WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO • Hacker News Board

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#351

Post by rrrazdan » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 1:44 AM UTC

jackgavigan wrote: post #298

roymurdock wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Levine is skeptical/amused by the nonsensical valuations but takes a more neutral stance, probably because he was never truly invested in/familiar with/cared that much about new technology and what people promise it can do. Galloway is more idealistic and Levine is more practical taking things at face value and breaking them down. They're both very knowledgeable and worth reading.

> ..probably because he was never truly invested in/familiar with/cared that much about new technology and what people promise it can do. Where's the technology in WeWork?

We are current WeWork tenants. WeWork can’t even provide us an interface to manage and view who used WeWork credits in our org. We asked for a report and got a pdf after 2 days.

Tech my foot. The printer software is an abomination.

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#352

Post by nateburke » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 1:46 AM UTC

zachrose wrote: post #349

kortilla wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1000 engineers for what? Again, where is the technology?

Maintaining internal frameworks, delivery pipelines, infrastructure, instrumentation and product roadmaps. Transitioning to new organizational structures. Internal hackathons and lunch ‘n learns. What am I forgetting?

Blog posts, conference talks, building at scale, open source contributions, core libs, platform, tools, dashboard migrations

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#353

Post by adonnjohn » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 1:52 AM UTC

victor106 wrote: post #309

aeternum wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, maybe not every tech company but he is wrong more often than he is right. For example, he predicted both Amazon and Google would be 'losers' back in 2015.. oops: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2015/04/09/the-fut...

From the article “For Galloway, the winner will be Macy’s, which has successfully gone online,” Macy’s Stock https://g.co/kgs/8KZ1Kj Prediction is a hard business.

What pumped up their stock so much in 2015?

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#354

Post by arbitrary_name » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 1:55 AM UTC

TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #336

codq wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would be great to remove Kara Swisher's self-aggrandizement and name-droppery and isolate Galloway's takes entirely.

God, Kara Swisher is perhaps the most annoying tech journalist on the planet. Her "analysis" consists of inserting random name-drops that are completely unrelated to the topic at hand and then regurgitating the analysis of smarter people without any additional value add. It seems Kara Swisher's entire reason for existing is for expressing disdain. In any organization she'd be that political person who adds no value t…

I really bought into the hype and gave her a try - she adds absolutely nothing to the conversation.

The a16z podcasts are way better - I can't recall the name of the ladies who generally host that but they are much more effective interviewers and analysts.

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#355

Post by WrtCdEvrydy » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 2:02 AM UTC

rrrazdan wrote: post #351

jackgavigan wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ..probably because he was never truly invested in/familiar with/cared that much about new technology and what people promise it can do. Where's the technology in WeWork?

We are current WeWork tenants. WeWork can’t even provide us an interface to manage and view who used WeWork credits in our org. We asked for a report and got a pdf after 2 days. Tech my foot. The printer software is an abomination.

> The printer software is an abomination.

...that's a surprise....

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#356

Post by yobert » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 2:08 AM UTC

yawaramin wrote: post #331

I'm just curious about something ... do WeWork employees work in their co-working spaces? Or do they have their own office?

Some of both. I regularly use WeWork coworking spaces, but have a regular office for only employees at my home base.

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#357

Post by dreamcompiler » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 2:17 AM UTC

braythwayt wrote: post #316

roymurdock wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a cornerstone of their brand relative to other office space leasing companies, and tech investors are how/where they got a lot of their funding. Check out their S-1, they mention "technology" 110 times: "Technology is at the foundation of our global platform. Our purpose-built technology and operational expertise has allowed us to scale our core WeWork space-as-a-service offering quickly, while improving the qua…

It’s “tech theatre,” not tech. It’s how they got their funding, but reading what even the happy users on HN have had to say, the technology isn’t core to why people rent from them.

Nailed it. Brilliant.

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#358

Post by dreamcompiler » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 2:24 AM UTC

ravenstine wrote: post #307

streb-lo wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't airbnb similarly disqualified under your definition?

AirBnB is convenient. WeWork isn't really more convenient than existing competitors. It just has the wow factor.

The wow factor being embodied primarily in a Charismatic Young Narcissist (CYN) CEO. See Elizabeth Holmes.

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#359

Post by perl4ever » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 2:26 AM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #294

untog wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compared to Uber they're still small. But I recall an article not so long ago talking about the tracking WeWork had installed in their offices that gave them startling insights like "people tend to drink more coffee in the mornings". They've been just as guilty as any of hiring a bunch of developers just so they can call themselves a "tech company".

> that gave them startling insights like "people tend to drink more coffee in the mornings". To play devil's advocate a bit, isn't this how science works? If you're not checking the obvious, you won't discover that people actually drink more coffee on the afternoon, or what have you.

Personally, I generally drink no more than one medium/large coffee all day, but sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon, and sometimes I spend all day drinking it and reheating it, and still have some left when I go home.

I guess I kind of wait until I feel particularly down and tired, but otherwise well hydrated, and that's when I want coffee, but not always at the same time of day.

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#360

Post by countryqt30 » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 2:41 AM UTC

wgerard wrote: post #72

I see lots of cheering which, to some degree, I understand given the public persona of Adam Neumann. I'm more interested in the ramifications, and I don't just mean the obvious ones like "potential tech recession" (maybe, who knows) or "more due diligence" (unlikely, or if so likely to swing completely the other direction). Given that "private markets are the new public markets" I wonder if this will just encourage m…

Adam Neumann and his wife Rebekah Neumann have repeatedly shown massive unethical behavior (see the plethora of Bloomberg articles about the many examples) without integrity on many levels, which are a "extremely interesting set of self-dealing priorities"-at best.