5 ms·

'Stone-cold crazy' $1.7b golden parachute for ousted WeWork CEO Adam Neumann

36 points by burnte 7y ago

sideshowmel 7y ago
WeWork has always seemed like a Ponzi scheme to me. This reinforces my theory.
totaldude87 7y ago
This is outright stupid and sets dangerous precedence and example. dear SoftBank I know you have a lot of money to throw around but don't waste it in this crap. Instead use this money to fund hundreds of companies that actually help in the evolution of technology and science.
stuqqq 7y ago
Donate money to charity please. Don’t give money to this scumbag.
mdorazio 7y ago
This is completely insane. The only possible explanation I can think of is that Neumann's shares were so ridiculously impossible to get back and he was so stubborn about giving them up that SoftBank either paid this blood money or choked on WeWork running out of cash in a month. Even if that did happen, how negligent was SoftBank to get into this position in the first place? This is why the general public, and now an increasing number of politicians, are increasingly hating SV in general - the headlines are getting almost as bad as the financial bailout ones in 2009.
- SmellTheGlove 7y ago
  Particularly when We isn’t really a tech company and based in NYC, not SV. It’s unfortunate to have it lumped in when it’s really not representative of tech dysfunction. We have that, but it’s not this.
  - skinnymuch 7y ago
    I don’t know how many people will care if a company is based in NYC vs SF/valley. It still feels in general like a SV thing if thinking of SV as its ideas and echo chamber vs just region.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - SmellTheGlove 7y ago
      I dunno, real estate grift seems more NYC than SV to me. I think ambiguity is due to We marketing itself as a tech brand, but if we look at what really happened here, it doesn’t seem SV beyond the CEOs caricature personality. Even the growth at all costs companies like Uber are driving toward sustainable unit economics. I’m not one to defend the valley - I was an outsider for the first decade and a half of my career before moving out here and into the fire. There’s a lot of stupid shit that goes on in tech, but what We did is only create the appearance of working from the same playbook. Maybe on my latter point we really are saying the same thing - I could see how an observer might relate the behaviors.
- skybrian 7y ago
  They put more money than they could afford to lose into a company they don't control, so now they're stuck.
jfjfjfkkkfjj 7y ago
This is beyond comprehension and unfair. In a perfectly logical world, SoftBank should give Elizabeth Holmes $5B.
lostgame 7y ago
Whatever you say, Stone Cold Steve Austin. ...not sure why I just said that, but I gotta stick by it. Whatever you say, Stone Cold Steve Austin! In reality, this is terrible.
anm89 7y ago
This is obviously an absurd situation but I don't understand why people seem personally offended by it. This isn't public money. It's their money to lose and if they do it's they who suffer the consequences. It's their right to be stupid. As long as the do it on their and their non public investor's dime.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- tinus_hn 7y ago
  As long as they pay their taxes, employees and suppliers, you’re right. Otherwise they’re stealing and public is paying for it.
- katmannthree 7y ago
  >It's their right to be stupid. As long as the do it on their and their non public investor's dime. Perhaps, but from the outside it looks like at some point Adam decided that instead of running a real company he was going to pump and dump We and run off with as much cash as he and his wife could carry. SoftBank's action here, while possibly a good strategic choice for them at this point, looks from the outside to be rewarding antisocial behavior with more money than the vast majority of us will ever earn in our lifetimes. People aren't saying that SoftBank can't do it, they're just saying that it's very unpleasant to watch.
  - anm89 7y ago
    Cool, so let them litigate if they so choose. A court can decide if the pump and dump broke securities laws and penalize accordingly. It still doesn't matter for any of the people acting personally offended. It's absolute within softbank's right to act "antisocially" as long as no specific laws were broken. What, should we take them to thought crime court for improper antisocial thought?
    - katmannthree 7y ago
      >It's absolute within softbank's right to act "antisocially" as long as no specific laws were broken. I'm not disagreeing with that. Just as it is likely his right to act in a manner many find to be antisocial, it is my and everyone else's right to be disgusted by Adam Neumann and to shame him online in whatever (legal) fashion I feel like. >It still doesn't matter for any of the people acting personally offended. Since you seem to prefer concrete takes on things, consider that I'm not judging Adam on some abstract moral basis. His actions on a broad scale represent a set of behaviors that are at odds with a healthy society. He has harmed softbank, but he has also harmed the employees at We. There are people who left stable jobs to work for him who are now out of work, and many more who will soon join them.
