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Report: WeWork expected to cut 500 tech roles
- egdod 7y agoWhy does wework even have tech roles?
- autotune 7y agoInfrastructure and software are hard.
- nopriorarrests 7y agoWhat hard problems related to software and infrastructure WeWork was solving? I can not imagine a single one. Handling check-ins? Counting number of beers consumed?
- illuminati1911 7y ago"Counting number of beers consumed?" This spring I talked to their software engineering manager/lead at a tech meetup in Shanghai (the guy was from SF) and he said that they plan to hire tens of engineers just to analyze their beer consumption data to optimize supply.
- nopriorarrests 7y agoThis should be top level comment.
- codesushi42 7y agoSF is the only place in the country where you could say that with a straight face. In fact, that guy has probably long since left and is doing his own beer analytics startup.
- egdod 7y agoBeing a landlord doesn’t require much in the way of bespoke infrastructure and software.
- akuchling 7y agoMeetup.com is owned by WeWork. There could be substantial development there, although meetup.com's interface is still a confusing mix of new features that never get finished and old features that never quite go away.
- ulfw 7y agoWhat do five HUNDRED people in tech do at an office rental company?
- spectramax 7y agoWithout meaning any offense to anyone, I am also genuinely curious how is a company such as Twitter have so many employees? Outsiders like myself know what goes into running GE or Tesla (and is easy to understand), but I would really appreciate someone from silicon valley enlighten about various needs for a company such as Twitter (or WeWork, etc.); what really goes on inside the doors, how are teams organized, what are some of the most challenging problems? If I were running Twitter, I would freeze the feature creep, have a robust security and site-reliability team, perhaps make small improvements to UI/UX by eliminating friction/impedance. Similar to how Craigslist and surprisingly how Ebay is today - it is pretty much the same experience as 2008, I vividly remember. Instead, engineering resources can be channeled to new ventures (or augmentation projects) for additional growth.
- momokoko 7y agoBecause at scale small changes can save or make a company more money than an engineers salary. Simply making a process 2% more efficient can save hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Or increasing advertising conversions by 1%. etc etc.
- bob1029 7y agoRight, but system creation+enhancements can be made by a single engineer in a large % of those cases. Overwhelmingly so if you already have a working live system to start with and you are seeking incremental improvements (vs a full rewrite). There aren't many technical challenges I have encountered, when reduced to their smallest functional dimensions, that couldn't be fundamentally addressed by a single engineer. Obviously, efforts like writing an entire (practical) operating system are impossible for a single engineer to accomplish, but even then a single engineer could lead the entire effort or massive parts of the effort (e.g. the Linux kernel). Conversely, I have seen far too many cases of "too many chefs in the kitchen" when it comes to a software project. This is the end of the spectrum where you end up stuck on Docker with a stochastic and otherwise insane architecture that isn't even consistent within each product, much less across the entire organization.
- downrightmike 7y agoThis is why they are a pretend tech company. Tech roles are the company otherwise. This is part of the likely 2,000/15,000.
- archeantus 7y agoIf you’ve been inside of a WeWork office, there is a pretty advanced process in place for checking in and alerting different people about you being there. It felt a bit over-engineered when I went there, but I suppose that is the kind of stuff these “tech roles” worked on.
- autotune 7y agoA WeWork recruiter recently sent me a SRE job role and I just laughed.
- softwaredoug 7y agoThere IS a market for a WeWork like service. A WeWork-like model has appeal to someone like me that would love good coffee and an office/hoteling space! Especially as I travel a lot and sometimes want a reliable private workspace in an arbitrary city. Coffee shops frankly don’t cut it for working/meeting with people all day. Also there’s often a need for meeting spaces in arbitrary cities. my company would have used an airBNB style conference room scheduling solution half a dozen times last year. All to say there’s at least a potential customer base here. Whether it’s a profitable business model, well, maybe :)
- fourstar 7y agoIt’s called a hotel or motel. They contain all those things you desire.
- softwaredoug 7y agoNot really. Having tried to use hotels for meetings, they are unreasonably expensive and do stupid stuff like “the whiteboard rental fee is $500/day”
- rosybox 7y agoMaybe that's just the cost of offering these things. How much money do you think they're making off of those fees? They're probably covering costs and are low margin.
- nopriorarrests 7y agoI think they are making a killing. If you have a business meeting in progress with your client, you are not going to move to another hotel bc of $500 whiteboard fee. You cringe and put this expense on your corporate credit card. And hotel knows this.
- CydeWeys 7y agoAs someone who's been around enough people who book conventions, they're making a KILLING off these fees. It's the business model of the industry; they get you on the extras. Every little coffee or snack break is outrageously expensive. God help you if you cater a lunch through them. If you think the services for a wedding are expensive, try booking a convention. Companies have way more money to spend than random couples do, and the hotels/convention centers know it. For example, here's a typical catering menu for a convention center. Note that most of these prices are per person, and also note all the extra fees that they'll ding you for on pages 2-4 on top of the already high food costs (e.g. $2 per meal and break per person for plates).
- youeseh 7y agoSay you own a co-working space. You probably should have some way to let: - People book conference rooms. - Let people check in and check out. - Let people book hot desks. - Manage access for members, hot desks, event participants etc. - Lots of other stuff. At some point, the off the shelf software is no good, especially if you're looking to... build a single experience around the world for lots and lots of office buildings under your management! The software will have a lot of other admin and reporting doodads. Especially if you're trying to turn your office company into an everything company. Then the scope goes way up. You might even start thinking about managing everything because you're a control freak... stuff like central air con control and energy use analytics across all properties... I'm just throwing stuff out there, I've never worked for WeWork. Does this justify hundreds of engineers? It is so easy to hire more people when you have a massive war chest. Projects begin to justify themselves because you'll need them "soon enough". And if the founder pulls it off, then they're a genius! Or not.
- codesushi42 7y agoDoes this justify hundreds of engineers? No. And the software to do those things isn't worth billions. WeWokeUp.
- paxys 7y agoIt's a classic case of hire engineers first and figure out problems to solve later. This works great if the company already has a massive revenue stream (Google, Facebook etc.) so the engineers can just mess around and once in a while come up with something great. For a company losing $2B+ a year, not so much. Once WeWork solved its core engineering problems (bookings), engineering job descriptions got more and more abstract - "build the operating system for the workspace", "bridge the gap between physical and digital", "create a sense of community", "humanize through technology" (all copied directly from their engineering website), so it's clear that they are paying thousands of engineers to do nothing. I know for a fact that they have large data and machine learning teams spread across SF, NYC, Tel Aviv, Shanghai and maybe more that collect and analyze data from all their operations - few hundred offices and few hundred thousand members. At this scale there is zero reason not to use off-the-shelf products (or pay one of the dozens of companies out there that specialize in this), but they decided to custom build all the infra in-house from scratch.
- weare138 7y agoBut I was told WeWork is a tech company. Repeatedly.
- joejerryronnie 7y agoJust imagine what would have happened if WeWork added “blockchain” to their mission statement in late 2018.
- xiphias2 7y agoI don't know who told you that, but Adam didn't: according to him WeWork is a community company, a new category.
- tempsy 7y agoThis article on Masa from January gives some insight on what engineers were doing: https://www.fastcompany.com/90285552/the-most-powerful-person-in-silicon-valley https://www.fastcompany.com/90285552/the-most-powerful-perso... tl;dr They used sensors to determine that people drink coffee in the morning and the line was long. They also used sensors to determine that small groups of people were booking large conference rooms so they made more small conference rooms. Relevant part: WeWork’s potential lies in what might happen when you apply AI to the environment where most of us spend the majority of our waking hours. I head down one floor to meet Mark Tanner, a WeWork product manager, who shows me a proprietary software system that the company has built to manage the 335 locations it now operates around the world. He starts by pulling up an aerial view of the WeWork floor I had just visited. My movements, from the moment I stepped off the elevator, have been monitored and captured by a sophisticated system of sensors that live under tables, above couches, and so forth. It’s part of a pilot that WeWork is testing to explore how people move through their workday. The machines pick up all kinds of details, which WeWork then uses to adjust everything from design to hiring. For example, sensors installed near this office’s main-floor self-serve coffee station helped WeWork discern that the morning lines were too long, so they added a barista. The larger conference rooms rarely got filled to capacity–often just two or three people would use rooms designed for 20–so the company is refashioning some spaces for smaller groups. (WeWork executives assure me that “the sensors do not capture personal identifiable information.”)
- jrvarela56 7y agoThis is it. A friend who worked in the analytics team mentioned how everything is measured and taken into account when renovating and buying new buildings. Things like exposure to sunlight, time spent at a desk, etc. These analytics are offered to FB/Amazon/big-co along with office as a service. As someone else mentioned, cool/potentially profitable company. Just not worth 40B.
- tempsy 7y agoDo you think so? I posted this mostly as a joke. The idea that this was anything close to being "AI" is a bit silly. The insight that there were long lines for coffee in the morning and small groups were taking large conference rooms are simple observations that one person could've made and written a report about.
- codesushi42 7y agoThey may as well just close down now. The morale there must be terrible. Anyone good who survives the cuts will GTFO to greener pastures. Anyone who stays or anyone desperate enough to join will be terrible. Good bye We, consider this my eulogy, we hardly knew ye, and may you rest in peepee.
- cagenut 7y agoI kinda wish there was a job for like, DevOps Hatchet Men. I don't want to lay people off, but after they're laid off I feel like I could probably delete about a million dollars a year worth of their AWS bill right now and they'd never even notice the stuff missing.
- lprubin 7y agoSounds like a great consulting niche. It's a simple to understand value proposition and I imagine there is somebody powerful at many successful companies that would love to see the huge server cost line item go way down on their P&L.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoThere are consulting roles like that, but you’ll make more in infosec and it’s an easier sell than arguing why you should capture your share of the value you’re delivering to make it worth your while.
- encoderer 7y agoI think this space is hotter than ever. Hard to keep juicing profits for Wall Street when you are increasing AWS spend 5% month over month. There are LOTS of companies spending a million a month or more on AWS.
- solidasparagus 7y agoWhoops, apparently I can't read. That would be $52M per year. I would guess there are under 100 companies with that kind of AWS bill and probably closer to a couple dozen with that kind of spend.
- willhslade 7y ago$12M but sure.
- paxys 7y agoAWS consultants most definitely exist already.
- jfb 7y agoWait, they have more than 500 tech roles? For a shitty office space leasing company?
- gbjw 7y ago1500 tech employees (out of 15000 total).
- codingslave 7y agoLiterally last week I got an email from WeWork looking for a Senior Data Engineer with "High Comp". I never understand these companies, aggressively hiring before they lay everyone off
- jrockway 7y agoI think it will cause a lot of cognitive dissonance if you treat large companies like you'd treat a single person. Imagine there is one person in charge of everything; it would be super weird if they bring you in for an interview on the day they're firing everyone else. But that's not how these large companies work; one person made the hire someone and some other person that's never met the first person made the decision to lay everyone off. You have to look at it like a distributed eventually-consistent database. In that context, everything should make sense; there was a netsplit and the consensus algorithm produced a different state in each cluster. (There's a reason why we try not to design database like that. Perhaps there is a management lesson in there somewhere.)
- speby 7y agoThis ... it is incredibly easy to trap yourself into thinking large companies are even aware of everything they're doing in every little niche and nuance pocket of their operations. In many cases, there can be a growth area that had job requisitions approved for a high-growth investment in a small part of the company while the entire rest of the company experiences a massive layoff. This can occur both with central knowledge of the hiring in that small pocket of the company or without. Either way, the effect is the same and so is the reaction ... it just looks weird.
- kunle 7y agoI saw folks do this for Buzzfeed layoffs and Uber layoffs a while back, and I think it was helpful (context here : https://www.businessinsider.com/ex-uber-employee-has-created-spreadsheet-of-laid-off-staffers-2019-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/ex-uber-employee-has-created...) If you're affected by the WeWork layoffs and looking for a new role, fill this out: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdx4TOVN7AdgvyAZGbquEV7gd4Ok5pJcTAtBXgPWY3sPe0ufg/viewform?usp=sf_link https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdx4TOVN7AdgvyAZGbq... If you're interested in recruiting ex-WeWork folks, you can look them up here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14CAtBsn3ZTL59tNMVbew2AlAh_mzPaSL5wOm4Sh8FD0/edit#gid=1753458875 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14CAtBsn3ZTL59tNMVbew...
- dvtrn 7y agoFYI, may want to take a gander at "WeWork Role", whatever your options are didn't save and just lists 'option 1'.
- kunle 7y agoThx. Fixed.
- rocketpastsix 7y agoyoure a good person.