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Because in this case, the "victims" were voluntarily involved. Also, the peanut gallery is free to throw peanuts at the stage.
You think the rank and file got their just desserts?
WeWork Needed a Bailout, But Adam Neumann Still Leaves a Billionaire
51–60 of 105 posts
Re: WeWork Needed a Bailout, But Adam Neumann Still Leaves a Billionaire
#52Yet any early employees who signed on with compensation in the form of stock grants/options/RSUs have lost out on years of compensation. Claiming that it's a risk/reward tradeoff is nonsense, as ICs don't have any meaningful say on the path to exercising their "income", and there are huge incentives for founders and VCs to arrange deals like this. I really hope that people start realizing that this is a core behavior…
I've been saying for years that stock grants/options/RSUs are like playing the lotto, and salary/benefits are more important. They're also a tool to keep people in roles they no longer want, because of a promise of a great payoff someday.
How are RSUs like playing the lotto if you work for one of the big 5 (GAFAM)? I work for one and my RSUs vest monthly and they are autosold so i get a USD based direct deposit each month. While it does very slightly, I wouldn't consider it the lotto.
Re: WeWork Needed a Bailout, But Adam Neumann Still Leaves a Billionaire
#53[flagged]
This isn't a failure of capitalism, its just due to blind optimism and lack of governance with people falling under the spell of a charismatic CEO imho. If it had worked, everyone would be saying this guys a genius. I looked at WeWork at one stage for an office, the prices seemed crazy, I didn't understand how any one was using it, you've been able to get serviced offices for years for way cheaper. He did OK though,…
You aren't asking "why" enough. It's not just a bad actor... Why was it possible for him to do what he did? Why was he allowed to personally succeed and leave others the debt?
Re: WeWork Needed a Bailout, But Adam Neumann Still Leaves a Billionaire
#54Re: WeWork Needed a Bailout, But Adam Neumann Still Leaves a Billionaire
#55Since when did loss making pre-IPO companies become "TOO BIG TO FAIL" ?
Softbank is trying, rather clumsily, to avoid "losing face". Looks like they came to the conclusion that should they let wework follow the natural course of things, it would taint the image of all their other investments.
The thing is, this is not going to work. Public market investors are wary and are not ready to buy over-valued assets without some really good reason. The party is over, and it doesn't mean we are entering into the apocalypse, but rather that the time of irrational dreams is over, and that we need to think things based not on irrational ideas, but by paying more attention to the fundamentals.
Money can still be made, but the whole VC world needs to stop thinking that every business is going to generate the absurd returns facebook and google gave. Those are black-swan events. Not every startup will give 6000% returns. Those were anomalies, it is not going to happen every day.
But, the thing is, even a 200% return over 5 years is a great investment. Most of time it would beat DOW or NASDAQ indexes even reinvesting dividends.
So, maybe excessive greed is breeding irrealistic expectations, which in turn is feeding terribly bad decisions.
Re: WeWork Needed a Bailout, But Adam Neumann Still Leaves a Billionaire
#56There is another less discussed downside to Vision Fund’s reckless spending and overvaluation of startups. While Travis & Adam make their billions, the employees at Uber and WeWork are granted overvalued options and stock that subsequently crashes. The Uber stock is still below where it was 5 years ago and may never recover. The WeWork stock will likely never recover. As an employee, I would avoid working for a compa…
Every time I see these shenanigans it validates my position of turning options into cash if I’m above water ASAP, and getting as much of my raises into base salary as possible. Twice burned (2001, 2009)...
Meh I regret selling any GOOG in the low $200s
Re: WeWork Needed a Bailout, But Adam Neumann Still Leaves a Billionaire
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been saying for years that stock grants/options/RSUs are like playing the lotto, and salary/benefits are more important. They're also a tool to keep people in roles they no longer want, because of a promise of a great payoff someday.
How are RSUs like playing the lotto if you work for one of the big 5 (GAFAM)? I work for one and my RSUs vest monthly and they are autosold so i get a USD based direct deposit each month. While it does very slightly, I wouldn't consider it the lotto.
They mean for a privately held company
Re: WeWork Needed a Bailout, But Adam Neumann Still Leaves a Billionaire
#58[flagged]
Without getting into that, on the bright side of this We does seem to have facilitated a fairly large-scale transfer of wealth from investors and landlords to contractors and people renting short-term office space.
Re: WeWork Needed a Bailout, But Adam Neumann Still Leaves a Billionaire
#59[flagged]
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Re: WeWork Needed a Bailout, But Adam Neumann Still Leaves a Billionaire
#60As Matt Levine said, if you owe the bank a million dollars, you have a problem. If you owe the bank 100 million dollars, the bank has a problem.
I don't know who said that first but it certainly wasn't Matt Levine.
But the big question (for longtime readers) is: does that misattribution count as securities fraud?