Don’t think of your workplace as a family: Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky

Brian Chesky had laid off 25 percent of Airbnb's workforce in 2020.

Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky recently opened up about a mistake he had made while announcing layoffs at the height of the Covid pandemic in 2020. He had penned a note to his employees describing the company as a family. “I have a deep feeling of love for all of you,” he wrote. Speaking at a podcast, Chesky said that he would frame his appreciation differently today.

No matter how much you like your colleagues, don’t think of your workplace as a family, he said. "Thinking of your workplace as family can be an effective motivational tool, but it can also make it difficult for bosses and employees alike to do their jobs," CNBC Make It quoted him as saying.

Describing the letter he wrote during the layoff, the Airbnb boss said, “I wrote that letter fairly quickly... I didn’t have a lot of time, and so I wrote what I felt and that’s what I felt, and I was pretty emotional when I was writing it. And it is true that a company’s not a family. In fact, we had to make that pivot."

Explaining that the company used to refer to its employees as its family, Chesky added, "And then we did have to fire people, or they’d have to leave the company, and you don’t fire members of your family.”

Airbnb had laid off 25 percent of its staff — or 1,900 workers — and suspended projects not directly related home-sharing, like movie production and transportation, in 2020.

Two years later, however, the company announced that employees were allowed to work out of anywhere and their salaries won't be affected.