Hypothesis: 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.
WeWork is just one part of it, however. Uber is another Ponzi scheme, living on underpriced rides and multi-billion losses for as long as their bond rating holds up.
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.
To get the benefit, you have to provide documentation that you're looking for a job.
> 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.
i have no idea really, but considering that lawyers exist and a lot of money is at stake ... they ll connect some dots
This is a disgusting attitude and is exactly why these types of problems exist.
Hey, it's the bank's fault they approved a 20K credit limit without even checking my ID. They should've done their due diligence beyond seeing the credit score /s
Your statement doesn't make sense to me. If you're claiming that this WeWork situation is similar to someone fraudulently obtaining $20,000 by claiming they are someone else, I have to disagree because there has been no misrepresentations in the WeWork saga that I am aware of.
Oh no, there was no identity theft. Just a jobless man cashing in on his credit score.
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?
Having recently gone through a job search as a decently qualified candidate in an area with a lot of demand and low supply for my skillset, I'd say absolutely.
Hiring doesn't happen overnight and it's much more difficult when you're doing it actively, as opposed to passively responding to the recruitment vultures. Especially when there's a time crunch, since severance doesn't last forever and hiring doesn't happen overnight.
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.
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.
If I owned shares in softbank, I’d be livid about him flushing more money down that hole. It makes me suspect that if WeWork collapses, softbank would go down with it.
“WeWork isn’t really a real estate company. It’s a state of consciousness, a generation of interconnected emotionally intelligent entrepreneurs.” -Adam Neumann.[1] Even after hearing that media raved about him/WeWork, analysts were bullish and investors pumped Billions. Startup media are generally happy with their funding related news as it is glamorous. And due to the funding noise, Startup ecosystem has forgotten t…
I don't even know who their target audience was. Many people who work from home do so because they enjoy the privacy of working from home. People who want more social interaction go to coffee shops, and plenty of people do both. I don't see who would want to pay a few hundred bucks a month to work on a conference table surrounded by strangers.
Please don't give your opinion on something you don't know anything about. You've clearly never even seen the inside of a WeWork because the majority of them were office spaces. The audience was small companies who preferred short time leasing, which in large cities, there were plenty of. Every wework I've been to in Manhattan has been completely full. There are 1-5 person offices, and sometimes single larger spaces, and you rented the "offices", which were just rooms. It's not like it's just a table where people sit together, that's crazy. It's office space. The benefit was you could get a place for a few months and then move somewhere else if your company isn't stable yet and you don't want to sign a year lease.
If I'm Neumann, I'm taking 200-250 million dollars of my 1.7 billion in winnings and giving it away to the laid off employees (about 90k each). Imagine the positive press you could drum up about yourself! All while keeping 1.5 billion dollars!
Why?
Positive press of this magnitude can help propel your next big idea.
If you have a reputation of compensating employees well when startup ideas don't pan out they will be more likely to want to join the next one.
Though there are probably more news worth things you could do with 300m.