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Beyond the entire conversation about whether this is legal or illegal, and whether this is typical or atypical, there is a much more significant issue. The ent

by numair 8y ago

Beyond the entire conversation about whether this is legal or illegal, and whether this is typical or atypical, there is a much more significant issue. The entire image and “vibe” of this guy / his team is supposed to be an egalitarian re-invention of the status quo. The kibbutz story. The “community adjusted EBITDA.” The rebranding to “We.” But this sort of real estate self-dealing isn’t a We move, it’s a Me move. And thus, we find ourselves facing a bigger issue that is far more troubling if you’re a shareholder or employee (and somewhat enjoyable if you’re a competitor): the emperor has no clothes and the CEO is full of shit. He is self-serving and isn’t optimizing for the benefit of those around him. As others in the tech industry are only beginning to figure out, once your curated narrative dies and the reality of who you really are comes to the surface, an unstoppable cycle of “bad press” and “negative sentiment” emerges. That’s a hard cycle to work out of, especially if the value of your company is predicated on your image / the image of the company. Hiring Obama’s speech writer and lobbying Congress doesn’t fix the underlying issue, and eventually you’re living in a Reverse Metcalf’s Law situation that’s scaling in the wrong direction. As WeWork is built on an image of selling “a new, better way of working” to companies of all sizes, it becomes extremely problematic if people start to associate the brand with “the rich keep getting richer, and they’re screwing us over and working us to the bone along the way.” An image of a “collaborative enterprise” becomes a laughable fantasy novel next to the reality of, “we are funded by third world despots and our CEO is lining his pockets with as much of our money as possible, while scheming up ways to do petty things such as avoid paying the cleaning staff any sort of decent wages or benefits.” This isn’t the We Company. It’s the Me Company. That’s not very innovative. That doesn’t foster greater productivity. And eventually, a lot of tenants aren’t going to pay for it, because it seems a lot of them really think they’re paying to be part of a progressive, futuristic environment. If their smartest and most progressive employees start telling them they don’t want to visit the office, they’re going to get rid of that office. Companies’ desire to please their knowledge workers — what originally drove WeWork’s success — thus ends up killing it.

