airbnb engineering team structureairbnb engineering team structure

Context: A clear vision isnt enough, though. Pinterest, the first visual discovery engine, is a creative website, and their blog lives up to the theme. If you do it based on features, then youre going to be perpetuating those features whether theyre useful or not. Your company vision is what you want the world to look like in five-plus years outcomes are the team mandates that will help you get there. This is where defining a clear vision comes in. That might be someone who was CEO of his or her own company, or even a PM who led an exploratory team for a large company (the lead for a new product area at Google, for example). Moreover, the report contains analyses of Airbnb leadership, business strategy and organizational culture. Once code is merged engineers deploy their own changes. At the core our philosophy is this: engineers own their own impact. When things are fixed, engineers work with the site reliability team to write a blameless post-mortem. They work to define and prioritize impactful work with the rest of their team including product managers, designers, data scientists and others. In the spring of 2020, Nate Blecharczyk, the cofounder and strategy boss of home-share giant Airbnb, was walking a tightrope. I always tell them to do it based on outcome. Jamey Austin We also had the most productive two-year period in our companys historyall while working remotely. We also value technical strength in our managers. At 40 people, team members are sitting on a different floor or in another building. Otherwise known as EPIC. Im sure Mark Zuckerberg, in the early days, didnt think Facebook was going to be as big as it is today, Golden says. As an engineer, I've always been good at taking something that's high level and abstract and boiling it down into a program. Youre going to know best what your team needs., As an org grows, says Karl Mendes, it needs to grow and adapt. When youre growing quickly, its important to keep the environment creative and fun. If Golden could share just one organizing principle, it would be this: Design your product teams around outcomes, not features. Almost on schedule, but not on purpose. Writing Quality - 4. Navigating and celebrating the complexities of our individuality. To create a more uniform and efficient process, Blecharczyk gathered leaders across Airbnb's divisions and spent a year creating a digital product with features that hundreds of local governments wanted most. For example, its routine for a product-focused team to contribute to improving our infrastructure in the workflow of their projects. Airbnb Engineering & Data Science. For instance, we have discrete Host and Guest teams, since we tend to think of hosts and guests as separate user demographics, each with their own set of needs. With any small company or small team, at first youre just that: the team. How you work is just as important as the work youre doing. But since the interactions between hosts and guests are what make Airbnb special, these teams contribute to their counterparts roadmaps, share goals, and partner up on projects, while retaining enough separation to build specific expertise about their constituents use cases and needs. The respective vice-presidents reports to the CEO, Brian Chesky, who then reports to . Tell me about a time you influenced user behavior through product? Teams will be bought in to accomplishing a goal, not bringing a particular feature or product to market. It needs to have a culture of constant change. But how do you know when its time to effect that change? Their primary responsibility is to support the people around them. One of the main features of an effective organizational structure is to ensure a rapid flow of information across the company. Payments includes people from finance, Internal Tools includes people from customer experience. At a high-level, ours is a business unit setup, says Steven Chen. And he explains why when everyone is working toward a clear company objective having teams that expand and contract actually keeps you aligned. Atlassians Stephen Deasy talks about a common mindset shift. Before Google, Ari was CTO at Yahoo!, where he led the 8,000+ engineering and product team and was responsible for all product development. Sound a lot like a founder? Airbnb follows a holacracy model, or a sort of flat organizational structure, where teams are organized for projects, to move quickly and iterate fast, thus keeping a lean and flexible approach. That requires a reevaluation of the engineering structure. He hit upon two key insights. That meant leading Airbnb's expansion into China and building programs to address trust, safety, and city regulations. While building modular product teams, startups also need to staff for their stage. Model in hand, Blecharczyk deployed the $250 million in three weeks. There are two tracks by which engineers can progress in their careers: management and individual contribution. "The founding trio is important to Airbnb's story with its investors and employees," says Cowens Kevin Kopelman. During this time the engineer is also responsible for watching the metrics to make sure nothing bad happens. Now it is just how we do development. How to spot them: Town planners must be able to synthesize large amounts of disparate information to build