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WeWork lays off 2,400 employees
- rantwasp 7y agoWeWorkOnLayoffs - what a terrible turn this has taken and how many good people are impacted by this. truly sad
- roland35 7y agoFrom 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, but 12,500 seems reasonable for 849 locations (from https://www.wework.com/locations https://www.wework.com/locations), ~14 people per location, assuming that they are included in that 12,500 number.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ben_jones 7y agoI 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.
- pkaye 7y agoHow many office did WeWork have at peak vs current?
- barbecue_sauce 7y agoDidn't WeWork own/purchase some sort of dev contracting business?
- Traster 7y agoOne of the big overheads of WeWork was staffing a faux-technology organisation in order to justify the disruptive silicon valley tech valuation. I image a lot of those people are long gone. I'm sure there's a load of IPO related staff that are ripe for cutting too.
- pwinnski 7y agoSurprising absolutely nobody. Meanwhile, Adam Neumann is still collecting a $1.7 Billion payout.
- rchaud 7y agoJust think of the shareholder value that's been unlocked now that 2400 people are out of a job!
- Pumpmaster6000 7y agoIs it a 'payout' if you own (whatever % of) the company?
- wyldfire 7y agoMore context: many employees of WeWork wrote a letter to management, covered also in NYT: "‘We Are Not the Adam Neumanns of This World’: What WeWork Employees Told Their Bosses" [1] [1] http://archive.is/8bVvY http://archive.is/8bVvY
- ericmay 7y agoThis will become quite the case study in the business world. There's so much to learn from this mess.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- FussyZeus 7y agoWhat on Earth is WeWork doing that requires TWELVE THOUSAND PEOPLE!? Holy fucking shit
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- mdorazio 7y agoCertainly nothing to merit 12k, but they do have close to 1,000 locations and it's fundamentally a brick and mortar managed office space company, so every location needs at least a few people to keep things running / deal with client issues. The question is how big their back office operations really needs to be.
- robbyking 7y agoManaging their local facilities.
- jonas21 7y agoManaging 800 physical office locations? That’s not really that many people per location.
- FussyZeus 7y agoDo they seriously have employees at each? I assumed it was either a franchise or contractor thing. Rare for a tech company to actually hire people directly for that sort of thing.
- tentboy 7y agoThey aren't a tech company. They are an office leasing and real estate company, and have the appropriate employees for this type of business.
- meritt 7y ago> and have the appropriate employees for this type of business I disagree. WeWork has 836 locations and 12.5k (now 10k) employees, or ~12-15 employees per location. Regus/IWG has 3,306 locations and 9.6k employees, or ~3 employees per location. How is 4-5x the number of employees for a comparable non-tech company appropriate?
- codegeek 7y agoEven if average Employee cost was $20,000/year, that is a whopping $48,0000,000 (Million) profit added to the shareholders. What is their actual revenue ?
- chris11 7y agoIn their filing for the IPO WeWork posted a net loss of 1.6 billion on 1.8 billion in revenue.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- swozey 7y agoI can't fathom the morale at this place. I really hope things get better for these poor people caught in the middle of this shit show.
- fred_is_fred 7y agoThe worst part of this for people will be having WeWork on their resume.
- chrisseaton 7y agoWhy would that matter? You can be doing great technical work even if the company overall is doing something that may not be working out well.
- swozey 7y agoI don't really agree with this. I despise Facebook and happily retweeted a post a few weeks ago specifically aimed at helping FB engineers find work elsewhere. I'd prefer to help good people get out of bad places. https://twitter.com/EricaJoy/status/1190701524210438144 https://twitter.com/EricaJoy/status/1190701524210438144
- whatok 7y agoThere is a perception that they hired tech employees just to show "growth" and therefore people haven't really done much real work.
- p1esk 7y agoWow. You do realize most engineers have to work at far shittier companies and environments than FB? And for a lot less money.
- swozey 7y agoThen they should research the companies in the post and if they're interested in a change apply as well. No listing in that post is catering to an ex-FB employee by any means.
- neya 7y agoI 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.
- rapsey 7y agoWhat dire consequences?
- hef19898 7y agoWeWork is under investigation, so.
- astrodust 7y agoOh, snap: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wework-newyork-investigation-exclusiv/exclusive-new-york-state-attorney-general-investigating-wework-sources-idUSKBN1XT01J https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wework-newyork-investigat...