corodra 7y ago
I love how everyone here is pretending that if they did a startup company and got investment this big, they wouldn't put in safety measures for themselves. Or even better, not sell their shares at last investment evaluation. Private corps still have shares and he wasn't going to let go of voting rights without a few shipping containers worth of money. You really want to pretend you wouldn't do the same? Stop hating the player because you'll get nowhere. Hate the game and the bullshit religious devotion to these tech companies. Ya'll worship these twats one way or another. From the Jobs, Musks, Bezos, Zuckerbergs, ya'll worshipped them at one point. The Silicon Valley made the joke about this with the pitches that were "Make the world a better place with..." Then you gasp in surprise when you find out they're the same asshole as any other business major. These are all businesses. For profits. Not non-profits. There is zero difference between a ceo/founder in SV compared to Rockefeller, Carnegie, JP Morgan, or even Donald Trump. They are all the same money and power hungry folks. Some just have better PR teams and self restraint than others. Better wig makers too. The only stone cold crazy thing going on is that people are surprised.
- hos234 7y ago
  Have you heard of Theodore Roosevelt? The Rockefeller, Carnegie and Morgans are just one side of a coin. And if you read enough history, society is constantly flipping the coin.
  - corodra 7y ago
    Yea, the Bull Moose is one of my heroes. But I'm also not blind to reality. The benefit he had in his days of trust bustin' was the fact the general populace never worshiped the old business titans like the second coming of Jesus. These days, people with open arms and open hearts say, "Yes! Please! Exploit my data and ruin the market with monopolistic practices because you said you love us and you say nice things about the poor and wanting to save the planet." Then they cry foul when it's too fucking late. The point to reading history is to learn from the past so the same mistakes are not made again. Something people STILL don't understand. Nothing here about WeWork or Amazon or Apple is new. New market, sure. New business practices? Hell no. Exploit workers. Exploit consumers. Exploitative contract verbiage. Exploit and lobby the government. Bullshit self-interest deals. Nothing new at all. But even here on HN where it's supposed to be a bunch of smart guys, they all jump like lions on the kill whenever someone mentions one of these silicon valley asses are up to no good. They start reciting whatever xyz fallacy they saw in an article to pretend like their dismissal holds water. Take a look back into earlier this year on HN about WeWork. Some folks were talking about how over valued the company was and it was a silly business model to begin with due to their PR pushes. It wasn't going to hold. Oh no, just a bunch of baby boomers, racists, and uneducated collegeless plebs who don't understand how tech works. They don't know what they're talking about. Let's throw confirmation bias into their face. Hell, the Theranos discussions were even worse before they got exposed. All a bunch of misogynist racist assholes if you questioned the validity of any claims made by Holmes. For a group of people that claim to believe in science and evidence, it's a rather emotionally driven community that uses pop-psychology, middle-school level debate tactics and mass numbers to push weak agendas. There's a part of me that just thinks, "Fuck it all. Let it burn." But I figure if I go on these rants every now and then, someone else who doesn't believe the hype machine, but feels alone in that, might get a sense of "Well, I'm not completely alone in thinking this company/person is an asshole." But what really makes me mad, no one here can rightfully claim that if they were in that dude's position with WeWork, that they would do any different. But oh, "How could this happen? Shame on them! Shame! Shame!" You're really going to claim that you entered STEM if it had the same employment prospects as a someone who majors in philosophy or art? Maybe they would have tried to negotiate for an even $2b. I'll take that claim of doing something different and shaming the guy for settling under $2b. But if you had the ability to legally walk away with $1b+ from a company you are the founder of, and you know it won't hold water for too long, you wouldn't take it? People illegally walk away with far less money.
7532yahoogmail 7y ago
On the one hand it's risk capital and this what happens to stupid investors who with the CEO are greedy --- without creating real value like Buffet, Intel, AMD, or other real companies. On the other hand this is why in the US people like Sanders, Warren, and AOC get taken seriously: asshole corporate people getting paid billions while workers are laid off and are taxed at higher rates than rich people with tax accountants and offshore accounts. WeWorks will lay off 2000 people, but as reported elsewhere, can't do that just yet because they can't come up with severance pay.
quantified 7y ago
Charismatic flim-flam is definitely a core competence.