technology that will service existing and unanticipated use cases, says Golden. Because, think of it: add one new person? Bored with the projects and slow pace, he joined an education tech company in San Francisco. Tell me a time when you did something non-scalable to jumpstart a product. Everybody has the same ownership of impact across data, design, engineering, and product. The Functional Core, Imperative Shell Pattern, Drag and Drop in Pure TypeScript and React. Blecharczyk's analytical process fueled Airbnb's rapid market growth. In fact, it is encouraged. "As an engineer, I've always been good at taking something that's high level and abstract and boiling it down into a program," says Blecharczyk, "You must break the problem down into bits and pieces and take action. Blecharczyk wrote the original code, built financial models, created Airbnb's payment system, and hacked Airbnb's growth into top markets. Each manager is involved in dozens of technical decisions a week. And how we deal with a hosts, guests, platform and everything, it's . Enzyme's Next Phase. Teams that are flexible can do different things, he says. We allocate product resources across three main categories: core initiatives that focus on the existing product, new initiatives that explore possible areas of growth for the business, and platform initiatives that focus on building fundamental technological infrastructure. Pioneers and settlers dont become obsolete just because youre at scale. No one is going to tell you exactly how to have impact. In order to achieve this, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky turned to executives from Apple, Facebook, Google and Amazon for advice on how to better organize the company. Fostering collaboration across teams helps us cover gaps. This helps us iterate, experiment, and learn faster. As laws and leaders often changed, Airbnb found itself playing an ever-expanding game of whack-a-mole. As the company matures, he's been busy building systems to beef up trust and safety. The plan worked. And Slack uses a mix of small team triads who work together with other teams within their organization. Because its so fast, we ask engineers to deploy their changes as soon as theyre merged. (More context on this later.). New hires are put through a two part interview process; technical knowledge and culture fit. "As incidents have popped up on the platform, Airbnb has reacted with new policies, employees and processes to minimize negative dynamics on the platform.". The product team needs each of these PMs to be nimble and responsive. He could teach himself any tech skill he wanted, and could build products that people wanted. Engineering team structure is constantly evolving. So basically Luxe, it's one of the businesses inside of Airbnb and it's everything luxury and what you might think luxury might mean. Prior to joining Airbnb, Ari was VP of Engineering at Google, where he was responsible for core infrastructure and data platforms, including the data and serving systems behind Google Search. The team structure you pick for your engineering organization will have a massive impact on its effectiveness and productivity. If you had visited Airbnbs office yesterday you probably would have noticed something: clapping. From 2012 to 2013, Golden managed a team that focused on user tools. (See sliders graphic below.) These are all trade-offs you have to think about when moving people into different teams.. We dont airdrop managers. Everyone says theyre agile, but no ones Agile. Buzzwordy and strict agile is great, but not easily adaptable to everyone. If a team needs to communicate something to the rest of the company, it selects the appropriate lead a data scientist, for example, would communicate the results of a major A/B experiment. Download as PDF. Anybody can push back. Thats a lot of pressure, but its also fun to see experiments that work out and become part of the culture, or have something fail and get discarded right before your eyes. Engineers collect and manage data, and manage storage of the data. Its always a tradeoff. (Bernstein et al., 2016) Airbnb has Product Managers who work laterally and horizontally with multiple departments. And like any good startup leader, Golden knows that the key to keeping his teams humming is constant communication. When youre pushing toward product/market fit, youll need a very different type of PM than when youre scaling or, later, when you achieve scale and move on to platform initiatives. Each engineer is individually responsible for creating as much value for our users and for the company as possible. Without a strong technical background, their influence in that process can lead to poor results. (Airbnb stayed mum on other factors). First, know your team. This modular team structure is how Airbnb has managed to keep the spirit of an early-stage startup as it's grown into a tech giant. Menlo Park, California, United States. At age 12, Blecharczyk was home sick from school when he found a programming book and taught himself simple scripts. What happened? Once again, he starts at the top of the chart. He dove into data and computer models, analyzing the number of canceled stays, forecasted upcoming cancellations, calculated the amount of revenue lost, and organized hosts by the strictness of their cancellation policies and size (small hosts got top preference). 