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WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

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Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#481

Post by kerkeslager »

icelancer wrote: post #285
kerkeslager wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Oh, they'll just walk away from the leases. Each lease is owned by a different subsidiary. That subsidiary will just file bankruptcy. Problem solved. They'll just cut the losers, and turn up the dial on the profitable buildings." Ugh. What an awful culture we live in where this is considered perfectly normal behavior.

Shrug. Takes two to sign a lease. The commercial landlord knew what they were getting into.

That's it, all unethical behavior is suddenly okay if it's legal, and caveat emptor?

Contracts have very little meaning if one of the signatories can disappear without holding their end of the bargain and without consequences. Is this the society you want, one where giving someone your word is meaningless?

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#482

Post by fro0116 »

ageitgey wrote: post #304
jen20 wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The advantage to me with Spaces (which I believe is owned by Regus) is that I can do guest co-working in any city they happen to be present - and since I travel extensively, the bigger the network the better, as far as I'm concerned. Sadly WeWork do not appear to offer this option (or didn't last time I looked).

WeWork offers this if you sign up for an American Express Platinum Business card and take advantage of the free year of WeWork benefit. I can (and do!) book any WeWork in the world any day - all for $0. Yes, that's right, the free AMEX WeWork plan is significantly better than any WeWork plan you can buy. That's start-up logic for you. I stopped paying WeWork after 1-2 years as a paying customer because their free pla…

Wow... this is actually quite tempting for $595!

Are there any limits to how much you can make use of this offer or the kinds of spaces available?

_Surely_ they won't let you just camp an entire private office in SF all year round when it's supposed to cost upwards of $1000 per month?

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#483

Post by Nemo_bis »

joshpadnick wrote: post #210

I'm sure I'll get downvoted for this, but I actually just signed up to be a (thankfully month-to-month) WeWork customer for a HotDesk today in Phoenix, and it's actually been a pretty great experience: Great space, nice people, reasonable IT, I was up and running and working within 30 minutes of doing my tour. And yes I've had a cup of the famous We Kombucha. This particular location just opened 3 weeks ago and is ap…

Reasonable IT? Are you paying for an encrypted wi-fi? https://www.cnet.com/news/weworks-weak-wi-fi-security-leaves...

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#484

Post by tomc1985 »

lpellis wrote: post #286
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…

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

It's be dumb not to be with the amount of crap, optimism, and snake oil shoveled at us

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#485

Post by JBSay »

munificent wrote: post #240
cj wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What's the benefit to a large corporation doing this instead of lots of small companies? (The economies of scale need to outweigh the large corporate overhead.) I like this way of thinking. WeWork isn't doing anything "new" - coworking spaces have existed for years. What's the upside of having a giant corporation owning all coworking spaces, versus having many small and independent small businesses running and opera…

> What's the upside of having a giant corporation owning all coworking spaces, versus having many small and independent small businesses running and operating independent coworking spaces? Advantage to customers? Likely minimal. Advantage to the company itself: economies of scale and, likely more importantly, lack of competition allowing them to increase prices. The very clear trend across all sectors is that compani…

Clearly false as there is no regulation to prevent the formation of very large companies (anti-trust laws don't apply). In fact companies tend toward giant behemoths in part BECAUSE of government regulation. Small companies can't afford the enormous fixed cost of compliance the way large ones can. Regulations are a huge incentive for market consolidation and large corporations love writing new barriers to entry regulations.

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#486

Post by wsc981 »

88840-8855 wrote: post #253
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…

I must say, I am jealous. It seems a bit unfair to me how computer engineers are getting hired and paid so well, while my economics degree is useless and I have to fight like crazy to get a job that pays WAY less than engineers get. Honestly, I studied economics because I wanted a job that pays well - that was one of the key criteria - and now I am standing with little money and a job I hate. It sucks.

If you really set your mind to it (and you've got the right capabilities), you should still be able to roll into a software engineering job. There's plenty of online resources available to teach yourself software development. There are plenty of companies willing to take on junior developers. Build up a small portfolio of software on Github for potential employers to see and you should be able to get a start as software developer.

Of course you likely won't have great pay from the start, but keep doing work for a few years and keep improving your skills and you should be fine.

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#487

Post by ckorhonen »

mandevil wrote: post #281
komali2 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"WeWork used [a sensor network that tracked everyone throughout the building combined with machine learning] to learn that people drink coffee in the morning so they should hire a barista." Source: https://twitter.com/modestproposal1/status/10855834347880202... Sounds like a reasonable use of tens of millions of dollars of VC money.

But I’ve never actually seen a barista in any of the WeWork’s I’ve used (including the one which doubles as their HQ).

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#488

Post by ageitgey »

fro0116 wrote: post #482
ageitgey wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WeWork offers this if you sign up for an American Express Platinum Business card and take advantage of the free year of WeWork benefit. I can (and do!) book any WeWork in the world any day - all for $0. Yes, that's right, the free AMEX WeWork plan is significantly better than any WeWork plan you can buy. That's start-up logic for you. I stopped paying WeWork after 1-2 years as a paying customer because their free pla…

Wow... this is actually quite tempting for $595! Are there any limits to how much you can make use of this offer or the kinds of spaces available? _Surely_ they won't let you just camp an entire private office in SF all year round when it's supposed to cost upwards of $1000 per month?

You can use it everyday as your main office, but you are limited to the hot desk areas and you can't use private offices.

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#489

Post by goatinaboat »

MrFantastic wrote: post #413
jjeaff wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya, I can't imagine that is really a draw at all. If you travel a lot, you will have an office in your hotel room or can use the business center in the hotel.

It would be more impressive to meet a client at a WeWork office.

Not sure what industry you’re in but I don’t think most people’s clients think like that.

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#490

Post by red_trumpet »

munificent wrote: post #240
cj wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What's the benefit to a large corporation doing this instead of lots of small companies? (The economies of scale need to outweigh the large corporate overhead.) I like this way of thinking. WeWork isn't doing anything "new" - coworking spaces have existed for years. What's the upside of having a giant corporation owning all coworking spaces, versus having many small and independent small businesses running and opera…

> What's the upside of having a giant corporation owning all coworking spaces, versus having many small and independent small businesses running and operating independent coworking spaces? Advantage to customers? Likely minimal. Advantage to the company itself: economies of scale and, likely more importantly, lack of competition allowing them to increase prices. The very clear trend across all sectors is that compani…

If they raise prices, someone else could locally open up a new coworking space with lower prices. The lack of advantage to costumers, which is your first point, means that customers go to the cheaper place.

So the economics of scale (supposed that is a relevant factor) could provide WeWork with a higher profit margin, but to become dominant, they have to take a cut to this margin.

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