36 points by burnte 7y ago

WeWork has always seemed like a Ponzi scheme to me. This reinforces my theory.

This is outright stupid and sets dangerous precedence and example. dear SoftBank I know you have a lot of money to throw around but don't waste it in this crap. Instead use this money to fund hundreds of companies that actually help in the evolution of technology and science.

stuqqq 7y ago

Donate money to charity please. Don’t give money to this scumbag.

mdorazio 7y ago

This is completely insane. The only possible explanation I can think of is that Neumann's shares were so ridiculously impossible to get back and he was so stubborn about giving them up that SoftBank either paid this blood money or choked on WeWork running out of cash in a month. Even if that did happen, how negligent was SoftBank to get into this position in the first place? This is why the general public, and now an increasing number of politicians, are increasingly hating SV in general - the headlines are getting almost as bad as the financial bailout ones in 2009.

SmellTheGlove 7y ago
Particularly when We isn’t really a tech company and based in NYC, not SV. It’s unfortunate to have it lumped in when it’s really not representative of tech dysfunction. We have that, but it’s not this.
- skinnymuch 7y ago
  I don’t know how many people will care if a company is based in NYC vs SF/valley. It still feels in general like a SV thing if thinking of SV as its ideas and echo chamber vs just region.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - SmellTheGlove 7y ago
    I dunno, real estate grift seems more NYC than SV to me. I think ambiguity is due to We marketing itself as a tech brand, but if we look at what really happened here, it doesn’t seem SV beyond the CEOs caricature personality. Even the growth at all costs companies like Uber are driving toward sustainable unit economics. I’m not one to defend the valley - I was an outsider for the first decade and a half of my career before moving out here and into the fire. There’s a lot of stupid shit that goes on in tech, but what We did is only create the appearance of working from the same playbook. Maybe on my latter point we really are saying the same thing - I could see how an observer might relate the behaviors.
skybrian 7y ago
They put more money than they could afford to lose into a company they don't control, so now they're stuck.

jfjfjfkkkfjj 7y ago

This is beyond comprehension and unfair. In a perfectly logical world, SoftBank should give Elizabeth Holmes $5B.

lostgame 7y ago

Whatever you say, Stone Cold Steve Austin. ...not sure why I just said that, but I gotta stick by it. Whatever you say, Stone Cold Steve Austin! In reality, this is terrible.

anm89 7y ago

This is obviously an absurd situation but I don't understand why people seem personally offended by it. This isn't public money. It's their money to lose and if they do it's they who suffer the consequences. It's their right to be stupid. As long as the do it on their and their non public investor's dime.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
tinus_hn 7y ago
As long as they pay their taxes, employees and suppliers, you’re right. Otherwise they’re stealing and public is paying for it.
katmannthree 7y ago
>It's their right to be stupid. As long as the do it on their and their non public investor's dime. Perhaps, but from the outside it looks like at some point Adam decided that instead of running a real company he was going to pump and dump We and run off with as much cash as he and his wife could carry. SoftBank's action here, while possibly a good strategic choice for them at this point, looks from the outside to be rewarding antisocial behavior with more money than the vast majority of us will ever earn in our lifetimes. People aren't saying that SoftBank can't do it, they're just saying that it's very unpleasant to watch.
- anm89 7y ago
  Cool, so let them litigate if they so choose. A court can decide if the pump and dump broke securities laws and penalize accordingly. It still doesn't matter for any of the people acting personally offended. It's absolute within softbank's right to act "antisocially" as long as no specific laws were broken. What, should we take them to thought crime court for improper antisocial thought?
  - katmannthree 7y ago
    >It's absolute within softbank's right to act "antisocially" as long as no specific laws were broken. I'm not disagreeing with that. Just as it is likely his right to act in a manner many find to be antisocial, it is my and everyone else's right to be disgusted by Adam Neumann and to shame him online in whatever (legal) fashion I feel like. >It still doesn't matter for any of the people acting personally offended. Since you seem to prefer concrete takes on things, consider that I'm not judging Adam on some abstract moral basis. His actions on a broad scale represent a set of behaviors that are at odds with a healthy society. He has harmed softbank, but he has also harmed the employees at We. There are people who left stable jobs to work for him who are now out of work, and many more who will soon join them.

