Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

‘We were sold off’: WeWork’s staff face uncertain future as company collapses

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 95 posts

Re: ‘We were sold off’: WeWork’s staff face uncertain future as company collapses

#31

Post by davidw »

corporateslave5 wrote: post #11

SoftBank and their investors deserve this. SoftBank wanted to take wework and jam it on the stock market, then pull their money out. They knew this company was trash, they are no better than Adam Neumann. Congrats to Adam for exposing and exploiting softbanks attempts to exploit the USA stock market. In the end this will stop future cases of investors trying to jam garbage companies into the public markets, essential…

> In the end this will stop future cases of investors trying to jam garbage companies into the public markets, essentially stealing money from retail investors who don’t know better

Until the next bubble, at least.

Re: ‘We were sold off’: WeWork’s staff face uncertain future as company collapses

#32

Post by typeformer »

Apocryphon wrote: post #16
bpodgursky wrote: post #9

Adam Neumann jacked $10B in funding from dumb, rich, foreign investors (SoftBank). Over 80% of that money was pumped into salaries and domestic real-estate deals. Why are people mad about this? Dude is a modern Robin Hood -- a national hero. Let him keep the $1.7B change.

Robin Hood didn't keep the money he stole.

Good rebuttal ^

Re: ‘We were sold off’: WeWork’s staff face uncertain future as company collapses

#33

Post by eranima »

generalpass wrote: post #28
eranima wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This really has nothing to do with socialism.

"Late state capitalism" is a Marxist term.

It was coined by Werner Sombart, who was not a Marxist but rather a classical economics professor in Germany.

Re: ‘We were sold off’: WeWork’s staff face uncertain future as company collapses

#34

Post by wowFuckYoouu »

corporateslave5 wrote: post #11

SoftBank and their investors deserve this. SoftBank wanted to take wework and jam it on the stock market, then pull their money out. They knew this company was trash, they are no better than Adam Neumann. Congrats to Adam for exposing and exploiting softbanks attempts to exploit the USA stock market. In the end this will stop future cases of investors trying to jam garbage companies into the public markets, essential…

  Congrats to Adam
Gee, yeah. Great job with plotting an elaborate scheme to create an illusory company made of garbage and then pass the buck, in order to reveal the REAL enemy.

He totally pulled a heroic move, worthy of congratulations.

Yeah.

Wow.

Re: ‘We were sold off’: WeWork’s staff face uncertain future as company collapses

#35

Post by arcticbull »

corporateslave5 wrote: post #11

SoftBank and their investors deserve this. SoftBank wanted to take wework and jam it on the stock market, then pull their money out. They knew this company was trash, they are no better than Adam Neumann. Congrats to Adam for exposing and exploiting softbanks attempts to exploit the USA stock market. In the end this will stop future cases of investors trying to jam garbage companies into the public markets, essential…

There are no good guys here.

Neumann, by taking money from SoftBank, was completely complicit. He knew his financials, he knew the company was a flaming dumpster, he knew he had no plan to fix it, other than buying a wave pool company and assigning his family to high-level positions.

You really think if the company had gone public, Neumann would have what, stepped up and said "see, this is why we need to add more investor protections"?

Re: ‘We were sold off’: WeWork’s staff face uncertain future as company collapses

#36

Post by tootie »

corporateslave5 wrote: post #11

SoftBank and their investors deserve this. SoftBank wanted to take wework and jam it on the stock market, then pull their money out. They knew this company was trash, they are no better than Adam Neumann. Congrats to Adam for exposing and exploiting softbanks attempts to exploit the USA stock market. In the end this will stop future cases of investors trying to jam garbage companies into the public markets, essential…

WeWork still has a ton of customers and rapid growth. I think their eyes were bigger than their mouths when it came to expanding offerings into unrelated nonsense and they were being extremely undisciplined in their spending, but the business is still extremely viable. The new leadership are taking a giant ax to all the excess to get it over with and then can rebuild from what is still a very strong base. It will take at least a year to recover, but I think they'll still hit profitability in the long run.

Re: ‘We were sold off’: WeWork’s staff face uncertain future as company collapses

#37

Post by FireBeyond »

bpodgursky wrote: post #9

Adam Neumann jacked $10B in funding from dumb, rich, foreign investors (SoftBank). Over 80% of that money was pumped into salaries and domestic real-estate deals. Why are people mad about this? Dude is a modern Robin Hood -- a national hero. Let him keep the $1.7B change.

Into domestic real estate deals that he often played on both sides of the coin.

He was in this to build an empire and a dynasty. He tried to write his family into leadership / ownership in perpetuity.

He wasn't freeing money from the "dumb, rich, foreign investors" for the good of the people, but for the good of himself. Anything that fell to the people was happenstance, and after he'd had first pickings.

Re: ‘We were sold off’: WeWork’s staff face uncertain future as company collapses

#38

Post by arcticbull »

tootie wrote: post #36
corporateslave5 wrote: post #11

SoftBank and their investors deserve this. SoftBank wanted to take wework and jam it on the stock market, then pull their money out. They knew this company was trash, they are no better than Adam Neumann. Congrats to Adam for exposing and exploiting softbanks attempts to exploit the USA stock market. In the end this will stop future cases of investors trying to jam garbage companies into the public markets, essential…

WeWork still has a ton of customers and rapid growth. I think their eyes were bigger than their mouths when it came to expanding offerings into unrelated nonsense and they were being extremely undisciplined in their spending, but the business is still extremely viable. The new leadership are taking a giant ax to all the excess to get it over with and then can rebuild from what is still a very strong base. It will tak…

They have customers who cost them money on an incremental basis. More customers, less money. They don't deserve to be valued any differently than like Regus, approximately 8X their annual profits or 1X their annual revenue. In this space, net margins are approximately 15%.

That values WeWork somewhere between -15.2B and 1.8B based on their 2018 performance data.

Measured against their competitors, they're still about 5X over-valued.

Re: ‘We were sold off’: WeWork’s staff face uncertain future as company collapses

#39

Post by generalpass »

eranima wrote: post #33
generalpass wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Late state capitalism" is a Marxist term.

It was coined by Werner Sombart, who was not a Marxist but rather a classical economics professor in Germany.

Geez, even the Wikipedia article on the term states that is Marxist. I think you are substituting "Marxist" with "as written by Marx."

Re: ‘We were sold off’: WeWork’s staff face uncertain future as company collapses

#40

Post by karthikb »

nknealk wrote: post #25

I'd love to hear from WeWork customers about recent events. Are customers watching this thinking "oh man, I don't know if my workplace will be the same in 6 months, better start looking for alternatives?" Is the atmosphere in their offices any different now?

I work out of one. Not much has changed, but the coffee mugs are half the size (seriously) and what was regularly fruit water is now usually plain iced water. Not really important in the grand scheme of things. We still get billed monthly, and have access to our workspace.
Post reply on HN