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WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

cnbc.com

131–140 of 291 posts

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#131
post #124
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being laid off gets you unemployment. Quitting doesn't.

It's not between sticking around or quitting. They could have gone out and found a new job. One that presumably pays more than unemployment and quite possibly given the current stage of the economic cycle, more than their current job.

I mean, if your lifestyle doesn't require the full payment, you can think of it as a half-pay long vacation.

I for one wouldn't mind being unemployed for 3 months.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#132

Earlier 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…

Everybody will always sell their business for as much as they can. It's unreasonable and not helpful to expect otherwise.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#133
post #17

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.

If he was not able to manage that kind of money the first time, he will not go very far the second time. Most likely he will come up with a similar Ponzi scheme and burn all his cash.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

shifting of talent I hate this new reality.

Which new reality? The one where most of the population can read and write and where most hold degrees and diplomas? This isn’t the 1900s industrialization era, where employees were picked out of the farm fields to work in factories, having never gone to school. People are smart these days, layoffs aren’t as destructive as they used to be.

Obviously the comparison should be between today and a society of serfs & slaves.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#135
post #121
post #17

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.

well, he will never work in this town again :/

He'll Epstein his way back into the good graces of the upper classes. Fully expect to see the "Adam and Rebekah Neumann centre for cancer research" or something like that at a major university sooner rather than later.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#136

Earlier 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?

Please explain what the scam was, and how money was forcefully or fraudulent taken from the investors. Was the scam the public knowledge of a CEO using private jets to smoke weed and vacation with company money and speaking in cultish phrases? Was it the lack of cash flow? Was it the obvious lack of any moat?

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#137
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The self dealing was reprehensible and evidence of low morals in my view, but none of those events actually materially impact the value of the business. Materially WeWork is a real estate company selling itself as a tech company to get a higher valuation. Sure, it's expected that founders don't have a realistic idea of what their company is worth, investors should have done more research. But Neumann's ethical fail…

Unless Neumann presented fraudulent numbers, then the buyer is responsible for valuing what they buy. Sellers don't get to dictate what something is worth.

I'm not arguing that Neumann's actions meet the legal definition of fraud. I'm arguing that he has a moral responsibility. Investors are responsible for believing Neumann. But I think that if he had been an ethical person who did not self-deal, WeWork might not have been over valued so much. I think self-dealing and dishonestly representing your company's worth is related.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#138
post #3

From the article, 2,400 employees is 19% of the peak of 12,500 employees on June 30. There was no mention of where the cuts were made however. I am curious how many "white collar" type jobs WeWork would have, since I heard from previous discussions here that they were hiring for roles in unrelated-to-real-estate things like machine learning. I would imagine that there are lots of hourly-type roles managing the sites,…

Didn't WeWork own/purchase some sort of dev contracting business?

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#139

Honestly 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.

Not everyone can easily find a new job whenever they want.

Perhaps true for those at the margins, but for 2,400 white collar workers at a "tech" startup?

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#140
post #87
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. https://twitter.com/EricaJoy/status/1190701524210438144

Wow. You do realize most engineers have to work at far shittier companies and environments than FB? And for a lot less money.

Then they should research the companies in the post and if they're interested in a change apply as well. No listing in that post is catering to an ex-FB employee by any means.
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