The CEO of Airbnb is calling out other corporate executives who are now
demanding that their workers go back to the office and stop working remotely.
In fact, he argues that the executives themselves are likely working remotely,
maybe they're traveling, maybe they're in luxurious parts of the country.
He says, quote, I guarantee you that many of these CEOs who are calling
people back to the office in New York City are going away to the Hamptons for
the summer or going to Europe in August.
I still think that's happening.
So you still have incremental flexibility.
That's way more than the old world before Zoom.
And he also says, well,
Airbnb announced last year that it will allow employees to live and
work from anywhere without pay loss if they stayed in their home countries.
Chesky, that's the CEO, said at the time that Airbnb had the most productive
two-year period in our company's history, all while working remotely.
And I believe him on that, I think that this idea that people can't be productive
while they work from home is ridiculous.
But at the same time,
I just wanna note that he probably has a little bit of an interest in
encouraging people to continue allowing their workers to work remotely.
Because if you can work remotely, you can work from anywhere, and you might
decide to rent an Airbnb in a different town and enjoy that town during the week.
I mean, it's good for his business, so
I have no doubt it's part of the reason why he's advocating for it.
>> Ding, ding, ding ding, we have a winner [LAUGH] that is the correct answer.
Of course, the CEO of Airbnb says, I'll just go vacation somewhere,
maybe rent out somebody's house and work from there.
I'm spitballing here, I was brainstorming earlier today.
So of course that depends, he's gonna say that.
In terms of the CEOs and what they should do and
should they ask people to come back to work.
Well, first I gotta say that apparently I'm doing the CEOing wrong because he's
like, all the CEOs are doing it from the Hamptons anyway.
I'm like, they are [LAUGH]?
Why aren't I in the Hamptons CEOing from over there?
And this is the thing that I've heard my whole life about,
everybody takes August off.
When do I get to take August off?
Okay, so I'm doing all of this wrong.
So anyways, but to the core of the issue, I think it's so easy,
this issue, I don't know.
But everybody has to be in camps at all times, and
all camps have to be extreme and binary, okay?
Either everybody has to come in, no one has to come in, it has to be the same for
each company, doesn't it depend?
What does the company do?
If you're on an assembly line, sad day, but you really gotta go in, right?
If you're a host, for example,
in a show that's shot in a studio, you gotta go in, right?
>> Yeah, except if it's a Friday.
>> I was gonna say ironically though, Sharon and
Ana are at home right now [LAUGH].
>> You're gonna take a shot at us.
I understand it's self-serving, but spot on, okay,
the American worker has been nickeled and dimed, caged,
[LAUGH] watched, put on camera.
Whatever you wanna call it, let people be free.
And yes, these CEOs that are not Cenk are in the Hamptons with what's good for
them, not good for you.
And that to me is very simple too, yeah, if you're in a factory and
that's your job, you're gonna go in.
If you're delivering packages for UPS, okay, you'll be on the road a little bit,
but everybody else should get, as long as you're getting the work done.
And by the way, doesn't that save brick and mortar and utilities and
all kinds of things?
What's the problem here?
>> Well, I'm gonna say, I favor being able to work remotely, so
I wanna be clear about that.
I think that it does allow some flexibility and some freedom for
the worker, it saves money for the worker too.
Because you don't have to deal with a super annoying commute like I do every day
where you're stuck in traffic for an hour after a super stressful day of doing a job
that requires you to absorb all sorts of terrible news.
But nonetheless, this is not about me.
Really?
This is about, let's say, San Francisco.
So Airbnb is based in San Francisco.
And I gotta be honest, we have to at least address that there are some downsides to
people working remotely and never going back to the office.
So right now I wanna give you some numbers, okay?
Let's go to graphic four here.
In San Francisco, the home of Airbnb's global headquarters,
roughly 18.4 million square feet of office space downtown is vacant,
and more than 30% of office buildings have space available to lease or sublease.
And my heart really goes out for the landlords, I'm just kidding,
it's not about the landlords.
It's actually about what has happened to San Francisco as a result of people no
longer going into work, right?
It's kind of a ghost town that has basically paved the way for
a lot of small businesses to fail.
When there's less people out and about, less people riding BART, for
instance, to get to and from work, that creates a lot more opportunity for
people to carry out some pretty antisocial behavior, stuff like that.
So, I mean, San Francisco is falling apart right now, it just is.
And I read this article on Curb today, it was a reporter who's like,
these people are probably all conservatives who
are talking about San Francisco, I'm sure San Francisco's fine.
She goes to do a story about San Francisco and the piece ends up being, my God,
I was totally wrong, San Francisco is a mess.
And so my heart goes out to people who are living in those conditions right now.
It is having an impact on just local communities there, and
I don't know what the solution is.
I think forcing people to go back into the office might not necessarily be the right
answer.
But there have been some proposals,
including the opportunity to turn commercial property or
those office spaces into something we desperately need, housing.
But I also wanna be honest about how complicated that can be as well,
because each individual office might not have its own individual bathroom, right?
So it would take some significant work to renovate those buildings and
transition them into affordable housing.
What do you guys think?
>> Yeah, look, I think that those issues are related but
are not going to intersect.
So here's what I mean by that.
So is Anna right about San Francisco and other places and
commercial real estate being in massive trouble?
Yes, Charlie Munger, legendary investor, partner of Warren Buffett, recently warned
commercial real estate's in deep, deep trouble and that iceberg's coming soon.
And that affects the local businesses, that's all true.
But when you're running a company, you're not gonna care about that at all,
if I'm being honest.
You're just gonna care about what is most efficient for my company, right?
Because we all gotta survive, etc, etc.
And so to me this answer is super simple, it really depends.
So even within a company, so I was saying earlier about folks who have to come in,
so if you're part of the studio crew, you have to come in, there's no way around it.
On the other hand, there's no reason for engineers or salespeople to come in.
And what's happened during COVID was basically we all realized, yeah,
we don't really know why you guys are coming in.
You could do that, all you need is a computer, right, and
you have that at home.
So there's tons of jobs that you don't have to come in, and those folks,
a lot of them wanna stay at home.
And you're gonna be able to save money by having them at home,
you have to pay less rent, etc.
So people are just going to make the decisions that are best for them, and
it's gonna naturally lead to whatever result that it leads to, which is this.
I mean, it's not gonna go back to the way that it was, and
commercial real estate is gonna be hurt, a lot of the cities are gonna be hurt,
but people are gonna make relatively rational decisions.
That means only a portion of the workforce is gonna come back into the office.
>> It's true, it just sucks that the tech industry destroyed
affordable housing in San Francisco.
And then now that they're all working remotely,
they're destroying small businesses that employ people living in San Francisco.
It does have a domino effect, and
a lot of people are hurting in San Francisco right now.
And again, that's not to say that I wanna force everyone to go back to work, but
the tech industry certainly did a doozy [LAUGH] on San Francisco,
to say the least.