer my skills, help others grow, grow my own skills and making money so I support my actual family after 5pm. on the dot.
Exactly. I always tell the people I work that we are a team and not a family. Your family wont kick you out if you become lazy. Yor family wont judge you if show drunk or late to work. I will. As a team, we want the best for each other within the game we are playing. But extending that to a "family" analogy is BSing people. I've had to fire around 5 people in my career as a manager. And I can guarantee you I care less for that people than for cousins I seldom see.
> The best companies aren’t families. They’re supporters of families. Allies of families. There to provide healthy, fulfilling work environments so when workers shut their laptops at a reasonable hour, they’re the best husbands, wives, parents, siblings, and children they can be.
Much of the time, when companies say things, it's because they're not true, but they need you to believe they are. The things that are true don't need as much saying. The stated aspects of a company's culture are no exception. If they say their culture is one way, it's probably because it's distinctly not.
I work for a family owned company that does have a little of that "we are all family" sense of things and I think the distinguishing marks are:
1. You are not fully trusted until the founder's son personally has some trust in you (this usually involves proving yourself professionally but also making an impression)
2. If you are not fully trusted, the company loyalty is about the same as any other company
3. If you are fully trusted, the company will go out of its way to avoid firing you even if you become ineffective, ie, they will shift you between positions, change you from full-time to part-time, sometimes even completely change your department.
4. Sometimes this trust gets to the point of not really paying attention to what so-and-so is doing
5. The downside is our company is heavily top-heavy, with a lot of people in vague senior positions with ill-defined zones of responsibility. People who are not able to stabilize somewhere into a new senior position usually move on but that can take a while
6. Partly because of #5, the exact responsibilities of senior people can be vague and the chain of command for certain things can be confusing
7. There is a lot of hiring within family and friends, not necessarily resulting in incompetence, but sometimes you wonder if there might be better people for some positions
8. The company is slow moving and stays relatively small, procedures are highly informal
9. Raises are probably below industry average, bonuses are probably above industry average
Altogether, for me personally, the trade-offs are worth it. That being said, I can understand why most companies do not structure themselves this way.
#3, the company going out of its way to avoid firing you if you get their trust. They don’t ignore incompetence but they are willing to be flexible. The extra feeling of security is generally nice especially when company fortunes go up and down. They have also supported a shift in my job responsibilities toward more of a development focus, despite that being outside my original job description, and have overlooked some strange behavior on my part (not filing certain reports, avoiding certain customer interactions, etc), without needing a real explanation (the real explanation would require going into my mental heath history which is something I’d rather avoid).
"New employees, who were screened for empathy in job interviews, were welcomed “home” and told: “You belong here.”" - What a distrubing quote, was it a cult?!?!
Your employer is not your family nor like your family. It isn't your parent, nor brother, nor cousin. It isn't your friend, in the sense that even if your boss may personally be your friend - the company has an interest that's contradictory to yours: Making more profit off of your work.
---
As for AirBnB - I really dislike them. They eats away at the supply of apartments available to people for actual rent - you know, to live in - in favor to catering to rich(er) tourists. This naturally drives rents up. So, the employees were part of a somewhat nasty "family".
83 comments
[ 1.1 ms ] story [ 136 ms ] threadYou don’t build “the family” on the concept of it’s value is purely what you’re getting out of it. You base it on sacrifice and the understanding that the work part is only the mission, the team is the reason you’re there and is probably what matters most.
We have forgotten that the things that matter most in life and the things that build that kind of culture everyone mocks as “not real”, its all built on necessary sacrifice and substance that can not ever be quantified on profit & loss spreadsheet.
Maybe the issue is that people SAY they want a culture that cares, but really it’s just not something you really want to work for. Do your job, collect a paycheck and go home. Maybe people should just be ok with the fact that in reality, that’s all they want. Otherwise, move to a rural area, take a job that pays a little less on a team that has these family qualities. We do exist, I think it’s just not something g you REALLY want or value.
