“We rebuilt the company from the ground up, and we stayed really lean.” Now, Chesky said, “we’re stepping on the gas, we’re not putting on the brakes.” “People were predicting we were going to go out of business.” “Two-and-a-half years ago, we lost 80% of our business in eight weeks,” Chesky said. But that is due in large part to the company cutting 25% of its staff at the start of the pandemic as the travel industry was clobbered, and losing more employees by attrition after. Chesky said the company is not undergoing layoffs at this time, and in fact is hiring. And Twitter recently cut approximately 50% of its staff as new owner Elon Musk races to bolster its bottom line.Īirbnb may be an exception.

Amazon confirmed this week that lay offs had begun in its corporate workforce, with reports saying it plans to cut 10,000 positions. Facebook-parent Meta said last week it was cutting 11,000 jobs after nearly doubling its staff during the pandemic. His remarks come at a difficult moment for the tech industry. Silicon Valley's greatest minds misread pandemic demand. The Facebook logo reflected in a puddle at the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, California, U.S., on Monday, Oct.

Brian chesky bloomberg