- chosenbreed37 7y agoI'd argue that they would have been reasonably happy with their salaries (and any other perks) while they were employed (otherwise they would have gone elsewhere). And whilst I've not read the article chances are there will be some severance payout. And whilst it's inconvenient there's a good chance many of them will find employment elsewhere. Lastly, the writing's been on the wall for some time now. I'd like to think that they would have braced themselves for this eventuality.
- gameswithgo 7y agoLook even if you want to be obtuse and pretend its not bad that people got lured into jobs that couldn't possibly last, and may have uprooted families only to get laid off now, and have to uproot them again, even pretending that is no big deal, which it is, but let's pretend. MAYBE you can feel some emotion for the investors whose money was essentially stolen, by a scam artist?
- chvid 7y agoJudging from the incredible press, it would be amazing if the management can hold the company together and it actually exists in 3 years.
- rchaud 7y agoThey will likely change the name, since it's become a punchline and will always remind people of their fly-by-night founder.
- pearjuice 7y agoAny predictions for EOL of WeWork?
- acd 7y agoThere is an startup bubble funded by central bank low interest rates. It’s understandable that capital is seeking higher gains. What is not so ok is that we are building a casino like economic bubble funding ideas which are not profitable. If interest rates where higher bets would be more selective.
- munificent 7y agoHypothesis: Events like this are the modern moral equivalent of the giant, gaudy, gilt-encrusted palaces of the 17th century. Economic disparity has reached a point where those at the top end literally have more money than they know what to do with and are increasingly spending it on stupider and stupider things out of some perceived need to do something.
- gmartell 7y agoI like your hypothesis but fear the reality is less benign. To me it seems most ('those at the top' as you put it) do what they do in an attempt to obtain ever more money and power - never satisfied with how much they already possess.
- p1esk 7y agoSo nothing has changed in this regard since 17th century, right?
- raincom 7y agoThanks to surveillance and collusion between politicians and the elite, now the elite is more protected than ever.
- p1esk 7y agoWas the elite less protected in 17th century?
- SwiftyBug 7y agoThey ended up having their heads cut off, so, yes.
- p1esk 7y agoAccording to [1] there have been more revolutions in the last 10 years than in the entire 17th century. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_revolutions_and_rebellions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_revolutions_and_rebe...
- advisedwang 7y agoDoes this include the 1000 employees being forced to move from FTE work for WeWork into working indirectly as contractors with JLL: https://twitter.com/WeWorkersCo/status/1195778138506190848 https://twitter.com/WeWorkersCo/status/1195778138506190848
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jackhack 7y agoHonestly 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.
- michaelhoffman 7y agoNot everyone can easily find a new job whenever they want.
- bhupy 7y agoPerhaps true for those at the margins, but for 2,400 white collar workers at a "tech" startup?
- unlinked_dll 7y agoHaving recently gone through a job search as a decently qualified candidate in an area with a lot of demand and low supply for my skillset, I'd say absolutely. Hiring doesn't happen overnight and it's much more difficult when you're doing it actively, as opposed to passively responding to the recruitment vultures. Especially when there's a time crunch, since severance doesn't last forever and hiring doesn't happen overnight.
- sp332 7y agoBeing laid off gets you unemployment. Quitting doesn't.
- kamarg 7y agoIt's not between sticking around or quitting. They could have gone out and found a new job. One that presumably pays more than unemployment and quite possibly given the current stage of the economic cycle, more than their current job.
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- u10 7y agoImagine going from being on the verge of cashing out your equity options to being fired within the space of 3 months.
- poulsbohemian 7y agoWhy corporate boards are so inept, and allowed to remain so, I'll never understand. If you buy into the goal being "shareholder value" then plainly Softbank failed. One could make the argument that WeWork's board did the things that they thought created the most value - but if you implode in on yourself, you clearly failed. Even if the self-dealing was not outright legal fraud, it was plainly not to anyone's benefit apart from Adam Newmann - which again is complicit behavior on the part of both boards. None of it is good business.
- droopyEyelids 7y agoThe board has the perspective of _ownership_. The employee has the perspective of _being commanded_. Imagine something nice that you own- like your car. Do you feel compelled to understand your car? Must you be an excellent driver to own that car, if you can afford it? No. And while it's not exactly the same, the people generally look at the company as a machine that makes them money. They don't have to be good at anything to own that machine, and if they want, they can even share it with their drug addict fail-child.