corodra 7y ago

I love how everyone here is pretending that if they did a startup company and got investment this big, they wouldn't put in safety measures for themselves. Or even better, not sell their shares at last investment evaluation. Private corps still have shares and he wasn't going to let go of voting rights without a few shipping containers worth of money. You really want to pretend you wouldn't do the same? Stop hating the player because you'll get nowhere. Hate the game and the bullshit religious devotion to these tech companies. Ya'll worship these twats one way or another. From the Jobs, Musks, Bezos, Zuckerbergs, ya'll worshipped them at one point. The Silicon Valley made the joke about this with the pitches that were "Make the world a better place with..." Then you gasp in surprise when you find out they're the same asshole as any other business major. These are all businesses. For profits. Not non-profits. There is zero difference between a ceo/founder in SV compared to Rockefeller, Carnegie, JP Morgan, or even Donald Trump. They are all the same money and power hungry folks. Some just have better PR teams and self restraint than others. Better wig makers too. The only stone cold crazy thing going on is that people are surprised.

hos234 7y ago
Have you heard of Theodore Roosevelt? The Rockefeller, Carnegie and Morgans are just one side of a coin. And if you read enough history, society is constantly flipping the coin.
- corodra 7y ago
  Yea, the Bull Moose is one of my heroes. But I'm also not blind to reality. The benefit he had in his days of trust bustin' was the fact the general populace never worshiped the old business titans like the second coming of Jesus. These days, people with open arms and open hearts say, "Yes! Please! Exploit my data and ruin the market with monopolistic practices because you said you love us and you say nice things about the poor and wanting to save the planet." Then they cry foul when it's too fucking late. The point to reading history is to learn from the past so the same mistakes are not made again. Something people STILL don't understand. Nothing here about WeWork or Amazon or Apple is new. New market, sure. New business practices? Hell no. Exploit workers. Exploit consumers. Exploitative contract verbiage. Exploit and lobby the government. Bullshit self-interest deals. Nothing new at all. But even here on HN where it's supposed to be a bunch of smart guys, they all jump like lions on the kill whenever someone mentions one of these silicon valley asses are up to no good. They start reciting whatever xyz fallacy they saw in an article to pretend like their dismissal holds water. Take a look back into earlier this year on HN about WeWork. Some folks were talking about how over valued the company was and it was a silly business model to begin with due to their PR pushes. It wasn't going to hold. Oh no, just a bunch of baby boomers, racists, and uneducated collegeless plebs who don't understand how tech works. They don't know what they're talking about. Let's throw confirmation bias into their face. Hell, the Theranos discussions were even worse before they got exposed. All a bunch of misogynist racist assholes if you questioned the validity of any claims made by Holmes. For a group of people that claim to believe in science and evidence, it's a rather emotionally driven community that uses pop-psychology, middle-school level debate tactics and mass numbers to push weak agendas. There's a part of me that just thinks, "Fuck it all. Let it burn." But I figure if I go on these rants every now and then, someone else who doesn't believe the hype machine, but feels alone in that, might get a sense of "Well, I'm not completely alone in thinking this company/person is an asshole." But what really makes me mad, no one here can rightfully claim that if they were in that dude's position with WeWork, that they would do any different. But oh, "How could this happen? Shame on them! Shame! Shame!" You're really going to claim that you entered STEM if it had the same employment prospects as a someone who majors in philosophy or art? Maybe they would have tried to negotiate for an even $2b. I'll take that claim of doing something different and shaming the guy for settling under $2b. But if you had the ability to legally walk away with $1b+ from a company you are the founder of, and you know it won't hold water for too long, you wouldn't take it? People illegally walk away with far less money.

7532yahoogmail 7y ago

On the one hand it's risk capital and this what happens to stupid investors who with the CEO are greedy --- without creating real value like Buffet, Intel, AMD, or other real companies. On the other hand this is why in the US people like Sanders, Warren, and AOC get taken seriously: asshole corporate people getting paid billions while workers are laid off and are taxed at higher rates than rich people with tax accountants and offshore accounts. WeWorks will lay off 2000 people, but as reported elsewhere, can't do that just yet because they can't come up with severance pay.

quantified 7y ago

Charismatic flim-flam is definitely a core competence.