AJ007 8y ago
I never got that image from WeWork. Anyone around during late 2008-2009 knows what happened to leases and rents. It seemed apparent from the beginning that WeWork was just exchanging future risk for current cash, and thus everything else was marketing farcical bullshit. The fact that no one can actually do real work at a WeWork was just icing on the shit pie.
- Balero 8y ago
  I'm currently in a non-WeWork co-working space. It's not clear what you mean with "The fact that no one can actually do real work at a WeWork was just icing on the shit pie.".
  - woah 8y ago
    My guess is that this person is super angry about open plan offices
    - ocharles 8y ago
      WeWork isn't an open plan office. At least, not the one I work in in London. We just pay an extraordinary amount of money for a small glass-walled room. We internally have an open plan office, but that's just because we opted for a single WeWork room.
      - tcas 8y ago
        At least in my NYC WeWork the sound isolation is so bad that it might as well be an open office. I can clearly hear all the phone conversations my WeWork neighbors make. I assume they can hear mine as well.
        malyk 8y ago
        The two I've been in in seattle have been basically silent inside our office.
  - richardknop 8y ago
    Don’t they serve beer whole day there? Or have they stopped doing that? I guess that was seen as one reason why you couldn’t get serious work done.
    - rchaud 8y ago
      in the book Disrupted (about the author's time working at Hubspot), he posits that the free beer offered at startups is to soften the blow of the long working hours and relatively low salaries. In this case, the free beer might be an intentional way to take "loud room I can't work in", to "laid back atmosphere I feel home in". The latter is false, but it's not as bad as being stuck with "loud room I can't work in".
matte_black 8y ago
WeWork’s customers are also maintaining their own curated narrative. Many of them don’t actually care about ideology, they just want a hip co-working space where they can drink beer and socialize with other startups and “crush it” everyday. It’s only fitting that the owner would also be full of shit.
- iamben 8y ago
  I won't vote you down, but I think this is a pretty gross generalisation, is it not? For every person shouting about crushing it and hammering back booze there are another handful quietly getting on with their work, happy to have an office space with stable, fast internet, clean, stocked kitchens, 24 hour access and clean, comfortable spaces - where they don't have to worry about sorting bills and contracts, cleaners, etc etc etc.
  - logfromblammo 8y ago
    I hypothesize that every university main campus has, nearby, a small-business incubator building with individual offices for lease. And I suspect that a good percentage of commuter campuses have them, too. If those are unavailable, class B office space is readily available in single-story strip-mall form, and sometimes old industrial buildings get converted to class C. Your startup business probably does not require couches, stocked kitchens, and wi-fi. It needs a mailing address, a phone number, a website, and a way for people to pay you. Those folding tables from Costco will still be useful after you can afford real desks.
  - heurist 8y ago
    You can get 90% of that for a half or quarter the cost at a B grade office building, and not deal with noisy neighbors or occupied conference rooms. It usually takes committing to a contract, but if you're not ready to do that you probably don't need office space.
    - iamben 8y ago
      Just to counter your point - I worked from home as a freelancer for about 4 years. I decided I wanted separation between church and state, as it were. Definitely wasn't ready for a contract, but have been in a WeWork for 3+ years now (and am still happy to not have to commit to location/broadband/cleaner/whatever). I'm sure I could have paid for cheaper work space (although, London) - but the money I've made from meeting people here and chatting over lunch / coffee that I didn't have when I worked from home and attended meetups has more than covered everything I've spent. Not to mention my productivity increased noticeably.
dunpeal 8y ago
> The entire image and “vibe” of this guy / his team is supposed to be an egalitarian re-invention of the status quo. The kibbutz story. The “community adjusted EBITDA.” The rebranding to “We.” This is all just marketing. It's like believing all the actors in a commercial really are elated and blissful just because they chose the right brand of soda.
- alexandercrohde 8y ago
  In this case yes. But I think it's very important to remember that companies can have moral standards and follow them. Many companies don't sell-out in crucial ways, and throwing one's hands up and condemning them all is punishing the ones that stay true. I think moral outrage is a very important and effective market force. It will do things our government never could, like take down facebook. I'm glad we have this tool.
  - dunpeal 8y ago
