WeWork lays off 2,400 employees • Hacker News Board

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#171

Post by whatok » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 7:41 PM UTC

swozey wrote: post #45

fred_is_fred wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There is a perception that they hired tech employees just to show "growth" and therefore people haven't really done much real work.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#172

Post by rchaud » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 7:41 PM UTC

meritt wrote: post #47

tentboy wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

WeWork has a number of side businesses that have no link to their office business. Regus does not.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#173

Post by empath75 » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 7:41 PM UTC

sharkweek wrote: post #91

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!

Or he could start a philanthropic foundation that mostly exists to put his name on buildings and cement his legacy for a hundred years or more.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#174

Post by rchaud » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 7:43 PM UTC

chvid wrote: post #18

Judging from the incredible press, it would be amazing if the management can hold the company together and it actually exists in 3 years.

They will likely change the name, since it's become a punchline and will always remind people of their fly-by-night founder.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#175

Post by dragontamer » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 7:44 PM UTC

Justsignedup wrote: post #131

kamarg wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

A 3-month hole in your resume will be something you'd have to explain to your future employers for the rest of your life.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#176

Post by lotsofpulp » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 7:45 PM UTC

jotm wrote: post #165

lotsofpulp wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Then I don't understand how a lender that lends money using the information they requested has been wronged. Even if borrowing money without intending to pay it back is wrong, it's still not relevant to this WeWork situation, so I don't see the point.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#177

Post by poulsbohemian » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 7:45 PM UTC

Why corporate boards are so inept, and allowed to remain so, I'll never understand.

If you buy into the goal being "shareholder value" then plainly Softbank failed. One could make the argument that WeWork's board did the things that they thought created the most value - but if you implode in on yourself, you clearly failed. Even if the self-dealing was not outright legal fraud, it was plainly not to anyone's benefit apart from Adam Newmann - which again is complicit behavior on the part of both boards. None of it is good business.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#178

Post by admn2 » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 7:46 PM UTC

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #83

ghaff wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd have to know how the two companies split functions between employees and contractors. Though I'd not be surprised if WeWork were staffed relatively heavily. To note something random, WeWork has an (unstaffed) booth at Kubecon which suggests they do marketing activities that someone like Regus generally doesn't.

Probably because Regus is more interested in running a business and not advertising to potential investors how cool it is. Just my guess.

On top of that, Regus pays a huge portion of the employees at center hourly. I know Regus is not sexy, but they should get credit for focusing on economics that work at scale rather than just pumping up some ridiculous valuation with no chance of liquidity outside of getting bought or IPOing.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#179

Post by ioror93jf » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 7:50 PM UTC

neya wrote: 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.

I am shocked people still get shocked about the elite being treated differently

Sports, TV, designer stuff... all heavily dependent on emotional attention. The attention economy is older than we realize.

Brand building is at the core of this, and we’ve seen this with of elite brand builders over and over.

Those who can do. Those who can’t are CEOs

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#180

Post by ReptileMan » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 7:51 PM UTC

aeturnum wrote: post #80

berberous wrote: post #63

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…

VC-s as a rule of thumb do due diligence before investing. They didn't throw money at him on the whim. They examined the books and everything else you could think of (or should have done so).

Unless he was cooking the books or conned some other way - you may say he is the one scumbag to rule them all if you like for walking with fuck you money squared while his employees get the shaft, but he did nothing wrong in pitching high valuations that the others side accepted.