I still can't believe this guy gets to walk away with 1.7 billion dollars just for building up fluff while all the people who helped him grow have dire consequences both financial and personal. Unbelievable that this guy gets a clean chit, and all this isn't considered criminal. This to me is almost at the scale of Theranos. Only, this guy was smarter in the legal side of things, perhaps.
WeWork is under investigation, so.
WeWork lays off 2,400 employees
41–50 of 291 posts
Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees
#42I still can't believe this guy gets to walk away with 1.7 billion dollars just for building up fluff while all the people who helped him grow have dire consequences both financial and personal. Unbelievable that this guy gets a clean chit, and all this isn't considered criminal. This to me is almost at the scale of Theranos. Only, this guy was smarter in the legal side of things, perhaps.
The employees deserve more cause they didn't get their share of the grift? By all accounts they were well compensated for working in a wealth destroying venture.
Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd argue that they would have been reasonably happy with their salaries (and any other perks) while they were employed (otherwise they would have gone elsewhere). And whilst I've not read the article chances are there will be some severance payout. And whilst it's inconvenient there's a good chance many of them will find employment elsewhere. Lastly, the writing's been on the wall for some time now. I'd like to thin…
Look even if you want to be obtuse and pretend its not bad that people got lured into jobs that couldn't possibly last, and may have uprooted families only to get laid off now, and have to uproot them again, even pretending that is no big deal, which it is, but let's pretend. MAYBE you can feel some emotion for the investors whose money was essentially stolen, by a scam artist?
>MAYBE you can feel some emotion for the investors whose money was essentially stolen, by a scam artist?
Honestly, I think investors were quite aware of what kind of business WeWork is. They were hoping to dump the whole hot mess to public markets and walk away, and they failed.
Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees
#44I can't fathom the morale at this place. I really hope things get better for these poor people caught in the middle of this shit show.
The worst part of this for people will be having WeWork on their resume.
Why would that matter? You can be doing great technical work even if the company overall is doing something that may not be working out well.
Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees
#45I can't fathom the morale at this place. I really hope things get better for these poor people caught in the middle of this shit show.
The worst part of this for people will be having WeWork on their resume.
I don't really agree with this. I despise Facebook and happily retweeted a post a few weeks ago specifically aimed at helping FB engineers find work elsewhere.
I'd prefer to help good people get out of bad places.
Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees
#46I still can't believe this guy gets to walk away with 1.7 billion dollars just for building up fluff while all the people who helped him grow have dire consequences both financial and personal. Unbelievable that this guy gets a clean chit, and all this isn't considered criminal. This to me is almost at the scale of Theranos. Only, this guy was smarter in the legal side of things, perhaps.
To be clear, Neumann's $1.7 billion payout is from SoftBank shareholders. There's nothing obviously criminal about SoftBank's bailout. But I agree SoftBank didn't have to do it. WeWork was ostensibly bankrupt and SoftBank could have dictated pretty much any terms they wanted.
i thought part of it were also consultancy fees for him to be a consultant for the company many years to come?
Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do they seriously have employees at each? I assumed it was either a franchise or contractor thing. Rare for a tech company to actually hire people directly for that sort of thing.
They aren't a tech company. They are an office leasing and real estate company, and have the appropriate employees for this type of business.
> and have the appropriate employees for this type of business
I disagree. WeWork has 836 locations and 12.5k (now 10k) employees, or ~12-15 employees per location. Regus/IWG has 3,306 locations and 9.6k employees, or ~3 employees per location.
How is 4-5x the number of employees for a comparable non-tech company appropriate?
Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees
#48Even if average Employee cost was $20,000/year, that is a whopping $48,0000,000 (Million) profit added to the shareholders. What is their actual revenue ?
In their filing for the IPO WeWork posted a net loss of 1.6 billion on 1.8 billion in revenue.
Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees
#49I still can't believe this guy gets to walk away with 1.7 billion dollars just for building up fluff while all the people who helped him grow have dire consequences both financial and personal. Unbelievable that this guy gets a clean chit, and all this isn't considered criminal. This to me is almost at the scale of Theranos. Only, this guy was smarter in the legal side of things, perhaps.
for the people who got laid off, obviously it's very bad, they should sue and they may get something back as settlement. For the existing employees who saw their stock options value deflated overnight, well tough luck. it's hard to become a millionaire For the investors who just throw money to whoever in sight just to see what sticks, no tears at all
> for the people who got laid off, obviously it's very bad, they should sue and they may get something back as settlement.
On what possible grounds? They were fairly compensated and got severance. There is no indication that they were hired under false pretenses. They're angry cause they didn't get to rip off Softbank too.
Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Managing 800 physical office locations? That’s not really that many people per location.
Do they seriously have employees at each? I assumed it was either a franchise or contractor thing. Rare for a tech company to actually hire people directly for that sort of thing.
Something I love is how companies have been able to convince people that they are a tech company just because they have an app even when they do something which has existed before the internet was even around.