I 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.
I can (can't?) say from some sources... it's a great day to work from home.
WeWork lays off 2,400 employees
101–110 of 291 posts
Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t really see why it’s his fault investors over valued his company — he believed in his own spin and was phenomenally successful at building a large, real business. This was not like Theranos where he was straight up lying about a product working — anyone could analyze the business based on the fundamentals, and investors seemed ever willing to invest at high valuations. The self dealing was reprehensible and ev…
> I don’t really see why it’s his fault investors over valued his company > he believed in his own spin It's his fault because he accepted the price for his business! He was in numerous conversations where people wanted to invest in WoWork and he told them that the valuations they were investing at were not just reasonable, but under the real market price - which is why venture buys into companies. > none of those ev…
I refuse to believe anyone wouldn't take 1.7 billion to walk away from a company.
Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well if you define a market simply as a mechanism of wealth transmission from dumb people to smarter people then I think that Adam Neumann deserves every single cent of 1.7 billion dollars.
> Well if you define a market simply as a mechanism of wealth transmission from dumb people to smarter people... Does anyone?
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Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees
#104Honestly I'm surprised there are 2400 employees who have stuck around this long, waiting for the other shoe to drop. How could they not see the obvious implosion coming? The proverbial tidal wave of ugly news has been steady for months now.
But if they saw it coming, why would they leave earlier? It's easier to just take the money while it's there.
Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees
#105I 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.
I don’t really see why it’s his fault investors over valued his company — he believed in his own spin and was phenomenally successful at building a large, real business. This was not like Theranos where he was straight up lying about a product working — anyone could analyze the business based on the fundamentals, and investors seemed ever willing to invest at high valuations. The self dealing was reprehensible and ev…
> This was not like Theranos where he was straight up lying about a product working
She.
Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees
#106Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t really see why it’s his fault investors over valued his company — he believed in his own spin and was phenomenally successful at building a large, real business. This was not like Theranos where he was straight up lying about a product working — anyone could analyze the business based on the fundamentals, and investors seemed ever willing to invest at high valuations. The self dealing was reprehensible and ev…
> This was not like Theranos where he was straight up lying about a product working She.
He.
He's talking about the WeWork guy, not the theranos woman. I think it's a strange sentence, but technically correct.
Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees
#108Hypothesis: Events like this are the modern moral equivalent of the giant, gaudy, gilt-encrusted palaces of the 17th century. Economic disparity has reached a point where those at the top end literally have more money than they know what to do with and are increasingly spending it on stupider and stupider things out of some perceived need to do something .
Events like this are the modern moral equivalent of the giant, gaudy, gilt-encrusted palaces of the 17th century.
I think this vastly overstates it. Versailles cost some significant fraction of France's GDP - possibly as much as 25% in some years. WeWork's $10B is a mere drop in the US' $20T GDP.
Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t really see why it’s his fault investors over valued his company — he believed in his own spin and was phenomenally successful at building a large, real business. This was not like Theranos where he was straight up lying about a product working — anyone could analyze the business based on the fundamentals, and investors seemed ever willing to invest at high valuations. The self dealing was reprehensible and ev…
> was phenomenally successful at building a large, real business What? How? He built an 8b business with 16b in investment. Anyone can do that. Take 16b, put it in index funds, call yourself an investment bank. You'd get better returns than -50%, for sure.
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Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t really see why it’s his fault investors over valued his company — he believed in his own spin and was phenomenally successful at building a large, real business. This was not like Theranos where he was straight up lying about a product working — anyone could analyze the business based on the fundamentals, and investors seemed ever willing to invest at high valuations. The self dealing was reprehensible and ev…
> I don’t really see why it’s his fault investors over valued his company > he believed in his own spin It's his fault because he accepted the price for his business! He was in numerous conversations where people wanted to invest in WoWork and he told them that the valuations they were investing at were not just reasonable, but under the real market price - which is why venture buys into companies. > none of those ev…
I think it's unlikely that Adam would be liable for having accepted an inflated valuation. Courts typically give management pretty wide latitude to make business decisions as along as they can give some plausible explanation. It's called the "business judgment rule" in corporate law and gives the company quite a bit of deference[0]. It derives from Delaware General Corporate Law § 141(a), then gets carved out through case law.
That said, there are a few ways to overcome it. Self-dealing is one way, assuming Adam didn't disclose the transactions. Fraud would be another.
All this stuff is pretty fact-specific. We can guess, but there's a lot we won't know until it gets litigated.