Did Airbnb kill the PM role?

[report-to-trees]

The best products and features I've ever worked on were run by engineering and design working very closely together, while the PM role was pretty much exclusively stakeholder / client communication.

It's a shame how large organizations always form a layer of "product owners" who fight amongst each other for ownership and control.

[talideon]

They did kill a whole bunch of things... like the ability to rent at a reasonable rate and the ability to get a mortgage that doesn't lean heavily on the 'mort' part.

[_just7_]

Yeah I don't really think a meaningfully larger amount people are traveling because Airbnb is an app that exist, so demand from tourism should stay flat, no?

[revenga99]

not looking at actual hard cold data but it's easy for someone to come to this annedonatal conclusion. In Asheville NC my entire neighborhood is being bought up by a corporation that is doing airbnb/VRBO. Also very hard to get ahold of anyone in case of a noise complaint.

[brador]

For anyone else wondering:

“Mortgage: late Middle English: from Old French, literally ‘dead pledge’, from mort (from Latin mortuus ‘dead’) + gage ‘pledge’”

[111111IIIIIII]

If you really believe Airbnb is to blame for this, I have a bridge to sell you.

[brigadier132]

Everyone loves a boogieman. The reason rents are high are not because of short term rentals. They are high because of inflation and globalization.

[mrfumier]

As a superhost who use the Airbnb mobile app and website everyday, the experience is quite awful.

Basic functions are not there, while the app already seems to be bloated.

I'm wondering if any of the product manager there ever used their product.

[huevosabio]

Same here.

The hosting app is terribl. To the point that there's an ecosystem of apps for managing properties, and most of the functions are just basic features that either exist or should on the Airbnb app.

The app is so bad, that I can't trust it with showing me who arrives today in the summary page, instead I go to the calendar.

And yes, I feel like they should make their PMs or designers use the hosting side of the app.

[tkjef]

Ever use the VRBO hosting app? Almost unusable. Sooo delayed on every button push. Horrible onboarding experience with no messages of what to expect. Can’t edit the property description from the app, have to use the website. The effing property description!!

[the_mar]

To be fair good product designers do like 85% of PM's job. Design is not what it looks like, it's how it works.

[yawnxyz]

At Microsoft many years ago, they used to put a lot of product design work on PMs (who didn't have the training or time / bandwidth to do that well). I think this was the Ballmer era...

[ativzzz]

It just depends if you hire more designers or PMs. Doing designs is a lot of work, but so is talking to customers and developing high level product strategy - talking internally about what needs to be done.

If your designers are doing the latter two, that means they're not spending nearly enough time talking to customers

[DragonStrength]

Sounds like Apple, right? You focus on product marketing, keep the decision-making close knit, and say "no" a lot. You can go a long time as an engineer there without ever talking to a product person.

[belugacat]

There’s a reason why Airbnb is paying for as many LoveFrom billable hours as they can.

[alexzhues]

None of this sounds revolutionary to me. This article implies PMs at AirBnB should handle the role of Product Marketing, have talent for design, and handle user flows. I think most companies already seek out those skills, but generally struggle to find that talent so they settle by finding specialists who can do each function well.

[jamiegreen]

I don't think it's revolutionary. They simply seem to have focused the role on what's important for them.

[revskill]

Sure. Product manager, product analysis,... they're bunch of "configurator" whose jobs is learn by heart how to config a system.

They're critical !

The issue is, their salary and their "political position" in a company is a concern. How can that "boring" role compare to a Senior Developer, or a Designer overall ?

[jvans]

The incentive structure of the PM role is to pump out new features when a lot of the time making something more reliable or easier to use has more user value. Design and Engineering should jointly take on this role

[Medh_Suk]

Getting rid of a job title doesn't mean getting rid of the work that needs doing.

Someone still has to own the "why" and the "what" of the product you're building—if it's not the PM, then it is engineering manager or design leader taking on this role.

[kbos87]

…quite likely at the cost of other important work that designers and engineers would otherwise spend their time doing. You can move chess pieces around all you want - and sometimes there are reasons to do that - but every org structure change comes with unintended consequences.

[carimura]

> Only ship something you are proud of.

meh. lots of companies are wildly successful with crappy products built by 9-5 teams. or startups with founders that are embarrassed by v0.1 or even v1.0.

[seizethecheese]

Depends on scale and industry, right?

A post-scale consumer company should only ship something they are highly proud of.

[randyrand]

What is a PM?

Program, Project, or Product? which one?

[manishsharan]

Why is AirBnb still a thing ? Do people like doing chores while on a vacation ?

[chongli]

Airbnb is a thing because landlords pulled their long term rental units off the market and converted them into short terms at X times the old rate. Landlords love it because they make way more profit. Business travellers love it because they can stay in a nice trendy house or apartment instead of a hotel and they expense the trip anyway.

The people who don’t love it are the neighbours and anyone in the market for long term rentals.

[jedberg]

I just stayed at two AirBnBs. I'm not sure what "doing chores" means. Sure I had to tidy up a bit when I left, but I would do that regardless because I'm a decent human being. Even when I stay at a hotel I wipe down the sink and strip the bed before I leave.

In the meantime I had a condo next to the beach with a kitchen and beach toys in both locations for less than the hotel next door cost (which would not have a kitchen, meaning that I'd have to eat out every meal, which gets pricy with two kids).

[jamiegreen]

I think it is nice to have a kitchen if it’s more than a few days.

But the chores are a bit much sometimes

[padjo]

Personally I find social interactions with hotel employees far more exhausting than straightening up a bit.

[alfalfasprout]

Having traveled for years on Airbnb it's extremely rare I actually have to do any sort of "chores". At most throw some dishes in the dishwasher or strip the bed (but even then that's not the norm).

[harry8]

Because hotels really are as bad for purpose as they are expensive?

[moffkalast]

Because hotels charge 100x the rate per night, all else being equal?