I feel like if you're a knowledge worker who isn't interested in management, the IC path is short-lived in almost any profession (not just SWE), no?
To me, the future isn't very bright for anyone who just wants to be an "employee" for the rest of their life, coder or not.
OTOH, the manager path is dangerous in recession times. You lose a lot of "hard" skills, and if you lose your cushy manager job at company A it isn't necessarily obvious to company B what value you have when things are tight.
Basically what will happen is that in some month X after IPO the company will be forced to pull back on new driver incentives (the thing that is really making these companies bleed cash), which will slow driver supply growth, which will increase rider wait times and/or make prices spike, which will lower demand, and thus slow growth, and kill the stock price.
I wouldn't touch this at all. Or short it if you're brave :)
I think there's more appetite now because the housing crisis in CA has really reached a tipping point (IMO). There's plenty of inflow into cities like Vegas from CA. Housing prices have rebounded but still relatively speaking cheap.
Reno is really small, but agree it's too bad Vegas hasn't become a major hub for more companies. The best thing is there are so many cheap direct flights, especially during the weekday. And only ~1hr from SFO and less than that from LAX...
I've considered moving to Austin (like so many others). I think my biggest concerns are 1) lack of good public transit 2) scorching humid heat ~5 months of the year 3) not a major airline hub.
I honestly wish Vegas became the tech dream that the Zappos founder had tried to build like 10 years ago. I would move there in a second.
Yep - we're living in the golden age of business class travel. Business class on every major international airline has some variation of a reverse herringbone lie-flat seat, which is the killer feature for paying for a premium seat in the first place (e.g. some privacy + lie flat seat).
Biggest reason I can think of is that airlines have so heavily invested in business class over last 10 years or so to the point where business is nearly as good as first class has been at a fraction of the price.
I've had the privilege of flying international first and business class flights several times over past few years using points (including Singapore Suites), and business class has gotten so good (lie flat reverse herringbone configuration) that there's hardly a difference between the two except a slightly bigger seat and marginally better food but 3x the price.
We are living in the golden age of business class travel.
I'm not saying a "tech" company has to be defined by how "hard" the tech is, or that a "tech" company isn't a "tech" company because it isn't working on LIDAR or AI.
I'm just pointing out that Airbnb's application of "tech" isn't necessarily "hard" tech, relative to other companies that it's usually associated with or compared to in the SF startup scene.
Well like every tech company the entire purpose of an externally facing engineering blog is to maximize their "tech/employer brand." That's the whole point. I would also guess that some of the projects highlighted are could probably fit into "complexity for complexity sake" e.g. teams of bored or overzealous engineers who are trying to justify their jobs by working on complex things that are probably overkill for the actual problem their trying to solve. That's pretty common.
I'm just pointing out that the nature of Airbnb's business means that there's no real-time, no streaming, no billions of concurrent users, etc. The tech boils down to a 1) web app 2) payments mechanism and 3) messaging. Nothing particularly revolutionary on the tech side.
I'm not suggesting they don't have engineering challenges, but if you stack ranked the engineering challenges by difficulty across Airbnb, Uber/Lyft, Google, FB, Netflix, Amazon, Dropbox, Pinterest, etc. I don't see how Airbnb would not very easily rank last by a long shot.
Airbnb is basically just a prettier craigslist with a payment transfer mechanism and messaging. It isn't to say it isn't a great business, just that the "tech" part of it is not really much more than a web app.
The fact that on a nightly basis a 4* hotel in the most expensive part of NYC is comparable to the 80th percentile for 1-bedrooms in SF or NYC actually shows that it is very reasonably priced because what you're really paying for is the flexibility and convenience of a short-term stay + the cleaning/security/concierge/other amenities.
By the same logic, if you eat at a restaurant and it costs only 50% more than what it'd cost if you made it at home or order a beer at a bar and it only cost 50% more than what it'd cost if you bought it at the grocery store you'd be really happy, though chances are you're paying at least 100% more, if not more.
It would be "expensive" if you lived at a hotel in the same way it's "expensive" if for every meal or every beer you drank you had it at a sit down restaurant or bar.
What is considered "insanely expensive"? Hotel prices widely vary depending on the city and time of year, and within a market there's 1* to 5* hotels.
I'm looking at hotels in Manhattan for this weekend and there's 4* hotels for $150/night. Is that expensive? That is equivalent to what some people pay in rent for a 1-bedroom apartment in SF or NY.
Completely disagree with this analogy. Hotels have their place, and in so many ways they can be superior to a home rental.
I am the furthest thing from a luddite, but I personally prefer (as I know many others) hotels to Airbnb. There's a consistency to the hotel product that you can't get with Airbnb that I place a premium on, especially for short or last minute stays.
I'm also not really sure why Airbnb is considered a "tech" co in the same way FB or Netflix is. There's is no real time component to the app, and it isn't dealing with billions of people using the app at the same time like a FB or Google is. In the few times I've used Airbnb over the years I'm honestly surprised by how little "tech" really permeates my experience (i.e. its just a basic web app that facilitates the listing + payment transfer + messaging...once I've made the reservation and paid Airbnb's job is essentially done).
My point is that most of the rank-and-file at these companies will make, on an annualized basis, about as much as a typical FB or Google or Netflix employee makes in liquid comp today (of which there are many thousands). I'm just not sure if the marginal increase in "people who are now liquid" will do anything to the market and from what I've seen prices are not trending sharply up in anticipation of some sort of bidding war. I could be wrong. It's just an observation.
Yes, and the people who have really made a lot of money (the founders, execs, earliest employees) have likely already had several opportunities to cash out over the years, so the market is already priced accordingly.