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WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

cnbc.com

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Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#61

Post by dickeytk »

Strom wrote: post #52
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 presume that by all the people who helped him you mean the WeWork employees and not investors like SoftBank. Well, these employees aren't walking away empty handed either. They've been getting paid all these years and most of them will probably continue getting paid for some time. That's also a fruit of Neumann's scheming. These people didn't have to fight for jobs in a real business, they are benefiting from the W…

They’re not destitute, no.

But their employees were heavily compensated with options that are now worthless.

Of course options are a risk, but they didn’t work there if they didn’t think those options would be at least worth something in the future.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#62

Post by jbob2000 »

brosinante wrote: post #31
jbob2000 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could look at this as a shifting of talent. Instead of those 2,400 people wasting their time managing short term office rentals for yuppies, perhaps they'll move on to more meaningful work! Some will start companies, some will join companies that provide more value to society, some will spend time with their families.

shifting of talent I hate this new reality.

Which new reality? The one where most of the population can read and write and where most hold degrees and diplomas? This isn’t the 1900s industrialization era, where employees were picked out of the farm fields to work in factories, having never gone to school. People are smart these days, layoffs aren’t as destructive as they used to be.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#63

Post by berberous »

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 evidence of low morals in my view, but none of those events actually materially impact the value of the business. Instead, overnight, investors just came to their senses about what kind of value this type of business is worth. Definitely a strategic misstep on his part, but it’s not like he stole billions of value away from the company. The drop in value is more like what happened to Uber or Blue Apron post IPO, except, unfortunately for the employees, it happened before they could exit.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#64

Post by Abishek_Muthian »

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.

“WeWork isn’t really a real estate company. It’s a state of consciousness, a generation of interconnected emotionally intelligent entrepreneurs.” -Adam Neumann.[1]

Even after hearing that media raved about him/WeWork, analysts were bullish and investors pumped Billions. Startup media are generally happy with their funding related news as it is glamorous.

And due to the funding noise, Startup ecosystem has forgotten that a Startup is a Business and a Business should make money, else it's just a hobby.

[1]:https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/17/business/the-wework-manif...

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#67

Post by jackhack »

Honestly I'm surprised there are 2400 employees who have stuck around this long, waiting for the other shoe to drop. How could they not see the obvious implosion coming? The proverbial tidal wave of ugly news has been steady for months now.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#68

Post by ben_jones »

roland35 wrote: post #3

From the article, 2,400 employees is 19% of the peak of 12,500 employees on June 30. There was no mention of where the cuts were made however. I am curious how many "white collar" type jobs WeWork would have, since I heard from previous discussions here that they were hiring for roles in unrelated-to-real-estate things like machine learning. I would imagine that there are lots of hourly-type roles managing the sites,…

I currently keep a wework hotdesk and they do have a sizable headcount at each location - 3 rotating front desk people, a location manager, and maybe 3/4 rotating maintenance staff. I think they might contract out the maintenance staff, but that's still 4x number_of_locations just for that.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#69

Post by Strom »

dickeytk wrote: post #61
Strom wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I presume that by all the people who helped him you mean the WeWork employees and not investors like SoftBank. Well, these employees aren't walking away empty handed either. They've been getting paid all these years and most of them will probably continue getting paid for some time. That's also a fruit of Neumann's scheming. These people didn't have to fight for jobs in a real business, they are benefiting from the W…

They’re not destitute, no. But their employees were heavily compensated with options that are now worthless. Of course options are a risk, but they didn’t work there if they didn’t think those options would be at least worth something in the future.

Options in a startup are always a lottery ticket. I would argue that no rational person assigns any significant value to them, because even career investors aren't able to pick winners and instead earn money by betting on a lot of different startups.

Re: WeWork lays off 2,400 employees

#70

Post by ygjb »

Strom wrote: post #52
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 presume that by all the people who helped him you mean the WeWork employees and not investors like SoftBank. Well, these employees aren't walking away empty handed either. They've been getting paid all these years and most of them will probably continue getting paid for some time. That's also a fruit of Neumann's scheming. These people didn't have to fight for jobs in a real business, they are benefiting from the W…

> These people didn't have to fight for jobs in a real business, they are benefiting from the WeWork illusion of grandeur and bringing in paychecks month after month.

Yikes. I have worked in two different startups that imploded quickly, largely due to an inability to find an effective sales and growth strategy. The fact that I was sold on the vision and that vision wasn't realized doesn't make the work I was doing any less challenging, nor did it make the job or business any less real.

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