Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 380 posts

Re: WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality

#201

Post by tejon »

bobthepanda wrote: post #179
kgwgk wrote: post #93

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-08/wework... "In addition to the corporate finance weirdness: “Going forward, the company will no longer be called WeWork but rather The We Company.” (“The switch is not a legal name change,” okay.) And: “Rather than just renting desks, the company aims to encompass all aspects of people’s lives, in both physical and digital worlds,” which is—and I have spent years w…

Ah, the Nintendo strategy. Why anyone at Nintendo thought that the Wii U was a good name for a completely new console is beyond me.

As someone who didn't own a TV, thus any consoles: the Switch was out before I learned the Wii U wasn't just an accessory for the Wii.

Re: WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality

#202

Post by nostromo »

_bfhp wrote: post #183
kgwgk wrote: post #93

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-08/wework... "In addition to the corporate finance weirdness: “Going forward, the company will no longer be called WeWork but rather The We Company.” (“The switch is not a legal name change,” okay.) And: “Rather than just renting desks, the company aims to encompass all aspects of people’s lives, in both physical and digital worlds,” which is—and I have spent years w…

Did Google not do something similar?

When you have Google’s track record you can get away with things We can’t.

Re: WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality

#203

Post by avip »

kgwgk wrote: post #93

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-08/wework... "In addition to the corporate finance weirdness: “Going forward, the company will no longer be called WeWork but rather The We Company.” (“The switch is not a legal name change,” okay.) And: “Rather than just renting desks, the company aims to encompass all aspects of people’s lives, in both physical and digital worlds,” which is—and I have spent years w…

We is an SV generated dream workspace built... to change a human being into this.

Re: WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality

#204

Post by sixstringtheory »

sriram_sun wrote: post #151
reaperducer wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One shake of the economy and everybody will cut WeWork and go back home or somewhere considerably more affordable Or even free. When I was in the Seattle tech scene about ten years ago, the State of Washington had free co-working space at the convention center as a way to stimulate local entrepreneurship. The desks were a little strange, but they were free!

Do not forget your local community college and city libraries!

Remote coder here, this is my jam. I can get a whole conference room all day and kick back in my local library, which I can lock behind me if I want to jump out to use the bathroom or eat. Granted, this is in Fairbanks, not LA or SF :)

But even living in Boston I never saw the libraries super packed, usually plenty of room in the top-floor old-school reading room at the central branch on Boylston. Maybe not on holidays, but those sucked for cafes too in the city–better to just stay home or not work those days.

Internet can be a crapshoot, but I can do most of my work tethered to cell anyways. I always have that one cafe with awesome WiFi I can go to for downloading OS/IDE updates.

Re: WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality

#205

Post by dpau »

sixstringtheory wrote: post #194
sudosteph wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case anyone is wondering: not worth the read unless you're just interested in the history of dystopic fiction. The characters are boring and everything drags on far too long.

I’ll agree it can get boring at times, but it was incredibly creative and a lot of the descriptions of the world in the book are unlike any other I’ve read about and were quite poetic, while at the same time mathematic and scientific. Still, it’s a pretty short read and should be of much interest to those into scifi and dystopias.

I agree, incredibly creative. Definitely worth the read for anyone who enjoyed 1984, Brave New World, etc. I don’t recall it being boring in the least, perhaps the translation is partly to blame.

Re: WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality

#206

Post by bartread »

kgwgk wrote: post #93

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-08/wework... "In addition to the corporate finance weirdness: “Going forward, the company will no longer be called WeWork but rather The We Company.” (“The switch is not a legal name change,” okay.) And: “Rather than just renting desks, the company aims to encompass all aspects of people’s lives, in both physical and digital worlds,” which is—and I have spent years w…

"The We Company": somebody didn't check what that sounds like when spoken in British English. Wait, what? A company that manufactures and or sells wee?!?? (Pee, to our American friends.) It's not as extreme as powergenitalia or expertsexchange but still something of a facepalm.

Re: WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality

#207

Post by [deleted] »

kgwgk wrote: post #93

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-08/wework... "In addition to the corporate finance weirdness: “Going forward, the company will no longer be called WeWork but rather The We Company.” (“The switch is not a legal name change,” okay.) And: “Rather than just renting desks, the company aims to encompass all aspects of people’s lives, in both physical and digital worlds,” which is—and I have spent years w…

[deleted]

Re: WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality

#208

Post by Brockenstein »

scandox wrote: post #5
Traster wrote: post #4

>The Gulf investors backing the Vision Fund seem to have decided that WeWork is not a tech bet but simply an aggressive punt on real estate. This is the bogey man of a huge number of current 'tech startups' - What if it turns out Tesla really are a car company! Or if We Work are actually an office rental company! OR gasp Uber is a cab company! (1) We now have a glut of companies operating in traditional markets that…

In 1999 there was an email going round about how ridiculous dotcom valuations were. Taking Amazon, I think, as an example it said it would have to earn more than Kodak, Boeing, Caterpillar etc to ever be worth it's valuation. There was a general sense of "it's just a bookstore". Now I know everything is more mature and the situation is different, but I also remember feeling very confident that Amazon was waaay overva…

During the dotcom bubble thousands of companies were way over valued, where are they now? Mostly gone. Amazon survived and evolved. They actually were the exception. That doesn't mean every company that you can imagine being in a similar boat to amazon is going to end up in the same boat as amazon or even close to it.

Not to mention when the dotcom bubble popped Amazon's stock price took a beating and didn't really surpass its dotcom bubble peak until fall 2009, 9 years later...

Re: WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality

#209

Post by linkmotif »

ghaff wrote: post #181
linkmotif wrote: post #148

I really wanted WeWork to work for me. But it did not. During my time there, it became apparent that their entire focus was on growth. WeWork was never interested in catering to their core market: people who want to work. They failed to create a productive work environment. They alienated people like me, who were willing to pay top dollar for a decent place to work. Instead they created distraction-filled, tacky plac…

Aren't "co-working" and "nice, quiet place to work" sort of mutually exclusive? It's like nice quiet open office plan. I suppose it's possible in theory but doesn't seem to be the norm. Certainly there are lots of places that rent private offices.

> Aren't "co-working" and "nice, quiet place to work" sort of mutually exclusive?

I don't think this has to be true. Why can't people co-work together, quietly? This used to be the case in libraries, before libraries became places where governments administer social services.

It's nice to work around other people, just as long as they are not on phone calls or taking meetings. These people belong in call centers or meeting rooms, so that people who aren’t talking can continue thinking and working.

> Certainly there are lots of places that rent private offices.

After giving up on the open office hot desk, I switched to a private office in WeWork. You could hear the music from the hallway. Furthermore, this particular WeWork was situated on top of a beer garden. Every weekend my "private office" most literally started shaking and vibrating as the beer garden turned into a club. I am not exaggerating. It was a joke.

Re: WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality

#210

Post by linkmotif »

subpixel wrote: post #192
linkmotif wrote: post #148

I really wanted WeWork to work for me. But it did not. During my time there, it became apparent that their entire focus was on growth. WeWork was never interested in catering to their core market: people who want to work. They failed to create a productive work environment. They alienated people like me, who were willing to pay top dollar for a decent place to work. Instead they created distraction-filled, tacky plac…

Brooklyn Creative League

Thanks for the recommendation. Not seeing anything on there suggesting they provide quiet places to work.
Post reply on HN