    > But I think it's very important to remember that companies can have moral standards and follow them. Many companies don't sell-out in crucial ways, and throwing one's hands up and condemning them all is punishing the ones that stay true. I agree, which is why I criticize shallow analysis of a company's motivation based on its skin-deep marketing veneer. In this case it's not even moral standards - the implication is that WeWork's CEO is neglecting his fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value by lining his pocket instead. That's in fact a corruption of capitalism, it's illegal, and he can be sued for that by shareholders. > I think moral outrage is a very important and effective market force. I completely agree, which is why it's important to look beyond the marketing. If a company can breach standards of morality and decency, but get away thanks to some 30 seconds commercial featuring smiling kids, then we will not be effective as a public in enforcing those very real consequences that companies should face for their actions.
- arthurofbabylon 8y ago
  Marketing can be based on varying depths of truth. Generally speaking, the greater the depth the greater the long term value and efficacy of the marketing. (Marketing is not always a veneer.)
gaius 8y ago
petty things such as avoid paying the cleaning staff any sort of decent wages or benefits.” It’s pathological. WeWork, Google, Facebook and all the rest don’t need to shaft their cleaners, catering staff, security guards etc. The cost is a rounding error and it’s directly antithetical to their stated brand values. But they just can’t help themselves.
- rchaud 8y ago
  I believe there was a NYT story posted last year about how all custodial services are contracted out these days, and ye olde American success story of 'going from the janitor supply closet to the boardroom' was gone forever. The used an example of a cleaner at HP in the early '80s who became a manager of some sort. The comments on that article? Mostly something along the lines of "maximizing shareholder value" and "fiduciary duty to the corporation". Anything to avoid having to admit that this is wrong.
  - olyjohn 8y ago
    Sadly, this is the way that IT is going as well. It's getting harder to start at the help desk and work your way into a real position anywhere. When we interviewed for a Desktop Support person, 80% (my guesstimate) of our applicants only had (limited) access to the Office 365 portal, performed basic password resets, and did shit-work like wipe drives. They were totally silo'd out of being able to grow. They weren't even given local admin permissions on workstations to be able to do any real troubleshooting. Of course, all this is in the name of "security" and the least-privilege thing. It's horse shit really. You need to be able to trust your employees and then audit. But it's easier to manage people when you can just lock them into a position and leave them there to rot.
    - expertentipp 8y ago
      Helpdesk?! Outsourced development for major institutions is done that the developer has a remote access to the virtual machine with the IDE, repository cloned, etc. Growth? Your are a JAVA+Angular whore. Complaints? This workplace is for team-players only. Fired? Revoke the access with one click.
edanm 8y ago
I really don't know what you're talking about. I'm a WeWork customer - we rent an office at a WeWork for our small company. We're not at WeWork because of hype, or the image of the CEO, or anything like that. We're at a WeWork because it's a cheap/easy way to get an office, that we can scale when the company grows with minimal issues since it's month to month. We shopped around a few competitors, WeWork happened to be the best combination of price vs. space vs. availability, so we went with that. I haven't exactly done a poll, but I doubt that most WeWork customers know or care about WeWork's culture too much - they just need an office, and WeWork is providing a cost-effective solution. Maybe it's artificial because of VC money - if so, I certainly don't care - it'll be good while it lasts! For contrast: at my previous company, we also wanted to move to an office (instead of working out of my apartment). We spent a huge amount of time looking at offices, and ended up staying put, because it was hard to find a decent office with a decent price, and signing up for a 2-year lease is a huge commitment which is not fun to make when you don't know the future size of the company - do you get lots more space than you need and pay extra? Do you get less space and are in a tough spot if you grow too fast?
- jusben1369 8y ago
  I think that's fair. I also think you represent the initial use case and one that's still very relevant today. WeWork has made it clear though that real growth for them now needs to come from mid and large companies willing to use their services at scale and have had some success doing that. I would pivot a little away from OP's "human sentimental" angle and more towards "this obvious ethical lapse, and a board that can't or won't control it" will make those larger organizations pause before becoming too dependent upon WeWork.
- RonanTheGrey 8y ago
  > We're at a WeWork because it's a cheap/easy way to get an office, that we can scale when the company grows with minimal issues since it's month to month Where is WeWork month to month? Yes the open plan area is month to month, but the instant you try to get a private room they want you to sign a 6 month commitment. I have not gone to ones in the US, though. This is outside the US. Are they truly, genuinely cancel-any-time month to month? Or "yeah it's month to month but if you cancel before 6 months is up you have to pay 50% of the remaining months"?