- roymurdock 7y agoThis is the ultimate problem with how we've structured public corporations/LLCs in the US. When markets are working correctly in an environment of low innovation, companies themselves becomes the product, and the company's product itself just become a cashflow on a balance sheet. Grow the company (and its userbase) to a point where it can be harvested (go public) and then processed while you get paid out. Nothing else in the environment matters if it's not on the balance sheet (most notably pollution, social disruption, and general human suffering). Yvon Chouinard has a great perspective on this in his book "Let My People Go Surfing" where he meditates on the paradox of running a private business that fights itself by automatically giving away portions of its revenue to charity rather than paying out shareholders/reinvesting in growth. What do you do when you see every sale your company makes as a failure in the fight against consumption/towards sustainability?
- csours 7y agoBefore a company goes public, the only way you get to be on the board is by being a cheerleader. After a company goes public you have a lot more responsibilities.
- hackin247 7y agoWaiting for the next domino to fall coughUbercoughLyftcoughDoordash* It feels like 1999 all over again :-)
- acl777 7y agoSaw this posted in another related story: 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 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/ https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14CAtBsn3ZTL59tNMVbew... original source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21199247 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21199247
- deusofnull 7y agofor a funny and informative recap of Adam Neuman's life leading up to the formation of WeWork, check out this episode from the Grubstakers podcast. Really, really wild the stuff this guy pulled and the bull it took to do so. https://soundcloud.com/grubstakers/episode-95-adam-neumann-wework https://soundcloud.com/grubstakers/episode-95-adam-neumann-w...
- sharkweek 7y agoIf I'm Neumann, I'm taking 200-250 million dollars of my 1.7 billion in winnings and giving it away to the laid off employees (about 90k each). Imagine the positive press you could drum up about yourself! All while keeping 1.5 billion dollars!
- empath75 7y agoOr he could start a philanthropic foundation that mostly exists to put his name on buildings and cement his legacy for a hundred years or more.
- nambit 7y agoWhy?
- cmcd 7y agoPositive press of this magnitude can help propel your next big idea. If you have a reputation of compensating employees well when startup ideas don't pan out they will be more likely to want to join the next one. Though there are probably more news worth things you could do with 300m.
- cvhashim 7y ago> Imagine the positive press
- jotm 7y agoWhy? A fraction of that will buy you even better positive press.
- manux 7y agoNot being selfish?
- redisman 7y agoEmpathy and because he made an order of magnitude more money than he can spend in a lifetime?
- cmarschner 7y agoSo, who will play Adam Neumann in the WeWork movie? Jim Carrey?
- tnolet 7y ago“Career transition” is that what we’re calling lay-offs now?
- rchaud 7y agoPolitical Correctness for the well-heeled.
- flukus 7y agoAn Australian Prime Minister road tested "liberated from their jobs" but that was deemed insensitive: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-12-18/abbott-announces-support-package-for-holden-workers/5163950 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-12-18/abbott-announces-supp...
- rexreed 7y agoSucks for the employees and everyone else who built up the founder's ego and his wallets. But honestly, this is an indefensible business model with clearly unsustainable economics. This deal and Theranos has convinced me that venture capitalists aren't as a group particularly insightful or worthy of admiration. Personally I hope the collapse of WeWork takes Meetup.com with it.
- postit 7y agoI’m glad I was included in the lay-offs. The situation was unbearable.
- tr33house 7y agocare to share more from the inside? I would've also loved to be laid off with severance if I were there but curious to hear if from your perspective
- salvagedcircuit 7y agoSo does this mean that rents will finally start on the downward trend in NYC? :D
- RickJWagner 7y agoI hate this for the laid-off employees. Especially at this time of the year, this sucks. I feel enraged for stockholders. WeWork's management wasn't 'sticking to the knitting', as Buffett would say. They seemed preoccupied with trying to shape the world (see link below) and not so much providing value for shareholders or security to employees. Hoping for a better, smarter, focused new company to come along and build the business. https://www.businessinsider.com/wework-bans-meat-2018-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/wework-bans-meat-2018-7
- WomanCanCode 7y agoWework business model didn't make any sense. Why wouldn't market favors competing landlords for rental spaces since that will ultimately brings the best value for customers? Also, we definitely don't have a protection for employees working in a startup like companies. Since our political system currently favors the job creators, it's best to take them to court and so you can get your side of the story out.