Airbnb’s New Remote Work Policy For Employees
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Are you looking for a job that allows you to work remotely, from a location of your choice, without affecting your compensation or benefits? Well, you might be closer to your dream job than you think you are!
Despite the world returning to its pre-pandemic habits, Airbnb recently announced its new Remote Work Policy for employees on April 29, 2022, taking the job market by storm. The Airbnb remote work policy allows employees to live and work almost anywhere around the world with no change in their compensation besides several other benefits!
In a Twitter thread on April 29, 2022, Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky announced five key features of the company’s new design:
“Today, we’re announcing that Airbnb employees can live and work anywhere.
Our design for working at Airbnb has 5 key features:
1. You can work from home or the office — whatever works best for you
2. You can move anywhere in the country, like from San Francisco to Nashville, and your compensation won’t change
3. You have the flexibility to live and work in 170 countries for up to 90 days a year in each location
4. We’ll meet up regularly for team gatherings. Most employees will connect in person every quarter for about a week at a time (some more frequently)
5. To pull this off, we’ll operate off of a multi-year roadmap with two major product releases a year, which will keep us working in a highly coordinated way”
What does the Airbnb Remote Work Policy mean?
In an email to its employees, Brian Chesky shared how, two decades ago, when Silicon Valley startups hyped open floor plans and on-site perks, companies were quick to catch up with the trend to give employees a positive experience they wished for a successful professional life. Similarly, employees have embraced flexibility and remote work with the pandemic and expect it to be the predominant way work will get done in the post-pandemic world.
Here’s what the five critical features of Airbnb’s policy mean:
- You can work from home or the office — whatever works best for you.
Employees will have the flexibility to choose whether they want to work from the office or at home. While employees for a few roles would be expected to work from a specific location or the office. Most employees will have the freedom to choose their place of work for most of the year.
- You can move anywhere in the country, like from San Francisco to Nashville, and your compensation won’t change.
Airbnb adopted the location-agnostic compensation strategy with its flexible working policy. Regardless of where they choose to move within the country, employees would not lose their pay because of the location. The company has decided to set single pay tiers by the country for both salary and equity, promising a pay increase in June 2022 to employees who were being compensated with lower location-based pay tiers until now. However, the company also announced that international moves would not be supported for the time being in 2022.
- You have the flexibility to live and work in 170 countries for up to 90 days a year in each location.
Brian Chesky also announced how Airbnb is working with local governments to make it easier for people to get proper work authorization to travel and work worldwide. Starting September 2022, Airbnb employees would benefit from having the flexibility of working in over 170 countries for up to 90 days a year in each location. While the employees would still require a permanent address for taxes and payroll purposes, Airbnb hopes to open-source a solution to navigate through the complexities of this arrangement.
- We’ll meet up regularly for team gatherings. Most employees will connect in person every quarter for about a week at a time (some more frequently).
From 2023, Airbnb informed that employees can expect in-person gatherings for about a week each quarter, besides several other social event opportunities for employees to spend time together.
- To pull this off, we’ll operate off of a multi-year roadmap with two major product releases a year, which will keep us working in a highly coordinated way.
Brian Chesky also stated that coordination has been the backbone of the company to deliver exceptional results during the pandemic and will continue to be. Airbnb employees would operate based on the single company calendar with two major releases in May and November each year for company-wide alignment.
Sounds exciting, doesn’t it? But that’s not all.
Companies That Have Gone Fully Remote, Like Airbnb
Ever since the company announced its new remote work policy, Airbnb’s career page saw more than 800,000 job seekers looking for a job at the firm. But there’s not the only place where opportunities lie!
For jobseekers with personal commitments and preferences for remote work opportunities, here are a few other companies that have announced remote work flexibility for their employees:
- Twitter: Earlier in March 2022, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announced that Twitter employees can continue working remotely as long as they like, as long as they’re legally allowed to work at the location they choose. Employees can choose to work from the office every day, from home, or both places on different days of the week. You can check out the Twitter Careers Page for more information.
- Spotify: The music streaming platform also adopted a flexible work model with its Work From Anywhere policy. Spotify scrapped the one-desk-fits-all approach and announced employees would be free to choose where they wanted to work from. Learn more about their Work From Anywhere Policy and apply to roles that fit you best.
- Coinbase: A few months into the pandemic, Coinbase announced that it would become a remote-first company even after the pandemic was over. Apply for roles at Coinbase now!
- Shopify: Shopify also allowed its 5000+ employees to work remotely recently. Employees would have the flexibility to work abroad up to 90 days a year and choose a location of their choice to work. Click here to apply for opportunities within Shopify and learn more about their remote-first approach.
- Gitlab: Gitlab is another company that has been fully remote since its inception in 2014. The company scales as an asynchronous, no-office company with 1500+ employees working from across the world. Take a look at their Careers Page to learn more.
Also Read: Remote Vs. Hybrid Work: Understanding the Differences
While these are only a few, many other companies have adopted the remote-first and Work From Anywhere approach. A common idea all of these companies share is that the best talent may be located anywhere globally, and companies would be at a huge disadvantage to letting go of them just because location serves as a barrier. Airbnb also stated how they aim to make their company even more diverse by hiring the world’s top talent from diverse backgrounds to contribute to a single mission.
Are you an Active Jobseeker Applying to Remote Jobs?
If you think companies with a remote-first approach are the best for you, here are some quick job search tips to keep in mind to land your dream tech job!
- Optimize Your Resume: Every time you come across a job role you’re interested in, tailor your resume with job-specific keywords to ensure it passes the ATS. If you need feedback, get a resume review from a FAANG mentor to ensure it lands you interview calls.
- Make a STAR LinkedIn Profile: LinkedIn can help you land any job you want, provided you use the platform the right way. Think of it as an elaborate version of your resume, and optimize it to share all your relevant professional experiences. You never know if a recruiter from your dream company might reach out to you themselves!
- Network, Network, Network: Reach out to recruiters, hiring managers, and professionals from remote-first companies that you’re targeting on LinkedIn. This is one of the best ways to build a meaningful professional circle that can fast-track your career.
- Track the Career Pages: Make a list of all the companies you want to work for and regularly check their career page and LinkedIn job openings. Opportunities come to those who look for them, and this could be your chance to join your dream job.
- Check Latest News: More and more companies are going remote. Check the news from time to time and be aware of any updates in the domain.
Read: How Reaching Out To People On LinkedIn Can Be A Game-Changer
Conclusion
As all major giants and big tech companies still navigate the RTO plans, remote work arrangements, and hybrid work models, job seekers are at a great advantage to grab opportunities to kick start or progress in their careers. Companies like Airbnb and more are making celebratory efforts to create a work culture to hire and retain the top talent of the world, and there will be more companies to follow. As Brian Chesky said: Remote work is not a temporary phenomenon. It is a genie that is now out of the bottle, and flexibility is here to stay. 🚀
