Airbnb Reviews

Cons

Sales is very competitive and stressful, but very high payout in the end if you work hard.

Cons

The website platform often is extremely quirky

Cons

- Lack of work life balance. GES role, you are expected to work evenings and weekends. Failure to do so results in poor performance results
- Low salary
- Unrealistic expectations set with limited resources provided to succeed
- The leadership team is not aligned and have a limited understanding of the product
- Departments are not aligned, everyone has their own agenda
- Lack of career development opportunities
- Favouritism, plays a role in promotions
- Negative work environment as a result of poor leadership
- Leadership fails to exemplify the Core Values

Cons

Unfair distribution of wages across offices and often disorganized in terms of planning for the future, especially for such an established company.

Cons

Guest facing roles are under a lot of pressure and face high goals. The systems that are in place often limit us from performing as well as expected and this is rarely taken into consideration. Schedules can be quite inconvenient as well but there is an effort to improve them. Goals tend to be unrealistic and only few can meet them. All in all there is a lot of changes that will on the long term help improve the situation for guest facing employees (better systems are being put in place, schedules are slowly getting steadier) but this might be to the detriment of the start up feel of the company.

Cons

Very fast pace environment that is constantly changing with an overtime expectation. Work life balance depends on how badly you want to succeed/advance

Cons

Micro management is terrible, really hard goals to achieve. You will always take your work home if you want to achieve your goals or get to 85% to them. Commission payout is unfair and not clear, when you challenge you have no answer and if you do there is nothing to review, they won’t review your claim. People who are “successful” sellers don’t take more than a week vacation, they are online 24/7 so no life-work balance. Team leads (not all) won’t answer you promptly and will be there only when then month is about to end and you need to close bookings. Things are getting better with Airbnb but it feels a lot like Luxury Retreats problems are hard to eradicate. Internal software has so many issues that sometimes you can’t work.

Cons

The Montreal office is terribly mismanaged. Very little focus on managing and mentoring their people. They throw young and inexperienced employees into sink or swim management positions, where they often sink. The Airbnb transition has been particularly rocky for staff, guests and partners. Mismanaged payments, shoehorned new policies, miscommunication from the SF office. Airbnb really demands that you drink the kool-aid, but they offer very little to back up all the talk of "values" and "belonging". And the pay is really low.

Cons

-Guest-facing work can be exhausting, especially for people new to the industry
-Commute can be difficult depending on where one is coming from
-Not impossible, but difficult goals to hit (especially in guest-facing roles)
-Legacy (pre-acquisition) software and processes, although being phased out, are frustrating to use.

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Nowhere is perfect, but Airbnb is pretty close. There are several old software tools and processes that made sense in 1999 but do not make sense in 2018. I give the IT team credit where it is due, and we are generally relying on these old programs less and less. However, the guest-facing teams are often required to use them and that can be very frustrating. They are slow, poorly-designed, and difficult to read.

The sales team in particular (Villa Specialists) work very long and at times unorthodox hours (especially newer hires), with very difficult sales goals. That means that while not officially encouraged, many Villa Specialists end up taking their work home with them. I know the sales management is working on this and have seen some improvements, but it's still something to be aware of.

Guest-facing roles can be extremely stressful for those who are not accustomed to working with very wealthy people. Most guests are perfectly pleasant people, but the stress of working with huge amounts of money can be very difficult.

All told, it's not so much that the work is hard. However, it does require tremendous focus and can be draining. I got lucky in that my manager is extremely supportive and understanding. However, not all managers are created equal, and if I had someone less supportive, I am certain the pressures of this job would get to me. Thankfully, that is not my case, nor is it the case of most people I know here.

Cons

Nothing for the moment, would highly recommend