Well maybe you can - by giving everyone significant equity - but no one is willing to write that cheque.
Generally speaking, there is never a "family" in a business. You are all there to make money, period.
I do want to work for a business that cares though. They can show me how much they care by paying me well, treating me with respect, not intruding into my personal life, and by giving me a reasonable level of flexibility in how I organise my working hours and time on site.
The people who say their companies are like families generally fall into two camps in my experience. Those who have no idea what they’re doing and want to signal their supposed intentions (no matter how bad their execution is), and those who want to emotionally pressure their staff into doing more than they’re paid for. If I make friends with some colleagues, well that’s nice. But I don’t want my boss to think of me as family, I wouldn’t even want to be friends with my boss. People are usually aren’t good enough at compartmentalizing for that to work.
One day he got offered big money for a buyout. Took it, ran, left employees to be laid off etc.
But the kicker: the ex-employees still talk of him as a great guy. They brag about how the big man told them he'd always take care of them. Even though he actually screwed them and left them to rot.
So no, I'm not a 'family company' kind of guy. Because I think its emotional leverage and not professional. I understand some folks thrive on that, and not for financial reasons. They seem to need the emotional connection to be happy. Whatever works for them.
Not so explicit, but most laid-off employees are "eligible for re-hire". That assumes, a) the company re-opens your same position, b) you still want to work for the company and haven't found a job in the interim, and c) that "economic situation" improves quickly to allow for the above, which it probably won't.
Because it's all bullshit, whether the founders realized it or not.
Also, a family doesn't get their members to sign nondispargement agreements, unless it's really disfunctional.
That kind of evil is a cult, not a family. Remaining Airbnbers would be wise to ponder those agreements and how ominous they are.
That's not terrible.
So the complaint is that a travel and hospitality company was not able to weather the storm long enough to keep everyone employed as if it wasn't happening?
Startups have been creating these cultures of “family” for years in order to have a closer relationship to their employees than ever before. This closeness, as many other dynamics of the current labor system in the US, benefit the companies far more than the employees.
The culture of “startup family” made it possible for companies like Theranos to lie to investors for so long while keeping their employees quiet.
The “startup family” culture made it possible for companies like Uber to devolve into a misogynistic, harassment-driven behemoth coming from the top.
The “startup family” culture convinced millions of employees to take lower salaries with the hope that their dead-last-liquidation-preference common shares would turn into a nest egg someday, while 99% of them never did. Most people never even ask or understand the terms of these agreements. That doesn’t sound like family to me.
At the end of the day every company gets your skill and in return compensate with stocks and salary. That’s all there is to it. If they don’t value your skill, you’re fired.
You don’t disown your kids because you don’t value their skill. Family is for life (mostly). Jobs aren’t.
Seriously zero days. The HR person emphasized, in the meeting, that my health benefits were good through the rest of the month. Which came off sounding pretty tone-deaf, since that day was the 31st.
Non-disparagement agreements for sure, but what else?
My current CEO left it for all the directors to tell the rest of the team, a trend I've seen several times in my career. I wish there was a name for a CEO who only gives the good news and leaves the bad news for middle management.
So yeah, we need a name for that kind of abdication.
Heh - I think that's called "Coward"
I grew up in the 80ies and communities were much stronger then. We had a community run iceskating course during winter, community run 'neighbourhood'-house with games, music etc. We supplemented our schools budget by collecting old paper every six weeks, people just showed up and did the work together ( teachers, parents & kids ).
Our municipality had a very nice pool-complex and library. All gone. Somehow this is all too expensive now.
But I would just wager its far easier to do lay-offs. The path of least resistance...
Unless airbnb was raking in the money, they've probably got a huge loss on the books now and they won't be making money any time so even a six month furlough would seem unlikely long enough to be able to hire back all of the people laid off.
It's actually better to say, start looking for a job now, and here's a three month severence package, then say hold off on looking, we might be able to bring you back.
