Becoming a doctor and trying to make it as a DJ have both crossed Michael Kinoti’s mind at one time or another. Instead, we’re lucky to have Michael (who goes by Kinoti) as Airbnb’s Director of Engineering for the Marketing Technology team. He brings with him over 15 years of industry experience at Microsoft and Uber, as well as a global perspective from his childhood in Kenya. Kinoti is passionate about travel and having a large-scale social impact, qualities that align nicely with Airbnb’s mission and vision. Here’s Kinoti’s story in his own words.
Doctor, lawyer, or engineer?
Anybody who grew up in Kenya around when I did is probably aware that medicine, law, and engineering were the only options for an ambitious student. And at least in my family, while all three careers were highly regarded, nothing was quite as prized as becoming a doctor.
Needless to say, I made my parents very proud when I was accepted to medical school. This is the story of the more than 20 years since, during which I’ve learned so much and have found my niche — as a software engineering leader.
Choosing my own adventure
It may help to describe how I arrived at that medical school acceptance in the first place, and how by that time, I had already started developing an interest in computers. As the child of an entrepreneur father and an engineer mother, I am grateful to have had two amazing role models from a young age. My mother’s grit has been particularly inspiring. She was the only female in her university cohort, and time and time again she has had to work harder than everybody else to prove herself. She became a leader at Kenya’s major telecom company and directly contributed to bringing the country high-speed Internet, giving my generation and ones after access to a world of information.
Always proponents of education, my parents sent me to one of the country’s premier institutions, the Starehe Boys’ Centre and School. The school’s mission is to develop youth into better human beings and leaders, with an emphasis on a holistic education beyond just academics. To this day, I live by the school’s values: integrity, leadership, and service.
I was lucky to be one of the first students in Kenya to take a computer studies course in school. While most students used the computer lab to play video games, myself included, I spent a lot of my time learning how to code. Seeing my deep interest in programming, my classmates would joke that I was going to be the next Bill Gates. I think those formative experiences instilled in me a dream to one day work at Microsoft, one of the biggest technology companies in the world. I wanted to make an impact through technology, which I saw and continue to see as an engine for leveling the global playing field. At the time, however, that was all just a dream and Redmond, Washington couldn’t have felt further away.
For a while, I put chasing that dream on hold as I applied to medical school and was later accepted. Everything was set for me to matriculate in six months’ time, and during that gap I took the opportunity to get some more hands-on coding experience. I realized that medicine wasn’t for me and that not only did I want to study software engineering, but I wanted to come to the United States to be as close as possible to Silicon Valley.
It took a lot of courage to admit this change of heart to my parents, and their initial reaction was a pragmatic one — it was too expensive, too far, and just not feasible to go abroad. Still, I was motivated to give it a try, so I took the SAT on my own and did everything else needed to apply to American colleges. I received some acceptance letters and, by showing my initiative, convinced my parents that my dream might be within reach after all.
Dreams do come true, but then what?
I remember being extremely excited leading up to my move to the US, until about halfway through the plane journey when it hit me that I was leaving my family and everything I knew behind. I had to overcome that fear and the imposter syndrome that came from doubting whether I picked the right path. To add to that, there’s a lot of culture shock that accompanies moving continents. For the first time in my life I was an ethnic minority and had to grapple with what that meant.
For me, the culture shock extended into the classroom, too. I enrolled at the Florida Institute of Technology to study software engineering. It was my first time seeing students challenging teachers and engaging in open discussions. Putting myself in a new environment exposed me to an entirely new outlook.
The amount of effort I put into adjusting to my new home paid off more than I could have ever imagined. I used to be a kid in Kenya with a vague sense that coming to America was the right move for me. With a lot of hard work, I got a job at my dream company: Microsoft!
Microsoft had so much support and mentorship, along with growth and learning opportunities that kept me busy for 11 years. To an extent, I was still following the mindset I grew up with that values loyalty. The path was clear: I could have stayed at the company indefinitely, then gotten married, and soon after started a family. What I learned from all the friends I made over those years, however, is that Microsoft is just one of many companies doing amazing things. Once you get to a point in your career where you’re not growing the same way, you’re not learning the same way, or you just want a different challenge, it’s okay to change.
I had focused on infrastructure during my time at Microsoft, and as much as I enjoyed it, I wanted to keep exploring. I joined Uber to lead the team building the company’s customer support platform. This is where I discovered my niche for building platforms at the sweet spot between product and infrastructure. I love being able to shape systems that directly affect millions of people and translate into features that people can see and feel.
Why I picked Airbnb
After a bit over three years at Uber, I made the switch to Airbnb, which felt right for so many reasons. Airbnb’s mission around building belonging and connection really resonated with me. The company has an ambitious vision, and I believe promoting belonging and connection are fundamental to solving so many other societal problems. This, in addition to travel being a passion of mine (I’ve been to 55 countries across 6 continents!) made me very excited about Airbnb.
The way Airbnb works toward its mission is unique. We have a creative touch when it comes to technology, something our CEO, Brian, encourages a lot. We care deeply about the details and chasing perfection in a healthy way. Of course, there’s no such thing as actual perfection, but to strive for that the way we do at Airbnb produces great results, something our users see every time they interact with the product.
Arguably the biggest factor in my decision, though, was Airbnb’s culture. This can be hard to fully put into words; what I love about Airbnb’s culture comes through in all the little things you experience day to day. There’s a genuine warmness between people who seek to build belonging and connection everywhere they go. People are welcoming, particularly to new hires. Even the interview process at Airbnb feels more human and conversational, which is different from so many other companies. Culture starts with the details and adds up into bigger things too: I think Airbnb truly excels at work-life integration and as somebody who recently started a family, I’m very glad I came here.
Integrity, leadership, and service at Airbnb
At Airbnb, I lead the Marketing Technology (Growth Platform) team responsible for Canvas, an internal platform that enables marketing and product teams to effectively engage with customers. Our overarching goal is to drive business growth and product engagement. Canvas has tools for creating, managing, and measuring content that gets published both to Airbnb and offsite channels such as emails, notifications, and ads. I’ve reaffirmed how much I enjoy my role as a platform owner since I get to be at the nexus of so many areas that are important to the overall business. I get to think about everything from notifications, to personalization using machine learning, to the underlying infrastructure powering it all.
On a daily basis, I put into practice the three values I’ve lived by since my days in school: integrity, leadership, and service. My philosophy around leadership is that it’s not about power or being in charge. Rather, leadership is a form of service. I make a point to be empathetic, and my mission as a leader is to unlock the best in others through coaching and mentorship. My own mentors and coaches have played a large part in getting me to where I am, and I seek to pay that forward.
Of course, integrity also remains at the heart of every decision I make as a leader. Privacy and compliance are key focus areas for my team right now, which I enjoy because of the strong alignment those goals have with my value of integrity. To me, integrity means handling user data with the same care I’d want for my own data.
Currently, we’re also doing cutting-edge work on personalizing our marketing. Instead of blasting out the same email campaign to every user, we want to identify the journey a particular user is on and customize the content they see to be more relevant. Not only is this an interesting technical problem, it’s a nuanced issue of respecting user privacy while offering a more tailored experience.
In the last couple years, Airbnb has been undergoing an incredible transformation from a startup into a mature company. There’s a huge modernization effort within the company to scale our tech stack to match the scale at which we have a global impact. If that’s interesting to you, I encourage you to check out openings at Airbnb. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from the wild ride I’ve had so far is that there’s no set path you need to follow — take a chance, and you’ll be amazed by what you might achieve.