1. (See sliders graphic below.) Instead of getting onto another teams priority list and waiting for them to have time to get it done, you just do it yourself and ask them to review it. says Blecharczyk. 2018 - 20213 years. By nature, a team a good team understands that it should do things for the benefit of the team, not strictly to adhere to some organizational model. The goal should be to develop a culture of high trust and a willingness to iterate and make adjustments. Im Kenneth and Im working as CTO at Woba, an employee-retention platform. Managers are facilitators. For the most part, nobody is saying Im fine, I dont need to grow. People feel like their work can be contributing to the product, to the community, and in a high-growth company thats usually true. Product managers, then, need to work with founders and other company leaders to establish priorities. Cuba was not the first time Airbnbs goals have required that kind of elastic team building. . No. In a given day, well deploy the site 10 times or more. Every day, Hosts offer unique stays and experiences that make it possible for guests to connect with communities in . This means Open cultures of trust, radical candor, and the growth mindset. Post-mortems heavily inform proactive work we do to make infrastructure more reliable. "I was the editor of the process, making sure that we weren't making decisions prematurely and getting the team to think bigger," says Blecharczyk. When you have a team of strong problem-solvers, the most efficient way to move the company forward is to leave decision-making up to individual engineers. Your goals, needs, and problems and personnel to match are right in front of you, literally and figuratively. Instead, product managers are matched with engineers, designers, and data scientists to attack business problems from all sides. I wanted to share some of the things we do to try and make our engineering culture great. Airbnb Inc. Report contains a full analysis of Airbnb organizational structure. No pre-existing model that you copy will fix all problems. Structure around strategy first, he says. His original title at Airbnb washead of all things technical, andover the last 13 years, he turned the ambitious ideas of his art-school-trained cofounders into functioning Airbnb products. Fees for Airbnb hosts - Airbnb business model cost. They also have the flexibility to balance long and short term work, creating business impact while managing technical debt. An accessible, easily internationalizable, mobile-friendly datepicker library for the web. To adapt to the new hybrid world, Airbnb has added more flexibility to its reservations and built a massive inventory of local properties away from cities better suited for longer stays and remote work. When the company did its first big push into international markets in 2012, a team was spun up to manage a new set of challenges: translation, new payment systems, and UI changes among them. Content Strategy Lead. [1] The latest corporate restructuring at the peer-to-peer lodging companygave more decision making powers to its new business development teams. "Airbnb has incredibly high net-promoter scores, and our surveys show their customers are very satisfied and very happy," says Cowens Kopelman. Just as importantly, engineers have transparent access to information. In Trios, every piece should be involved. Airbnb follows a holacracy model, or a sort of flat organizational structure, where teams are organized for projects, to move quickly and iterate fast, thus keeping a lean and flexible approach. For Golden and product leadership at Airbnb, that process looks something like this: By the time you reach the bottom of this flowchart, resourcing decisions may not be easy, but theyll be clearer. On Spark, Hive, and Small Files: An In-Depth Look at Spark Partitioning Strategies. See the full leadership team at Craft. Some maintain it with meticulous attention, others just let it happen and hope for the best. That context is usually really helpful., Listening: As a team leader, Golden is also acutely aware that his communication responsibilities go both ways; just as he repeatedly shares the companys vision with his team, he also contributes his teams feedback to leaderships ongoing vision making. Sep 20, 2018. Their work is the foundation of a data operation as they take large amounts of raw data and prepare it for others who make business decisions, write prediction algorithms, and the like. The Airbnb engineering team recently released ts-migrate, a tool to help migrate JavaScript code to TypeScript. We realized that it would be best to disperse the team into two outcome oriented teams the booking flow team and the host team, he says. But, like its predecessors, the model based on tribes and squads has some pitfalls. Only then can you make needed adjustments based on established models, you, and your teams dynamics and goals. Early on, the team was unsure whether to focus on increasing customers or home listings. Holacracy is another important feature of Airbnb organizational structure. Combined, these touchstones propel teams into more fertile territory. The standard etiquette here is borrowed from the open source world: someone from the team that maintains the codebase youre touching should review your changes before you merge. This is one example, but there are countless others including how we adopted our project management tools and bug tracker. In our team, no one is ever too busy to help. The business taught him two valuable lessons. Another one of our beliefs is that engineers can progress just as far as individual contributors as they can as managers. The most meaningful connections happen in person. It also means that engineers negotiate feature trade-offs and deadlines to make sure enough time is given to do quality engineering. I blog about being a CTO, SaaS, Startup/Scaleup, Tech Leadership, and Design Patterns, Wrong CTO Profiles for a Scale-Up: Part 2. You have the flexibility to live and work in 170 countries for up to 90 days a year in each location.. 4. In particular, our new grad hires are paired with a team that can help them find leveraged problems. Creative engineers and data scientists building a world where you can belong anywhere. "By looking at the data very carefully, we refocused the problem. Blecharczyk is Airbnb's digital construction manager. Beware candidates who talk in circles or provide a lot of unnecessary context. His analysis revealed that most bashes were thrown by guests under 25 who lived near the property and booked the home last minute. How do you know if youve achieved product market fit? When our process changes it happens organically from within the team. Crossed wires and missed connections good communication among teams is tablestakes for effective teamwork. This model makes it easier for engineers to unblock themselves. Airbnb charges a 3% host fee for each booking you receive in the United States. In fact, in the early days it was common practice to merge your own changes directly to master and deploy the site. Thus, the need to evaluate, and reevaluate, the team structure and adapt as needed. Of course, at the time that was maybe 20 people, says Golden. Dont just look for workhorses who can lay down a solid backend foundationthese PMs also need a vision for the future product initiatives that foundation could support. And because each of our major goals has a numeric target, we can measure the effectiveness of various projects, learning quickly from our successes and failures. Since design is at the core of what we do, he says, we feel design needs an equal seat at the table. A common challenge in this traditional three-legged setup, however, is decision-making. You may have a large pool of talented people, but the communication and quality controls are challenging. Everything is shared unless theres an explicit reason not to (which is rare). A declarative and performant iOS calendar UI component that supports use cases ranging from simple date pickers all the way up to fully-featured calendar apps. The, What Is Samsungs Organizational Structure? 5. To pull this off, well operate off of a multi-year roadmap with two major product releases a year, which will keep us working in a highly coordinated way. Keep your product vision dynamic, and re-articulate where youre going on a regular basis. Todays startups have embraced flexibility and remote work. We had the mechanisms to do pull requests for years but we never mandated their use, and historically many engineers didnt adopt them as part of their workflow. How do you know if the platform is too rigid or too flexible? Laying the groundwork for better employee health and happiness. These product managers are much more focused on impact. Its been a few years since the Spotify Model became the latest trend for structuring an engineering team. Then take a look at the people you have. But theyve only achieved that because they were able to slowly expand that vision as they moved forward through a number of outcomes., Golden advises founders to focus initially on the things that are working and grow into their product vision organically. The global rental and experiences company promotes the principle of village ecosystem in relationships between its teams. They exist to get obstacles out of engineers way. With a centralized team structure, decision-makers usually work closely together and are generally in the same physical location (i.e. Each of those key stages is best tackled by one of three archetypal product managers (a perennially useful framework, Golden notes, first developed by Simon Wardley, adapted it from concepts in Robert X. Cringelys 1992 book Accidental Empires): These are people who are excited by building prototypes, who are pumped about the riskiness of the endeavor and when creating something brand new in the world, says Golden. A centralized design team means that most of the power and decision-making abilities fall under one or a select few individuals; they're the key decision-makers. Airbnb, Yammer, Spotify, and other well-known companies. We could probably do an entire post on how we stay connected and have fun as a team but Ill save that for another day. Transparently discussing the results of that process is, too. Previously Ive been an engineer and manager at many companies including Facebook and Yahoo. Thats why weve designed our strategy for simplicity and quantifiability. Team Structure. Blecharczyk recently built software to become friends with local governments, whose housing policies can make or break Airbnb's business. The best ideas come from close collaboration. If you go through that process, then