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WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

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Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#181

Post by bogomipz »

berberous wrote: post #63
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 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…

>"he believed in his own spin and was phenomenally successful at building a large, real business.'

How was he "phenomenally successful" if the company needed an emergency bailout because they were about to run out of cash?

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#182

Post by jletienne »

tejtm wrote: post #121
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.

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

sadly he was given 1.7 billion as an exit package. he's capable of starting multiple business ventures tomorrow if he desires

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#183

Post by droopyEyelids »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #177

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…

The board has the perspective of _ownership_. The employee has the perspective of _being commanded_.

Imagine something nice that you own- like your car. Do you feel compelled to understand your car? Must you be an excellent driver to own that car, if you can afford it?

No. And while it's not exactly the same, the people generally look at the company as a machine that makes them money. They don't have to be good at anything to own that machine, and if they want, they can even share it with their drug addict fail-child.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#184

Post by vonmoltke »

ghaff wrote: post #57
meritt wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

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.

I have seen Regus people at conferences before. They may be more selective, but they do these things as well.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#185

Post by psv1 »

rchaud wrote: post #129
asdfman123 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can't help but think that Neumann's taret audience was deep pocketed old-generation investors who've worked in corner offices for decades and fell hook, line and sinker for the "gig economy is the future" spiel.

Example - IBM rent WeWork space in London for some teams even though they have a London office.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#186

Post by dclowd9901 »

berberous wrote: post #63
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 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…

Agreed. This is the direct and intended result of a society which values those with money (investors) over those without money (people who invest their time, talent and effort).

He did nothing wrong in this society, so maybe we ought to fucking change society.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#187

Post by dclowd9901 »

Strom wrote: post #69
dickeytk wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re not destitute, no. But their employees were heavily compensated with options that are now worthless. Of course options are a risk, but they didn’t work there if they didn’t think those options would be at least worth something in the future.

Options in a startup are always a lottery ticket. I would argue that no rational person assigns any significant value to them, because even career investors aren't able to pick winners and instead earn money by betting on a lot of different startups.

Right, so how did the fucking guy running the ship win the lottery on the backs of everyone who didn't?

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#188

Post by dclowd9901 »

rchaud wrote: post #161
stickfigure wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And what's their profit exit? The ever-innovative and dubious "forcing people to watch fucking ads while they ride around."

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#189

Post by ummonk »

asdfman123 wrote: post #94
Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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.

It is the office space equivalent of elastic cloud computing. Definitely a solid market, but you gotta be diligent about the bottom line costs.
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