A job is a job, that's it. You'll be treated like waste as soon as the money runs out.
> "Mr. Chesky aspired to a capitalism that had an “infinite time horizon” and was good for society."
Ah ah ah, what a time to be alive
Also, many workers enjoy working from home, but in terms of approaching the feeling of true alliance that is implied by "We are family" the only places (that I've been at) that have come close have been small startups where everyone had equity and everyone was working in one office.
Mind you, when I say equity, I mean actual equity, not stock options. And to get actual equity, typically a worker needs to bring something to the table, other than a willingness to commit future hours. Typically they need to invest their own money, and become a true partner, or invest something else of value (one of my partners had inherited an old farmhouse and donated that, which became our office).
>it built a reputation as the polar opposite of its sharing economy peers such as Uber, which prized ruthless competition, and WeWork, which collapsed under a partying culture and its founder’s self-dealing.
>instead, Airbnb stood for earnest idealism.
As I recall, just like Uber, Airbnb created a platform that facilitated breaking laws and regulations in many jurisdictions...and ultimately caused damages to many owners whose property values went down as a result of their neighbors running illegal short term rentals.
Nobody is entitled to their property remaining a certain value. The same kind of argument is why NIMBYs try to stop the development of new housing, artificially propping up property prices and making it hard for new residents of a city to afford homes.
Airbnb works actively to undermine that protection and permit extraction of the short term value, damaging the underlying communities. All I'm saying is that it could be a challenge for short-sighted politicians to look at the economic activity being generated and say "no, we don't want that, take your business elsewhere."
[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3006832
No, but people are entitled to not be damaged by their neighbours' criminal activities. Is it NIMBYism to be angry at the meth lab next door?
That is not necessarily true. Sure if property values go down as a natural result of supply/demand there is no remedy at law for that, but people are legally entitled to "quiet enjoyment" of their property, which would include enforcement of laws prohibiting short term vacation rentals interfering with your rights and resulting in damages (loss of property value). And under the law violating one's quiet enjoyment to their property results in compensatory damages.
Of course, you can still have a bad effect on the world even with a friendly culture, but I think it's safe to say Uber's culture led to a lot of more toxic behavior (towards drivers, competition, regulation, and ultimately employees).
[1] https://qz.com/work/1123038/uber-has-replaced-travis-kalanic...
https://m.signalvnoise.com/the-company-isnt-a-family/
Kudos
It's better when companies and managers are honest about the nature of the employment relationship.
1. You are not fully trusted until the founder's son personally has some trust in you (this usually involves proving yourself professionally but also making an impression)
2. If you are not fully trusted, the company loyalty is about the same as any other company
3. If you are fully trusted, the company will go out of its way to avoid firing you even if you become ineffective, ie, they will shift you between positions, change you from full-time to part-time, sometimes even completely change your department.
4. Sometimes this trust gets to the point of not really paying attention to what so-and-so is doing
5. The downside is our company is heavily top-heavy, with a lot of people in vague senior positions with ill-defined zones of responsibility. People who are not able to stabilize somewhere into a new senior position usually move on but that can take a while
6. Partly because of #5, the exact responsibilities of senior people can be vague and the chain of command for certain things can be confusing
7. There is a lot of hiring within family and friends, not necessarily resulting in incompetence, but sometimes you wonder if there might be better people for some positions
8. The company is slow moving and stays relatively small, procedures are highly informal
9. Raises are probably below industry average, bonuses are probably above industry average
Altogether, for me personally, the trade-offs are worth it. That being said, I can understand why most companies do not structure themselves this way.
Really, because all the things you listed seem negative. What are the positives?
GTFO with that family shit.
---
As for AirBnB - I really dislike them. They eats away at the supply of apartments available to people for actual rent - you know, to live in - in favor to catering to rich(er) tourists. This naturally drives rents up. So, the employees were part of a somewhat nasty "family".