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

theguardian.com

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

#61

Post by solotronics »

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.

How about the fact that thousands of peoples lives might be disrupted or ruined by financial mismangement. People probably moved to work for wework. Leases might be defaulted on. In some markets they were the largest user of commercial real estate so I am sure it will be somewhat bad for wework to implode.

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

#62

Post by autokad »

rollerboi wrote: post #30
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 might be revealing too much here, but I work for a company that leases space from WeWork, so I go to a WeWork every day and in the evenings I read about its eventual demise. (Might explain why I'm so morbidly curious about this company) The running joke in my dept is they're going to start cutting back on amenities (watered down mouthwash, less cut up fruit in the fruitwater, etc.) and we won't see as many maintena…

really strange person. reveling for the downfall of a company that would yield negative effects on you and your coworkers.

while I find this story interesting to see how things play out, what lessons learned, etc, I don't revel at all about what is happening even though it has no direct impact on me. I feel bad for those 2.5k+ employees that went from 'our company is going to go public and this is going to pay off nicely to me' to "I got nothing and now I'm being laid off". Its sad, sorry that happened to them.

The wework debacle is already having negative ramifications in tech where companies are over correcting from earnings growth and investment to higher bottom lines. This will also lead to lower pay and opportunity for many tech workers. I'm not reveling.

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

#63

Post by timwaagh »

Guardian sometimes isn't the best. Their editorial philosophy in this case wont allow them to on report good news even when it is obvious. WeWork must downscale or else they are over, so these surplus staffers would ordinarily have been let go. This is normally not avoidable as there is no option to do anything else when a company must rapidly downscale. Now they get to keep their job. I think WeWork deserves a lot of credit for this. They complain their pay is bad? It is a normal salary paid for the kind of job (cleaning) that usually has to rely on the black market or extremely temporary gigs. Although the situation is pretty bad, they have managed it well.

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

#64

Post by timwaagh »

fdswefsad wrote: post #26
zelon88 wrote: post #2

The guy is getting $1.7bn. That is gluttonous. To put that into perspective, if you took even just $100m and divided it among the 1,000 workers laid off each one would get $100,000. Yet they get nothing. And this one man gets $1.7bn from a company that isn't even healthy enough to survive while nickle and diming janitors who get paid $24k/year. This is what late stage capitalism looks like.

in Italy, I believe it used to be a crime to mismanage a company such that people lost their jobs. Anyway, such large job losses would trigger a criminal probe.

When doing business is a prison sentence, don't be surprised if the ones willing to do business are those who belong in prison.

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

#65

Post by woah »

autokad wrote: post #62
rollerboi wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might be revealing too much here, but I work for a company that leases space from WeWork, so I go to a WeWork every day and in the evenings I read about its eventual demise. (Might explain why I'm so morbidly curious about this company) The running joke in my dept is they're going to start cutting back on amenities (watered down mouthwash, less cut up fruit in the fruitwater, etc.) and we won't see as many maintena…

really strange person. reveling for the downfall of a company that would yield negative effects on you and your coworkers. while I find this story interesting to see how things play out, what lessons learned, etc, I don't revel at all about what is happening even though it has no direct impact on me. I feel bad for those 2.5k+ employees that went from 'our company is going to go public and this is going to pay off ni…

I think you might be mixing up “reveling” with “revealing”

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

#66

Post by [deleted] »

autokad wrote: post #62
rollerboi wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might be revealing too much here, but I work for a company that leases space from WeWork, so I go to a WeWork every day and in the evenings I read about its eventual demise. (Might explain why I'm so morbidly curious about this company) The running joke in my dept is they're going to start cutting back on amenities (watered down mouthwash, less cut up fruit in the fruitwater, etc.) and we won't see as many maintena…

really strange person. reveling for the downfall of a company that would yield negative effects on you and your coworkers. while I find this story interesting to see how things play out, what lessons learned, etc, I don't revel at all about what is happening even though it has no direct impact on me. I feel bad for those 2.5k+ employees that went from 'our company is going to go public and this is going to pay off ni…

[deleted]

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

#67

Post by JohnFen »

timwaagh wrote: post #63

Guardian sometimes isn't the best. Their editorial philosophy in this case wont allow them to on report good news even when it is obvious. WeWork must downscale or else they are over, so these surplus staffers would ordinarily have been let go. This is normally not avoidable as there is no option to do anything else when a company must rapidly downscale. Now they get to keep their job. I think WeWork deserves a lot o…

> WeWork must downscale or else they are over

At this point, I think WeWork is over no matter what. The only question is how long the death throes will last.

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

#68

Post by JohnFen »

timwaagh wrote: post #64
fdswefsad wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in Italy, I believe it used to be a crime to mismanage a company such that people lost their jobs. Anyway, such large job losses would trigger a criminal probe.

When doing business is a prison sentence, don't be surprised if the ones willing to do business are those who belong in prison.

I think there's a large difference between "doing business" and "mismanaging".

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

#69

Post by rollerboi »

autokad wrote: post #62
rollerboi wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might be revealing too much here, but I work for a company that leases space from WeWork, so I go to a WeWork every day and in the evenings I read about its eventual demise. (Might explain why I'm so morbidly curious about this company) The running joke in my dept is they're going to start cutting back on amenities (watered down mouthwash, less cut up fruit in the fruitwater, etc.) and we won't see as many maintena…

really strange person. reveling for the downfall of a company that would yield negative effects on you and your coworkers. while I find this story interesting to see how things play out, what lessons learned, etc, I don't revel at all about what is happening even though it has no direct impact on me. I feel bad for those 2.5k+ employees that went from 'our company is going to go public and this is going to pay off ni…

Yeah, I'm definitely a strange person but I want to say that me and my coworkers are largely insulated from the negative effects of the WeWork debacle. We always knew working in a WeWork was a temporary thing, maybe a max of 2 years in this space before we have our own office space to work from.

I don't revel about the 2.5k employees that lose their jobs at all. (Not that I befriended many of the WeWork employees, but they're very nice people and I would hate to be in their situation, especially this close to the holidays.)

I revel about the irrational exuberance from the upper echelons of management/banking. I revel that Neuman, Softbank, JPM, Goldman Sachs, etc. are now getting called out for trying to dress up a pig in lipstick and sell it to the public at 10x its current (perhaps, "real"?) valuation.

Your last paragraph though - it's hard to make the determination that "WeWork's meltdown is leading to corrections in earnings growth/investment from tech companies." Not necessarily true imo, earnings growth was bound to correct sometime soon, especially with economic data pointing that demand is starting to slow (which is why central banks across the world are easing rates).

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

#70

Post by rollerboi »

woah wrote: post #65
autokad wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

really strange person. reveling for the downfall of a company that would yield negative effects on you and your coworkers. while I find this story interesting to see how things play out, what lessons learned, etc, I don't revel at all about what is happening even though it has no direct impact on me. I feel bad for those 2.5k+ employees that went from 'our company is going to go public and this is going to pay off ni…

I think you might be mixing up “reveling” with “revealing”

I just read this after I posted a long reply... is this what they meant?? lol
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