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Airbnb CEO shares the mistake he made while conducting Covid-era layoffs: ‘A company’s not a family’
Cnbc ^ | 3rd June 2024 | Ashton's Jackson

Posted on 06/03/2024 9:50:15 PM PDT by Cronos

No matter how much you like your colleagues, don’t think of your workplace as a family, says Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky.

In 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Chesky penned a note to employees explaining that the company would conduct layoffs. “I have a deep feeling of love for all of you,” he wrote.

It made sense: Workplace families were a particularly popular loyalty-building concept among tech companies pre-Covid, with perks like free food, dry cleaning and in-office gyms encouraging employees to spend more time in the office than with their actual families.

But today, Chesky would frame his appreciation differently, he said: Thinking of your workplace as family can be an effective motivational tool, but it can also make it difficult for bosses and employees alike to do their jobs.

“I wrote that letter fairly quickly,” said Chesky. “I didn’t have a lot of time, and so I wrote what I felt and that’s what I felt, and I was pretty emotional when I was writing it. And it is true that a company’s not a family. In fact, we had to make that pivot.”

“We used to refer to ourselves as a family, and then we did have to fire people, or they’d have to leave the company, and you don’t fire members of your family,” he added.

...If you shouldn’t think of your workplace as a family, how should you approach it? Netflix CEO and co-founder Reed Hastings has a simple answer: like a professional sports team.

“You should organize around this idea that everyone has to fight for their job every year, like it is in professional sports,”

(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: airbnb
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1 posted on 06/03/2024 9:50:15 PM PDT by Cronos
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To: Cronos

Even now in today’s world, family members are getting screwed….


2 posted on 06/03/2024 9:55:39 PM PDT by drSteve78 ( Older Je suis Deplorable. Even more so)
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To: Cronos

He’s correct. My job is my job and that’s it.

There are a couple colleagues I consider friends but that’s it. I don’t socialize with co-workers.

My job could end tomorrow or I could retire from there in a few years. I have no idea.

Team? Maybe. Family? Never.


3 posted on 06/03/2024 9:55:42 PM PDT by cyclotic (Don’t be part of the problem. Be the entire problem)
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To: Cronos

What is the point? Is he trying to apologize for the layoffs or now saying he shouldn’t have been emotional about a business decision?


4 posted on 06/03/2024 9:57:06 PM PDT by Reno89519 (Build the Wall, Deport Them All. No amnesty for anyone.)
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To: Cronos

DUH.

Co-workers and “associates” are just people with who you work.

Nothing more, nothing less.

They are NOT your “family”.

They are not your faith community.

They are people with whom you work.

Nothing more. Nothing less.

To believe and expect otherwise is to set yourself up for one of life’s most crushing disappointments.


5 posted on 06/03/2024 10:02:05 PM PDT by lightman (I am a binary Trinitarian. Deal with it!)
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To: Cronos

Nobody screws you over quite like family.


6 posted on 06/03/2024 10:09:08 PM PDT by HartleyMBaldwin
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To: Cronos

Whenever I saw a work memo that began by describing the
Boss”s “love” for the employees, I expected nothing but pretentiousness or virtue signaling mumbo jumbo to follow.
Never fool yourself. Except for rare exceptions, everyone is as replaceable as a burnt out filament light bulb.


7 posted on 06/03/2024 10:13:01 PM PDT by lee martell
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To: cyclotic

>> Team? Maybe. Family? Never.

Yes, well stated. That’s it in a nutshell.


8 posted on 06/03/2024 10:27:45 PM PDT by Nervous Tick ("First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people...": ISLAM is the problem!)
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To: lightman

>> To believe and expect otherwise is to set yourself up for one of life’s most crushing disappointments.

I believe it’s even more insidious... the progressive left WANTS to replace familial ties with workplace ties. It cheapens family ties (a goal of theirs) and substitutes a more useful (to them) identity structure.


9 posted on 06/03/2024 10:32:09 PM PDT by Nervous Tick ("First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people...": ISLAM is the problem!)
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To: Reno89519
It seems to me he's been getting crap for four years for telling employees 'I love you all so much! You're fired!' so he's writing some sort of 'uh, look, I was in a hurry but I really meant it! yet I didn't because it was just a fad at the time. But I did mean it! I just shouldn't have said it! But I no longer believe that stuff!'

