Sounds like a good systems design interview question. Design an Airbnb like website operating globally.

I think going through this exercise will show it's more than "just a website"

Most major companies have to build a high reliability, highly-scalable website operating globally. Lots of people know how to build these things [except of course for contractors that the US federal government hires], and most of them don't have "tech hubs" in any major city unless they're ... you know ... actual tech companies. Why do we consider a glorified hotel company like Airbnb a tech company? Just because YC invested in them?

How is a company that is an entirely online marketplace with no physical property not a 'tech company'?

> Why does Airbnb need a "tech hub?"

To agree on different grounds;

They had some remote employees before; have had some remote employees (awkwardly, as an exception while promoting remote work), and will have been all remote for 1.5 years by August.

Will this actually hire jobs in the area? Or is it going to be a reserve office for occasional team building events that is located near a major airport.

Maybe they don't "need" one, but they have contributed in a very meaningful way to the web dev community so I feel that this is a harsh take. Check out Lottie, Mavericks, and their contributions to the React ecosystem.

You're asking the wrong guy; I consider React one of the worst mistakes in technology, and it's the main reason Airbnb's website sucks (I speak as a superhost who has to use the thing a lot).

I agree that AirBnB's website sucks, but why do you think this is caused by them using React?

How does react connect to your experience using the site as a host?

Complexity != Importance.

Airbnb is investing in their business, in what they believe (and they probably know from their numbers) will grow their future. They don't have to rationalize it only if there is complexity involved.

Data that airbnb owns values much more than their website stuff. And you need tech people in ML and data areas to manage and use these data effectively.

Agreed, meanwhile large banks do things that are technically incredible but get seen as boring.

Exactly my point. I'd venture to guess that Marriott (another hotel company that actually owns their properties and thus arguably has more at stake) has a tech stack vastly more complicated than Airbnb's, and yet Marriott would never announce they're building a "tech hub" in any city.

I think you are probably overestimating how enterprise does tech. Subcontracting, consultancies are the name of the game

For me at least, I found banking to be incredible, teams of DBAs managing very expensive database servers to perfection and high scale web apps that almost always work correctly

Such as?

moving billions of dollars daily with csv, tsv fixed-width files and sftp. /s

Petabytes upon petabytes, and it has to be correct, really well archived, and set up for reporting, stats, and ad hoc