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WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

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Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#231

Post by arcticbull »

hef19898 wrote: post #223
arcticbull wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...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 tha…

Doesn't have to be necessarily a bad thing if you ask me.

Oh no, I'm actually glad.

There's a case to be made that the benefit of a recession is that it kills off these types of wildly unsustainable businesses as they're forced to prove their model. It's been over a decade since the last one. This allows us to remove some of the froth from the market without necessarily going through the same level of hardship en route.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#232

Post by MFLoon »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #225
csours wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before a company goes public, the only way you get to be on the board is by being a cheerleader. After a company goes public you have a lot more responsibilities.

Right - I get that - but my thinking is, why would you make short-sighted greedy choices that are fundamentally bad business decisions? One could say hindsight is 20-20, but I don't buy that. WeWork at its core was a legit business (I say this as a former customer), unlike a say Theranos. It could have legitimately been a wildly successful company without the shenanigans. It seems trite to simply say that the board h…

I think they justified it by saying that they were aiming to be tech unicorn, not merely a real estate company; and it's par for the course for the board to pump and dump a tech unicorn once they realize the horn is about to fall off.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#233

Post by vanusa »

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.

What's not to believe, or be (more than momentarily) surprised by? His behavior is not only perfectly consistent with, but emblematic of the governing ideology of his, and our time:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism

The overarching goal of which might well summed up succinctly as: "Socialization of risk; privatization of gain."

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#234

Post by kingofpandora »

dragontamer wrote: post #175
Justsignedup wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

Huh? People take time off between jobs all the time.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#235

Post by p1esk »

MFLoon wrote: post #229
p1esk wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to [1] there have been more revolutions in the last 10 years than in the entire 17th century. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_revolutions_and_rebe...

Interesting observation, but a) events of the last 10 years are documented at an exponentially higher rate and resolution than events of the 17th century, and b) this list has lots of events which hardly raise to the level of the large scale revolutions of the 17th century, aaand c) none of these events are taking place in global centers of wealth and power. Today's elites are without a doubt more protected than the…

Re global centers - is it because elites are better protected, or because there are fewer people willing to die on barricades? Vast majority of Americans have a decent life today (eg not starving, not being exploited and treated like slaves by the elites), unlike the vast majority of population in the 17th century in Europe.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#236

Post by MFLoon »

cdolan wrote: post #192
Ivoirians wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that I would personally blame you, but the collapse of WeWork hasn't directly affected peoples' jobs, home values, or retirement savings. The implosion of the company has left the rest of the world pretty unscathed.

It has not imploded because it was privately bailed out. If it did implode (Ch 11 or Ch 7 BK) - it will start to have major impacts on the NYC and other real estate markets. It’s the largest lease holder in many cities.

I still don't think that would have had the same downstream macroeconomic effects as, say, exploding mortgages for millions of working and middle class Americans. Nobody leasing their commercial properties to WeWork is one missed paycheck away from homelessness or health crisis.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#237

Post by MFLoon »

fred_is_fred wrote: post #16
swozey wrote: post #10

I can't fathom the morale at this place. I really hope things get better for these poor people caught in the middle of this shit show.

The worst part of this for people will be having WeWork on their resume.

I don't think most reasonable employers hold it against prospective employees if they have "bad" former employers. Obviously the exception being if they were employed in executive (and perhaps in some cases, managerial) capacities. But certainly not line engineers.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#238

Post by majani »

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…

When you see big, tall men with forceful personas running roughshod in positions of leadership, you realize that perhaps we should always remember that we are just primates that learnt how to use tools well.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#239

Post by rchaud »

eternalny1 wrote: post #210
rchaud wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Uber isn'ta Ponzi scheme. I use Uber all the time, as does everyone I know. Hell, I even drove for them for a while. They provide a needed service and they are subsidizing that to get rid of competition like Lyft and to grow a huge user base. Then, it's likely they will raise prices and start making money. But it is not a Ponzi scheme. Last I checked, a local taxi company that is still in business wants $30 to take m…

> But it is not a Ponzi scheme. Last I checked, a local taxi company that is still in business wants $30 to take me into town, which is 5 miles away. Uber is $7.

The cost of that $7 are the billions they lose every quarter. It's not sustainable. They're a public company now, so to come up with fresh cash, they have to issue bonds and pay interest on them. How will they repay it when they aren't generating fresh cash through profits? They can't rely on VCs opening their wallets whenever they needed money.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#240

Post by majani »

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!

The more likely outcome is that he's now focused on protecting that nine figure status as if his life depended on it.
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