Don't think of your workplace as a family, says Airbnb CEO

cnbc.com

3 points·belter··4 comments

"If you shouldn’t think of your workplace as a family, how should you approach it? [...] 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,”"

How does this square against ageism in workplace? Sports is notoriously ageist: once you are past your prime, there's the door, and hope you saved a bunch, as your income is going to be a fraction of what it was at best.

You could say IT is young person's game, and your tenure at AirBnb or Netfix might be a year or two, so play and then jump to some other, more stable employment opportunity. But I wonder why some companies are allowed to be so aggressive with their firing policies.

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

"Fight for their job": ok but them pay me as much as professional sports players are paid.

The IT workplace has not been like family in ~10 years in my experience.

Lacking in perks, no loyalty, pay is stifled, no company events etc.

I retired last year but worked 40 years from 14 - 54. I made pizzas, drove a forklift in a warehouse, waited tables at a country club, managed a picture framing shop, installed cable plants and worked in a variety of IT positions from network engineer to VP managing the cloud services group of a major government contractor. In that entire 40 years every company was just like the family I had growing up. My family growing up was emotionally abusive, manipulative and would throw you under the bus to help themselves.

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