Joe Zadeh
Age 28
At 28, Joe was finishing his thesis at Caltech, feeling trapped by PhD parameters and a weight that academic pursuit imposes. Joe’s parents, his father an engineer and his mother a doctor, had left Iran to pursue better opportunities in the U.S. Achievement was not optional. Within six months, Joe had course corrected away from synthetic biology to a nascent, unknown startup, Airbnb, as one of its first employees. His parents were supportive, but baffled by the decision.
“Why would a PhD in Bioengineering work for a small company letting strangers rent out each other’s beds?”
Age 29
We’ve known each other since our undergrad years at Northwestern. Joe described this portrait of him at age 29:
“This is pre-Uber and pre-me-being-able-to-afford-a-taxi. So you drove me to the airport and I slept. I figured that I would just sleep on a couch somewhere. No couch at the airport. Not doing that again. … I was just starting out.”
By 30, Joe had transitioned from engineer to product manager, as Airbnb dealt with its first major PR crisis when someone’s home got ransacked. “I kind of thought I knew what I was doing, only to find out in the next couple of years that I did not know what I was doing.” But in that moment of crisis, Joe saw the opportunity to make the platform more secure and led a team to release 40 trust and safety features—in two weeks. Colleagues noticed.
Age 30
“I was one part of an entire company response … we were going to own up to mistakes and we emerged stronger for it.”
Age 31
Age 32
Age 33
Joe’s sameness and his growth have aligned with Airbnb’s.
“I’ve always been curious to learn, not just about engineering and technology. I always want to learn holistically. I’m always in my head, contemplative.”
He describes responsibility for the launch of Airbnb Experiences— “Intense pressure. It’s like the whole world is going to see what you’ve been working on, and it’s Airbnb’s second act. Most companies fail to get their second business off the ground. It feels really big, but there’s [the concern], ‘Don’t fuck it up.’”
Age 34
Age 35
Age 36
At 36,
“I feel a lot more confident, able to take a lot of feedback to improve, to not get rattled by things as much as I used to. I mean, I still classify myself as a pretty intense person. It gets the better of me sometimes, but I feel like a lot of the things that would cause me to panic in the past don’t cause me to panic now. One thing I really struggled with when I was just starting as a manager was a person unhappy in their role. I would lose a lot of sleep over that. Now, I try to help them and I see patterns. I know that I can’t win them all and I’ll do my best and we’ll try to figure it out. I think just taking a step back and not trying to over-engineer a solution helps a lot.”
For Joe, the portraits from the past decade “trigger a lot,” including contemplation of nature, art, and relationships in the desert at Burning Man, and especially the grounding and core meaning in life that his family gives him. He shifts to his wife Becca and daughter Zoe.
Age 37
“Having a kid is—they change so fast, it's shocking, it just makes you realize how fast life goes. They won't slow down.”
When work-life balance was relentlessly skewed to work, Joe was aware of it and knew he’d be lost without his family. A constant has been wanting them to know they mean everything to him.
Age 38
Age 39
Regarding this span of life, Joe captures his duality: