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Say 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 b

Say 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 ago
Does this justify hundreds of engineers? No. And the software to do those things isn't worth billions. WeWokeUp.
paxys 7y ago
It'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.
- ethbro 7y ago
  > 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's going to be an awkward presentation to management when they present their revenue forecasts under different economic scenarios...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- mrgreenfur 7y ago
  Maybe they are using all those ML teams to build "self driving offices" (a la uber) or Self-greeting receiption? or predictive room bookings
appleiigs 7y ago
Could have hired 500 office managers at half the salary and give them a paper daily planner.
unreal37 7y ago
WeWork had apps to optimize the space in their office layout for maximum efficiency. They had one of the lowest sqft per paying member in the business. They also were into custom spaces. They needed software to design the office floor plans for big customers like MixPanel. Lots of software. Not just booking rooms and events.
- aswanson 7y ago
  apps to optimize the space in their office layout for maximum efficiency That sound like some useless bullshit if I've ever heard it.
  - ygjb 7y ago
    So does most software until you try doing stuff the hard way.
  - ch4s3 7y ago
    Really? You think optimizing office layout to maximize rental income is ”useless bullshit”?
    - stickfigure 7y ago
      In fairness, it might actually be. They have a lot of properties, yes, but is it so many that that can't just send a particularly skilled human around to design them? Binpacking is np-hard but humans still do a very good job of playing Tetris. It is hard to imagine getting a positive return on automating something they (in the long run) will do a few times a year.
      - ch4s3 7y ago
        > It is hard to imagine getting a positive return on automating something they (in the long run) will do a few times a year. That's totally fair. I think they actually do some other types of more mundane optimization that are geared towards managing the properties. I think a number of the engineers also work on the learning platform for their education services.
TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
Probably need 20 engineers to do that... And another 480 to change the UI in annoying and unnecessary ways every three days.
cwyers 7y ago
I'm struggling to think what of that couldn't be done with off the shelf software, honestly. Hell, most of it could be done with Outlook and Active Directory.
- singlow 7y ago
  Not in a way that scales or is user friendly. You might be able to use those as a base for something very hackey. I helped build a full suite to do everything in that list for a coworking "start up". It gets complicated pretty quickly and you need a custom ui and good control of the data model for custom business logic. If you want self serve subscription payments and reservations you'll need a few programmers. But not 1000 of them.
zndr 7y ago
So Wework acquired https://www.teem.com/ https://www.teem.com/ specifically to do this, well the room booking part at least. They actually approached a different company and were rejected so they bought Teem. I liked the product, and wanted to purchase it. We Co had so over funded Teem that the sales people couldn't keep up. They were doing demos with experienced Sales Engineers and literally couldn't explain how things worked. We had 2 demos in 2 successive weeks and the product fundamentally looked different both times. Think about that: Imagine having unlimited eng and product resources and pushing code so fast that your sales team can't keep up sounds good right? Wrong...we didn't buy Teem we went with their competitor who was behind on a few items, but had a concise product and a concise roadmap that met our needs, not the needs of 1000 coworking spaces tied together.
ulfw 7y ago
A lot of those are build-once (if you don't buy third party) and do tiny updates later.

codesushi42 7y ago

Does this justify hundreds of engineers? No. And the software to do those things isn't worth billions. WeWokeUp.

paxys 7y ago

It'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.

ethbro 7y ago
> 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's going to be an awkward presentation to management when they present their revenue forecasts under different economic scenarios...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mrgreenfur 7y ago
Maybe they are using all those ML teams to build "self driving offices" (a la uber) or Self-greeting receiption? or predictive room bookings

appleiigs 7y ago

Could have hired 500 office managers at half the salary and give them a paper daily planner.

unreal37 7y ago

WeWork had apps to optimize the space in their office layout for maximum efficiency. They had one of the lowest sqft per paying member in the business. They also were into custom spaces. They needed software to design the office floor plans for big customers like MixPanel. Lots of software. Not just booking rooms and events.

aswanson 7y ago
apps to optimize the space in their office layout for maximum efficiency That sound like some useless bullshit if I've ever heard it.
- ygjb 7y ago
  So does most software until you try doing stuff the hard way.
- ch4s3 7y ago
  Really? You think optimizing office layout to maximize rental income is ”useless bullshit”?
  - stickfigure 7y ago
    In fairness, it might actually be. They have a lot of properties, yes, but is it so many that that can't just send a particularly skilled human around to design them? Binpacking is np-hard but humans still do a very good job of playing Tetris. It is hard to imagine getting a positive return on automating something they (in the long run) will do a few times a year.
    - ch4s3 7y ago
      > It is hard to imagine getting a positive return on automating something they (in the long run) will do a few times a year. That's totally fair. I think they actually do some other types of more mundane optimization that are geared towards managing the properties. I think a number of the engineers also work on the learning platform for their education services.

TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago

Probably need 20 engineers to do that... And another 480 to change the UI in annoying and unnecessary ways every three days.

cwyers 7y ago

I'm struggling to think what of that couldn't be done with off the shelf software, honestly. Hell, most of it could be done with Outlook and Active Directory.

singlow 7y ago
Not in a way that scales or is user friendly. You might be able to use those as a base for something very hackey. I helped build a full suite to do everything in that list for a coworking "start up". It gets complicated pretty quickly and you need a custom ui and good control of the data model for custom business logic. If you want self serve subscription payments and reservations you'll need a few programmers. But not 1000 of them.

zndr 7y ago

So Wework acquired https://www.teem.com/ https://www.teem.com/ specifically to do this, well the room booking part at least. They actually approached a different company and were rejected so they bought Teem. I liked the product, and wanted to purchase it. We Co had so over funded Teem that the sales people couldn't keep up. They were doing demos with experienced Sales Engineers and literally couldn't explain how things worked. We had 2 demos in 2 successive weeks and the product fundamentally looked different both times. Think about that: Imagine having unlimited eng and product resources and pushing code so fast that your sales team can't keep up sounds good right? Wrong...we didn't buy Teem we went with their competitor who was behind on a few items, but had a concise product and a concise roadmap that met our needs, not the needs of 1000 coworking spaces tied together.

ulfw 7y ago

A lot of those are build-once (if you don't buy third party) and do tiny updates later.