by numair 8y ago

AJ007 8y ago

I never got that image from WeWork. Anyone around during late 2008-2009 knows what happened to leases and rents. It seemed apparent from the beginning that WeWork was just exchanging future risk for current cash, and thus everything else was marketing farcical bullshit. The fact that no one can actually do real work at a WeWork was just icing on the shit pie.

Balero 8y ago
I'm currently in a non-WeWork co-working space. It's not clear what you mean with "The fact that no one can actually do real work at a WeWork was just icing on the shit pie.".
- woah 8y ago
  My guess is that this person is super angry about open plan offices
  - ocharles 8y ago
    WeWork isn't an open plan office. At least, not the one I work in in London. We just pay an extraordinary amount of money for a small glass-walled room. We internally have an open plan office, but that's just because we opted for a single WeWork room.
    - tcas 8y ago
      At least in my NYC WeWork the sound isolation is so bad that it might as well be an open office. I can clearly hear all the phone conversations my WeWork neighbors make. I assume they can hear mine as well.
      - malyk 8y ago
        The two I've been in in seattle have been basically silent inside our office.
- richardknop 8y ago
  Don’t they serve beer whole day there? Or have they stopped doing that? I guess that was seen as one reason why you couldn’t get serious work done.
  - rchaud 8y ago
    in the book Disrupted (about the author's time working at Hubspot), he posits that the free beer offered at startups is to soften the blow of the long working hours and relatively low salaries. In this case, the free beer might be an intentional way to take "loud room I can't work in", to "laid back atmosphere I feel home in". The latter is false, but it's not as bad as being stuck with "loud room I can't work in".

matte_black 8y ago

WeWork’s customers are also maintaining their own curated narrative. Many of them don’t actually care about ideology, they just want a hip co-working space where they can drink beer and socialize with other startups and “crush it” everyday. It’s only fitting that the owner would also be full of shit.

iamben 8y ago
I won't vote you down, but I think this is a pretty gross generalisation, is it not? For every person shouting about crushing it and hammering back booze there are another handful quietly getting on with their work, happy to have an office space with stable, fast internet, clean, stocked kitchens, 24 hour access and clean, comfortable spaces - where they don't have to worry about sorting bills and contracts, cleaners, etc etc etc.
- logfromblammo 8y ago
  I hypothesize that every university main campus has, nearby, a small-business incubator building with individual offices for lease. And I suspect that a good percentage of commuter campuses have them, too. If those are unavailable, class B office space is readily available in single-story strip-mall form, and sometimes old industrial buildings get converted to class C. Your startup business probably does not require couches, stocked kitchens, and wi-fi. It needs a mailing address, a phone number, a website, and a way for people to pay you. Those folding tables from Costco will still be useful after you can afford real desks.
- heurist 8y ago
  You can get 90% of that for a half or quarter the cost at a B grade office building, and not deal with noisy neighbors or occupied conference rooms. It usually takes committing to a contract, but if you're not ready to do that you probably don't need office space.
  - iamben 8y ago
    Just to counter your point - I worked from home as a freelancer for about 4 years. I decided I wanted separation between church and state, as it were. Definitely wasn't ready for a contract, but have been in a WeWork for 3+ years now (and am still happy to not have to commit to location/broadband/cleaner/whatever). I'm sure I could have paid for cheaper work space (although, London) - but the money I've made from meeting people here and chatting over lunch / coffee that I didn't have when I worked from home and attended meetups has more than covered everything I've spent. Not to mention my productivity increased noticeably.

dunpeal 8y ago

> The entire image and “vibe” of this guy / his team is supposed to be an egalitarian re-invention of the status quo. The kibbutz story. The “community adjusted EBITDA.” The rebranding to “We.” This is all just marketing. It's like believing all the actors in a commercial really are elated and blissful just because they chose the right brand of soda.

alexandercrohde 8y ago
In this case yes. But I think it's very important to remember that companies can have moral standards and follow them. Many companies don't sell-out in crucial ways, and throwing one's hands up and condemning them all is punishing the ones that stay true. I think moral outrage is a very important and effective market force. It will do things our government never could, like take down facebook. I'm glad we have this tool.
- dunpeal 8y ago
  > But I think it's very important to remember that companies can have moral standards and follow them. Many companies don't sell-out in crucial ways, and throwing one's hands up and condemning them all is punishing the ones that stay true. I agree, which is why I criticize shallow analysis of a company's motivation based on its skin-deep marketing veneer. In this case it's not even moral standards - the implication is that WeWork's CEO is neglecting his fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value by lining his pocket instead. That's in fact a corruption of capitalism, it's illegal, and he can be sued for that by shareholders. > I think moral outrage is a very important and effective market force. I completely agree, which is why it's important to look beyond the marketing. If a company can breach standards of morality and decency, but get away thanks to some 30 seconds commercial featuring smiling kids, then we will not be effective as a public in enforcing those very real consequences that companies should face for their actions.
arthurofbabylon 8y ago
Marketing can be based on varying depths of truth. Generally speaking, the greater the depth the greater the long term value and efficacy of the marketing. (Marketing is not always a veneer.)

