WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO • Hacker News Board

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#321

Post by JohnFen » Tue, Sep 24, 2019, 9:20 PM UTC

ngngngng wrote: post #17

I'm so glad I read hacker news. I almost took a job at WeWork just 2 months ago with a recruiter working very hard to convince me I'd be rich when they IPO. Now I'm at a much smaller startup called Weave which is a really phenomenal place to work. I didn't discover until recently that it's also a YCombinator company. edit: to clarify, hacker news has been extremely skeptical of WeWork for some time, due to this, I wa…

> a recruiter working very hard to convince me I'd be rich when they IPO

When a recruiter makes that argument to me, I consider it a huge red flag all by itself, and am much less interested in working there.

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#322

Post by seibelj » Tue, Sep 24, 2019, 9:21 PM UTC

chid wrote: post #295

lpellis wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hackernews is skeptical of many things though, sometimes hard to filter through the noise.

What are some examples where HN is too skeptical? I find that it's a good filter to view "news"

blockchain

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#323

Post by ineedasername » Tue, Sep 24, 2019, 9:23 PM UTC

braythwayt wrote: post #142

joshcain wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In which case, the major failing of We was that it did not go public fast enough. I wonder if we'll see this translate into time pressure for future startups to go public a little earlier before the bloom is off the rose.

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#324

Post by rainyMammoth » Tue, Sep 24, 2019, 9:24 PM UTC

tasuki wrote: post #262

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I should value the stocks I only accept sign on bonuses, keep your stock, it's worth a lot... right?

I joined my current employer a couple days pre-IPO, was given stock options and told they might be worth a lot. Despite my insistence, I wasn't told the exercise price, nor how many shares were outstanding, nor any other relevant information, so (sensibly?) valued the options at around zero. They turned out to be worth more than my base salary.

Good for you but this is still extremely shady. Any respectable company should tell you how much you are getting and how those are currently being valued. Attaching no value to a private company RSU is pretty smart though.

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#325

Post by cure » Tue, Sep 24, 2019, 9:24 PM UTC

bduerst wrote: post #291

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starbucks has a long list of failed stores. They aren't that good at picking locations. They just saturate and keep what doesn't lose money.

Historically Starbucks has been used as a market indicator for other companies' expansion. If a starbucks opened in a location then it was assumed that there were growth factors at play in the market since that was the north star for Starbucks. Starbucks in 2019 is the McDonald's of coffee shops, so it's not the same, but if you track their Starbucks Reserve locations you'll find the same predictions being used.

The NYC Starbucks Reserve location is certainly in a hot spot, right next to the Google offices and Chelsea Market.

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#326

Post by iosonofuturista » Tue, Sep 24, 2019, 9:27 PM UTC

seibelj wrote: post #322

chid wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are some examples where HN is too skeptical? I find that it's a good filter to view "news"

blockchain

If anything, HN is not skeptical enough about THAT.

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#327

Post by alexnewman » Tue, Sep 24, 2019, 9:28 PM UTC

Every 20 years another company takes out long term debts when credit is cheap. It always crashes and it always brings its business partners with them. This should be unlawful and we need gov't organizations to never allow this type of risk to be taken.

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#328

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Sep 24, 2019, 9:29 PM UTC

komali2 wrote: post #171

metalliqaz wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I had a remarkably intense series of frontend... ish interviews for a really difficult to define project. As in, I was working very hard in the little 5 minute slices of time I got for "do you have any questions" figuring out just wtf the job was and what the team was doing, and nobody could really explain it. It was some sort of "connectivity and identification team" working to identify people/customers/tenants/what…

[deleted]

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#329

Post by kgbdrop1 » Tue, Sep 24, 2019, 9:29 PM UTC

mrguyorama wrote: post #299

avs733 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It never occurred to me just how pretentious/bad the name 'We' is until reading that article... >We will now need additional capital from the private markets, who are no longer under the influence >We has gone from unicorn to distressed asset in 30 days. >In just seven days, We lost more value than the three biggest losers in the S&P 500 have lost in the last year combined: Macy's, Nektar Therapeutics, and Kraft Hein…

>Kraft Heinz Super off topic but why the heck is Heinz losing so much value?

You got me curious as well. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/24/business/kraft-heinz-food... lists a boatload of issues.

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#330

Post by robbiemitchell » Tue, Sep 24, 2019, 9:33 PM UTC

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #206

codesushi42 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here, and only by reading the headlines. A WeWork recruiter reached out to me. I laughed out loud and added it to the list of companies I would never work for. Not only do they do nothing interesting, but they are apparently unethical as well. No doubt another failed tech bro pump 'n dump scheme headed to the dustbin of history.

Definitely just another failed tech bro pump 'n dump scheme headed to the dustbin of history. I seriously doubt that. I think they're overvalued too, but I predict WeWork is still going to be around in another decade. There's clearly a ton of demand for what they provide.

Corporate governance problems aside, they have major cash flow problems relative to debt obligations and are also losing money. One could argue the demand is there because the price is artificially low.