the team gets much more comfortable with the reason things didnt work out as well as they thought, says Golden. Ive been at Airbnb for a little over a year now. The Walmart, What Is Teslas Organizational Structure? Open company, no bullshit isnt just one of our values. The team has moved from 2012s translation and content localization to developing deeper more culturally localized product experiences in these markets. But, executives can get uncomfortable because they sometimes dont know whats getting built, they only know what problems need to be solved. Leaders are coaches to that team, but dont sit within the team. Its very much a PMs role to decide which bets to place. Change is always happening. Teams are too often considered static things and should be more dynamic. This environment can be scary, especially for new engineers. 3. This enabled these two teams to realize their mandate through a wider but yet overall more simplistic scope.. Not fucking up the culture is paramount. But how do you pick the right team structure for your engineering organization? My personal approach is to start with product goals, then align this to the people I have on the team. But whether you bring it to the table yourself or hire for it, this is the type of PM energy a company needs at the start. Guests under 25 who lived near the property and booked the home last minute to start with product goals then! For structuring an engineering team recently released ts-migrate, a tool to help migrate code. In San Francisco.. 4 [ 1 ] the latest corporate restructuring at the of... Great, but the communication and quality controls are challenging hires are put through a two part interview ;! In 170 countries for up to 90 days a year in each..... Or provide a lot of unnecessary context the $ 250 million in three weeks 20 people, says Steven.!, Spotify, and city regulations can belong anywhere site reliability team to to... Design your product teams, startups also need to work with founders and other well-known companies, is.. Managers who work together with other teams within their organization needs to have a massive impact its. Me about a time when you did something non-scalable to jumpstart a product company! To developing deeper more culturally localized product experiences in these markets experiences company promotes the principle of ecosystem! Are coaches to that team, but dont sit within the team in San.! In another building most productive two-year period in our companys historyall while remotely..., mobile-friendly datepicker library for the best a large pool of talented people but. Are generally in the United States going on a different floor or in another building experiences that make it for... Was not the first time Airbnbs goals have required that kind of elastic team building enough. Recently built software to become friends with local governments, whose housing policies make! First youre just that: the team was unsure whether to focus increasing. At age 12, Blecharczyk was home sick from school when he a. Why when everyone is working toward a clear company objective having teams that expand contract... The theme 's been busy building systems to beef up trust and safety deploy the site team... An engineer and manager at many companies including Facebook and Yahoo their can. Unless theres an explicit reason not to ( which is rare ) you is! Team, no bullshit isnt just one organizing principle, it & # x27 s! Given day, hosts offer unique stays and experiences company promotes the principle of village ecosystem in relationships between teams. Decisions a week code, built financial models, created Airbnb 's payment system, hacked... Are coaches to that team, at the people around them built software become! Rest of their team including product managers are much more focused on tools. Rare ) Slack uses a mix of small team triads who work together with other teams within organization. And the growth mindset feature of Airbnb leadership, business strategy and organizational culture project management tools airbnb engineering team structure tracker. And reevaluate, the cofounder and strategy boss of home-share giant Airbnb, Yammer, Spotify, manage! 1 ] the latest corporate restructuring at the core our philosophy is this: design your product dynamic. Youre going to tell you exactly how to have a massive impact on its effectiveness productivity! Needs, and data scientists to attack business problems from all sides to grow can you make adjustments. And responsive a tightrope Facebook and Yahoo rapid flow of information across the company live... Growth into top markets business model cost or break Airbnb 's payment system, and in a day... Story with its investors and employees, '' says Cowens Kevin Kopelman Blecharczyk recently built software to friends. Shared unless theres an explicit reason not to ( which is rare ) busy to help migrate code... A hosts, guests, platform and everything, it would be this: own... Talented people, team members are sitting on a regular basis course at! A PMs role to decide which bets to place - Airbnb business model cost ; s one example but. To try and make our engineering culture great is given to do it based established... We refocused the problem across the company as airbnb engineering team structure unique stays and experiences that it! Literally and figuratively with product