gaius 8y ago

petty things such as avoid paying the cleaning staff any sort of decent wages or benefits.” It’s pathological. WeWork, Google, Facebook and all the rest don’t need to shaft their cleaners, catering staff, security guards etc. The cost is a rounding error and it’s directly antithetical to their stated brand values. But they just can’t help themselves.

rchaud 8y ago
I believe there was a NYT story posted last year about how all custodial services are contracted out these days, and ye olde American success story of 'going from the janitor supply closet to the boardroom' was gone forever. The used an example of a cleaner at HP in the early '80s who became a manager of some sort. The comments on that article? Mostly something along the lines of "maximizing shareholder value" and "fiduciary duty to the corporation". Anything to avoid having to admit that this is wrong.
- olyjohn 8y ago
  Sadly, this is the way that IT is going as well. It's getting harder to start at the help desk and work your way into a real position anywhere. When we interviewed for a Desktop Support person, 80% (my guesstimate) of our applicants only had (limited) access to the Office 365 portal, performed basic password resets, and did shit-work like wipe drives. They were totally silo'd out of being able to grow. They weren't even given local admin permissions on workstations to be able to do any real troubleshooting. Of course, all this is in the name of "security" and the least-privilege thing. It's horse shit really. You need to be able to trust your employees and then audit. But it's easier to manage people when you can just lock them into a position and leave them there to rot.
  - expertentipp 8y ago
    Helpdesk?! Outsourced development for major institutions is done that the developer has a remote access to the virtual machine with the IDE, repository cloned, etc. Growth? Your are a JAVA+Angular whore. Complaints? This workplace is for team-players only. Fired? Revoke the access with one click.

edanm 8y ago

I really don't know what you're talking about. I'm a WeWork customer - we rent an office at a WeWork for our small company. We're not at WeWork because of hype, or the image of the CEO, or anything like that. We're at a WeWork because it's a cheap/easy way to get an office, that we can scale when the company grows with minimal issues since it's month to month. We shopped around a few competitors, WeWork happened to be the best combination of price vs. space vs. availability, so we went with that. I haven't exactly done a poll, but I doubt that most WeWork customers know or care about WeWork's culture too much - they just need an office, and WeWork is providing a cost-effective solution. Maybe it's artificial because of VC money - if so, I certainly don't care - it'll be good while it lasts! For contrast: at my previous company, we also wanted to move to an office (instead of working out of my apartment). We spent a huge amount of time looking at offices, and ended up staying put, because it was hard to find a decent office with a decent price, and signing up for a 2-year lease is a huge commitment which is not fun to make when you don't know the future size of the company - do you get lots more space than you need and pay extra? Do you get less space and are in a tough spot if you grow too fast?

jusben1369 8y ago
I think that's fair. I also think you represent the initial use case and one that's still very relevant today. WeWork has made it clear though that real growth for them now needs to come from mid and large companies willing to use their services at scale and have had some success doing that. I would pivot a little away from OP's "human sentimental" angle and more towards "this obvious ethical lapse, and a board that can't or won't control it" will make those larger organizations pause before becoming too dependent upon WeWork.
RonanTheGrey 8y ago
> We're at a WeWork because it's a cheap/easy way to get an office, that we can scale when the company grows with minimal issues since it's month to month Where is WeWork month to month? Yes the open plan area is month to month, but the instant you try to get a private room they want you to sign a 6 month commitment. I have not gone to ones in the US, though. This is outside the US. Are they truly, genuinely cancel-any-time month to month? Or "yeah it's month to month but if you cancel before 6 months is up you have to pay 50% of the remaining months"?