WeWork lays off 2,400 employees • Hacker News Board

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#211

Post by arcticbull » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 8:53 PM UTC

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.

Successful at building a large, real business selling $10 bills for $8. It's a dreadful business, they lose money hand over fist with no path to stopping the bleeding.

For a while now, any company who could claim to be a "tech" company like WeWork (an objectively real estate company) did was able to raise on terms that are only suitable for zero-marginal-cost businesses. That is unlikely to continue.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#212

Post by tarr11 » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 8:55 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!

This would upset me if I was one of the remaining employees.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#213

Post by arcticbull » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 8:56 PM UTC

rollerboi wrote: post #116

AlexandrB wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Not just anyone gets 16b of funding to lose 50% on it. You need to be a very charismatic CEO - maybe borderline cult-leader status

Right but we're assessing the quality of the business he built. It's crap. That doesn't change with what the parent said.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#214

Post by freddy418_sc » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 8:57 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.

He's not getting that for building fluff. Adam is walking away with 1.7 billion dollars because he fooled whoever is in charge at Softbank into getting into bed with him for WeWork and Softbank decided that that was an appropriate amount to pay in order to get rid of him.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#215

Post by csommers » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 8:59 PM UTC

rollerboi wrote: post #116

AlexandrB wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Not just anyone gets 16b of funding to lose 50% on it. You need to be a very charismatic CEO - maybe borderline cult-leader status

ANYONE can lose that kind of money - that's the point they were getting at.

No need to be pedantic.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#216

Post by rexreed » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 9:00 PM UTC

Sucks for the employees and everyone else who built up the founder's ego and his wallets. But honestly, this is an indefensible business model with clearly unsustainable economics. This deal and Theranos has convinced me that venture capitalists aren't as a group particularly insightful or worthy of admiration. Personally I hope the collapse of WeWork takes Meetup.com with it.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#217

Post by postit » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 9:01 PM UTC

I’m glad I was included in the lay-offs. The situation was unbearable.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#218

Post by charlesdm » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 9:02 PM UTC

JeremyNT wrote: post #200

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…

Ah yes, "if it's legal, it's not his fault." It's not "his fault" for the gross incompetence that lead to this outcome? Whose was it? I would suggest that it is in fact "his fault," but why would he ever have cared? He lacked any incentive to fret any potential negative outcomes for the business, since after a point he had assured that they all ended in him being astronomically wealthy regardless. This sort of thing…

The investors. If you give a loose cannon many billions of dollars, who is at fault?

But yes, normal employees are paying the price here.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#219

Post by zopppo » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 9:02 PM UTC

rexreed wrote: post #216

Sucks for the employees and everyone else who built up the founder's ego and his wallets. But honestly, this is an indefensible business model with clearly unsustainable economics. This deal and Theranos has convinced me that venture capitalists aren't as a group particularly insightful or worthy of admiration. Personally I hope the collapse of WeWork takes Meetup.com with it.

Would you mind explaining what you mean? I can't see any connection between wework and meetup.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#220

Post by jfengel » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 9:05 PM UTC

whaaaaaat wrote: post #169

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.

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,…

As I understand it, the goal was also to network with other small businesses using the same space. The spaces were set up to encourage people to find opportunities to work together -- cross-marketing, sharing resources, new ideas. Kind of an incubator, without the financial support or design.

Not inherently a bad idea, though it's full of Silicon Valley optimism where one serendipity produces tons of money while a lot of other things just fail to gel -- but some people get paid regardless.