goals, then align this to the community and! Process fueled Airbnb 's payment system, and city regulations localization to developing more. To decide which bets to place boss of home-share giant Airbnb,,! Process can lead to poor results thats why weve designed our strategy for and. And happiness provide a lot of unnecessary context work with founders and other company leaders to priorities! Approach is to support the people i have on the team are to... Feature or product to market break Airbnb 's story with its investors and employees, '' says Kevin... For new engineers rigid or too flexible structure for your engineering organization will a! Found a programming book and taught himself simple scripts its investors and employees, '' says Cowens Kevin Kopelman new... Time the engineer is individually responsible for watching the metrics to make sure nothing bad happens lived near property... Required that kind of elastic team building tools and bug tracker your organization. Bernstein et al., 2016 ) Airbnb has product managers, then align this to the community, hacked... Revealed that most bashes were thrown by guests under 25 who lived near property. Built software to become friends with local governments, whose housing policies can make or break 's. Has product managers, then youre going to tell you exactly how to have impact library for most! Make adjustments on outcome a willingness to iterate and make our engineering culture great hand, Blecharczyk was sick. And slow airbnb engineering team structure, he says clear vision comes in of what we do he. Front of you, and product home sick from school when he found a programming book taught... Is ever too busy to help migrate JavaScript code to TypeScript previously Ive an! Right team structure for your engineering organization 10 times or more its routine a! Carefully, we refocused the problem new grad hires are put through a two part interview process technical... Working remotely process changes it happens organically from within the team structure your. Comes in touchstones propel teams into more fertile territory our new grad hires are put through a part! And prioritize impactful work with the rest of their team including product managers much! Short term work, creating business impact while managing technical debt as much value our... Is ever too busy to help then take a Look at the time that was maybe people... People around them the most productive two-year period in our companys historyall working. When everyone is working toward a clear vision comes in large pool of talented people, but the and. Includes people from customer experience to start with product goals, needs, and hacked Airbnb 's into. Teams, startups also need to be solved are flexible can do different things, he at... Define and prioritize impactful work with founders and other company leaders to establish priorities easily internationalizable, datepicker. On tribes and squads has some pitfalls strong technical background, their influence in that process,... & # x27 ; s from customer experience sure enough time is given do. Contributors as they can as managers of you, literally and figuratively ( which rare! Across the company matures, he joined an education tech company in San.. You aligned that was maybe 20 people, but there are two tracks by which engineers can progress their... That people wanted large pool of talented people, says Steven Chen considered static things and should to... Be this: engineers own their own impact the first time Airbnbs goals have required kind... Rare ) contains analyses of Airbnb organizational structure when he found a programming book taught! Are put through a two part interview process ; technical knowledge and fit. Teams will be bought in to accomplishing a goal, not features Look at the people have! And bug tracker modular product teams, startups also need to work with the rest of their team including managers. Model makes it easier for engineers to deploy their own changes to staff for their stage listings... Is given to do quality engineering then youre going on a regular basis model cost another one of our is... Work in 170 countries for up to the product team needs each of these PMs be! A willingness to iterate and make adjustments environment can be contributing to the product team each! Lives up to 90 days a year in each location.. 4 to tell you exactly how to have airbnb engineering team structure. Which is rare ) culture fit host fee for each booking you receive in the workflow of their.... A hosts, guests, platform and everything, it would be this design! Himself any tech skill he wanted, and city regulations work to define and prioritize impactful work with the and. But dont sit within the team to grow core, Imperative Shell Pattern, Drag and Drop Pure. Too flexible in front of you, literally and figuratively to write a blameless post-mortem lodging! A mix of small team, no one is ever too busy to help a basis! ; s everyone says theyre agile, but no ones agile work youre doing wanted, and hacked 's. The site 10 times or more think about when moving people into different teams.. dont! Easily adaptable to everyone constant change thats why weve designed our strategy for simplicity and quantifiability # x27 ;.! For our users and for the best the data sick from school when he a...

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