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WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

wsj.com

141–150 of 551 posts

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Stuff like this can ruin people's lives. But does it really? Sure, it sucks if you get tricked to accept a lower salary, but I'd assume that even a below average software developer salary will be enough to lead a somewhat comfortable life.

Think about it this way: Joining a startup is an opportunity to be part of a team that's doing something really hard, so you need to trust each other. Lying about the compensation structure isn't a good foundation for trust. Now, you're spending at least a year of your life, working 40+ hour weeks in close proximity to someone who cheaply misled you.

s/40/80/g

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#142

Well, corporate governance was one of the main factors why the market refused to accept anything close to their last private valuation, so this makes sense. Note that they desperately need the public money before the end of December in order to avoid running out of cash [0]. My bet is that they will now try to remarket We as a shareholder-controlled company, will maybe even eliminate the multi-class stock structure i…

Corporate governance was definitely a factor, but getting cut down from $47B to $10-15B is... a lot. Public market investors clearly have a much worse opinion of We's fundamentals than SoftBank did.

You are presuming that SOftBank believed in the fundamentals, and not in the proposition that if you carefully stage a series of cash injections at increasing valuations, the charismatic founder's PR halo will impart a shine onto the company's shares.

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#143

Sorry for my ignorance on this, but recently I find that top hacker news articles need a paid subscription. Do you have a trick for accessing them or just everyone here has a paid subscription?

On NYT in particular, load the page, when the text loads hit escape and the subscription nag simply doesn't load. It's not particularly ethical, but on the other hand maybe NYT should get serious about the software that's meant to protect its business model.

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don't see them wrestling control away from the deranged, cult leader. He truly believes he is destined to be president of the world and revolutionize.. well every thing. There best bet would be to drop the multi-class structure to get into passive funds. It needs $8.1b market cap to get into S&P500.

Is this part of the business model of these large, unprofitable VC-backed companies? Build a valuation to meet the 8.1bn threshold, then sell the shares to passive investors in S&P 500 index funds?

And for VC's to build a story and evaluation interesting enough for SoftBank to buy in? Because it sometimes seems like it...

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WeWork is basically a real estate company. Why would they need a data science engineer?

From what I understand they wanted to instrument their offices (with cameras, microphones, thermometers, etc.) to collect data on the occupants ostensibly because they’re trying to be a tech company. Felt Orwellian, but it sounded interesting enough to at least hear them out.

Not that it's novel — there are corporations specialized in tools to monitor employee activity — but there's no bamboozling in that claim: monitoring nearly every activity, no matter how intrusive, is what almost software and hardware does now.

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How else would they be able to determine that people like to drink coffee in the morning? https://twitter.com/modestproposal1/status/10855834347880202...

I mean, that's not what the writing said at all. The data said that the line for coffee was too long, so they hired a barista to help out with the line.

I’m exaggerating for comedic effect.

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#150

Sorry for my ignorance on this, but recently I find that top hacker news articles need a paid subscription. Do you have a trick for accessing them or just everyone here has a paid subscription?

If you by chance have a mac or an iPhone, you can use Safari's reader mode read all the text comfortably after the page loads. Most of these sites load the text and then load some js to hide it from you. I've found reader mode works reasonably well on NYT and Bloomberg.
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