WTF is he saying? "please stop criticizing me for my incredibly tone deaf move of making the firing of employees about how good a guy I am"

10 posted on 06/03/2024 10:34:30 PM PDT by pepsi_junkie ("We want no Gestapo or Secret Police. F. B. I. is tending in that direction." - Harry S Truman)
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To: Cronos

“you don’t fire members of your family,” he added.” -— He never met my family!


11 posted on 06/03/2024 10:46:47 PM PDT by PghBaldy (12/14/12 - 930am -rampage begins... 12/15/12 - 1030am - Obama team scouts photo-op locations.)
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To: Cronos

“you don’t fire members of your family,” he added.” -— He never met my family!


12 posted on 06/03/2024 10:46:49 PM PDT by PghBaldy (12/14/12 - 930am -rampage begins... 12/15/12 - 1030am - Obama team scouts photo-op locations.)
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To: drSteve78
[In 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Chesky penned a note to employees explaining that the company would conduct layoffs. “I have a deep feeling of love for all of you,” he wrote.]

Now....GET OUT!
13 posted on 06/03/2024 11:04:25 PM PDT by SaveFerris (Luke 17:28 ... as it was in the Days of Lot; They did Eat, They Drank, They Bought, They Sold ......)
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To: Nervous Tick

We’re all in this together! (I got pretty sick reading that in 2020)


14 posted on 06/03/2024 11:06:14 PM PDT by SaveFerris (Luke 17:28 ... as it was in the Days of Lot; They did Eat, They Drank, They Bought, They Sold ......)
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We’re all in this together! (I got pretty sick OF reading that in 2020)

It was a lie then. It’s still a lie now to pretend otherwise.


15 posted on 06/03/2024 11:07:11 PM PDT by SaveFerris (Luke 17:28 ... as it was in the Days of Lot; They did Eat, They Drank, They Bought, They Sold ......)
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To: Cronos

Family can betray you.. some of history’s most egregious betrayals are from family.

Family can be disowned.

Family can be divorced.

Family can be emancipated.

Family can be killed/murdered.

Family can be stolen from.

Family can frame you.

Family can lie to you.

Family isn’t business but it doesn’t necessarily follow its closer or safer.


16 posted on 06/03/2024 11:24:19 PM PDT by Secret Agent Man (Gone Galt; not averse to Going Bronson.)
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>> Netflix CEO and co-founder Reed Hastings has a simple answer: like a professional sports team.

Figured he’d say “like a bathhouse”


17 posted on 06/03/2024 11:42:00 PM PDT by Gene Eric (Don't be a statist! )
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To: Cronos

Besides it cost a lot more money to trick out an office for ‘a family’ than for a motivated team of people who work “to win”. And that you can fire easily...


18 posted on 06/03/2024 11:56:14 PM PDT by GOPJ (WOKE DEI hires are an easy way to work hard core commies and sexual weirdos into top corporate spots)
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To: Cronos

So, cutting to the chase, he is saying that employer-employee loyalty is an outdated concept.

Sadly, that does seem to be the case.

And that goes a long way to understanding one of the reasons why, in general, America seems to be less able, less competent than 50 or 75 years ago.

The work force of today is, supposedly. more educated and equipped with much more sophisticated tools but actually seems to be less capable.

It seems that more and more products are flawed and getting things done correctly and in a reasonable time is less and less common.

Our grandparents and great-grandparents basically won WWII in less than 5 years from almost a dead start with a USA population of only 140 million people.

Between 1940 and 1945 they built around 310,000 airplanes, 124,000 military ships, 100,000 tanks and armored vehicles, 2,400,000 Cars, Jeeps and trucks and 41,000 large guns and howitzers.

Plus 2,700 Liberty Ships for hauling cargo.

Could America do that today with our “woke” DEI workforce?

In 1930-1931 they built the Empire State building in only 410 days.

But we have now been informed that it will take 5 years to replace Baltimore’s Key Bridge.

One of the very few things the government did that still worked well up until recent years was the US Military.

Now democrats and RINOs have done (and are doing) their best to change it from the world’s most competent fighting force into a “WOKE” DEI welfare agency for the incompetent and mentally ill.

Are we past the tipping point?


19 posted on 06/04/2024 1:42:20 AM PDT by Iron Munro ( Islamophobia - a word created by fascists, used by cowards, to manipulate morons)
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To: drSteve78

Work is not family. It is a means to an end for everyone involved.

Church is not family. People come and go freely. It is community.

Family can be close or distant.

Ultimately you are left with yourself.


20 posted on 06/04/2024 2:29:51 AM PDT by Chickensoup
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