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WeWork isn’t a tech company; it’s a soap opera

352 点作者 artsandsci将近 6 年前

25 条评论

SamWhited将近 6 年前
This is the place where literally every one has the wifi password "P@ssw0rd" (or something similar, I forget) and instead of just connecting an HDMI cable to your laptop in the conference rooms you have to download some spyware that only works on Windows and Mac (despite the fact that their primary client is tech companies, many of whom use Linux or other OS's). Also never try printing, that just doesn't work, and the conference rooms are impossible to book if you're at an even slightly popular location. They also have a crappy website that they claim "builds community" or something, but everyone I've ever worked with just dreaded going on it because it meant wading through advertising and spammy posts from the handful of companies that actually tried to use the forums just to get a little customer support for the wifi or whatever was going wrong that day (and there was always something). I've worked in WeWorks a lot, sadly, but never again if I have any say in the matter. There are plenty of cool one-off coworking spaces that do a much better job. The downside of course is that you can't drop into one in any city, but that's what coffee shops are for.
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tedivm将近 6 年前
For the number of engineers they have you&#x27;d think they&#x27;d have figured out how to build a decent wifi network with some actual security in it. Instead every WeWork has the same password for the wifi (literally a variant on `P@ssw0rd`) and it is super easy to spy on other people&#x27;s connections. The hilarious thing is they actually built a secure wifi network for their staff, so they clearly recognize the need.<p>They also use the dumbest access points- they don&#x27;t support roaming and connect you to the least congested point regardless of speed. It used to be a morning ritual of mine to toggle wifi on and off again until I had a decent connection.
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baxtr将近 6 年前
The Verge simply doesn&#x27;t get it. WeWork will leverage their real estate assets and come up with an AI-based cryptocurrency to monetize their community base. They will call it <i>&quot;The Country of We.&quot;</i> Just wait for it. The time will come.
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puranjay将近 6 年前
I&#x27;m tired of my WeWork. I&#x27;m tired of the relentless positivity (&quot;Thank God for Mondays!&quot;) and faux corporate cheerfulness.<p>I freelanced because I wanted out of that corporatism where I&#x27;m reminded that I don&#x27;t just have to work; I have to be happy while doing it.<p>WeWork&#x27;s championing of &quot;makers&quot; and &quot;creativity&quot; and all that gobbledock might work for some people, but I just want a space to work out of that has good WiFi and quiet people. I don&#x27;t need to be told that I have to be happy doing my work, or that my work is important or world-changing.
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zachware将近 6 年前
What&#x27;s so structurally fascinating, in a very morbid way, is the difference between the balance sheets of the most heavily-funded late stage companies.<p>I have an opinion but regardless of it, if a no-asset&#x2F;no-liability company is losing money and the music stops, they can cut costs and survive. It&#x27;s messy but it happens.<p>WeWork is a completely different beast. It&#x27;s occupancy costs + G&amp;A are 105% of revenue. If it can&#x27;t sustain its losses with free flowing capital it can&#x27;t cut long-term liabilities as easily as headcount and perks (again, this is morbid), so its only option would be bankruptcy.<p>So in this case it would seem that the most rational way to invest in it, if you absolutely had to, would be in its debt. I have to assume, though, given this ridiculous structure, that the opco would be shielded.<p>Man, we can&#x27;t predict the future but it&#x27;s pretty clear that if something <i>does</i> go wrong, it would be an AIG-level mess to unwind the complexities.
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jakelazaroff将近 6 年前
I wonder when this trend of calling companies &quot;tech companies&quot; — just because they happen to use technology — will end.<p>WeWork clearly is a real estate company; Uber is a taxi company with an app; etc.
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driverdan将近 6 年前
This paragraph at the end stood out to me:<p>&gt; ...The We Company, used to be called WeWork, but it changed its name. The new name was owned, Bloomberg’s Ellen Huet reports, by We Holdings LLC — so WeWork paid $5.9 million to acquire “we” and changed its name last month. We Holdings — you guessed it! — manages stocks and assets owned by… WeWork’s founders.<p>That&#x27;s a huge conflict of interest. How would something like that be approved?
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leroy_masochist将近 6 年前
My lasting impression of the year-ish I spent at one of their NY locations was:<p>- The coffee was free, and great<p>- The person behind the front desk had recently graduated from Princeton and seemed way too smart for the job and bored<p>- The beer on tap was free after 5, was locked up before then, and was invariably some weird fruity craft beer that probably cost a lot<p>- Printing a single page involved first waiting in line for 5-10 minutes and then entering a 10-digit code into a really crappy office printer touch screen, then manually re-authorizing the job you had just set to print. Like DMV level inefficiency<p>All told, general impression was, &quot;wow, they actually pulled off getting a tech valuation for a real estate play&quot;.
logfromblammo将近 6 年前
Article author was confused by the org charts and diagrams, but it looked to me like the founders are setting the public company up to be machine for transferring investor money to themselves while maintaining voting control and without delivering any additional value.<p>Can someone better versed in finance explain to me how this is not a blatant flimflam to grab the IPO cash?
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jrochkind1将近 6 年前
&gt; I am just going to drop The We Company’s org chart here because it honestly leaves me speechless...<p>Indeed, I suspect that kind of a weird org chart of inter-related legal entities is pretty typical for a real estate company... because, as the OP suggests, that&#x27;s really what they are.
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par将近 6 年前
Incredible scam pulled off by Adam and Rebekah Neuman. Color me impressed.
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duxup将近 6 年前
I&#x27;m not very knowledgeable about WeWork... but what exactly do they bring to the table that wasn&#x27;t being done before business wise? They just seem to have office space like any other company that might.<p>Presumably the properties they bought or lease or whatever were somewhat profitable before ... but now WeWork owns them and ... doesn&#x27;t make money?<p>That seems, bad.<p>I&#x27;m skeptical of say Uber&#x27;s long term sustainability but at least with their app and business model they were doing something different that maybe could eventually pan out (ok it won&#x27;t... but there&#x27;s something there). But WeWork just seems like office space leasing ... on top of office space leasing, except they lose money...
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euler_angles将近 6 年前
This post just made We* seem like a big scheme just to make the founder wealthy. Am I missing something?
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chocolatebunny将近 6 年前
So I&#x27;m trying to look into IWG (which the article claims is WeWork&#x27;s primary rival) since it looks like they&#x27;ll have less competition in a year or two. It looks like they&#x27;re traded in the London Stock Exchange. Google seems to claim that they&#x27;re owned by Berkshire Hathaway Energy but I can&#x27;t find any evidence for that.
eof将近 6 年前
Until recently I thought part of WeWork’s allure was they were a real estate play underneath the office value add.<p>Incredible to me this isn’t the case and they have this type of status. Especially with the recent “exposé” showing the CEO owns some of the buildings WeWork is leasing from.
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barbecue_sauce将近 6 年前
I would say that the fact that you never see anyone from WeWork post on Hacker News is a good indicator that it&#x27;s not a tech company.
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coldcode将近 6 年前
Looking at that S1 once its public the stock will be mostly worthless. But the founders will be billionaires.
ZainRiz将近 6 年前
@patio11 is a huge fans of their business model:<p>&quot;I think this and remote work are the best bull case for WeWork.<p>In 2025, every Fortune 500 company will have 10k+ remote workers, and every purchasing department will approve a reimbursement for WeWork with no questions asked.&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;patio11&#x2F;status&#x2F;1161796809741627392" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;patio11&#x2F;status&#x2F;1161796809741627392</a>
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stephc_int13将近 6 年前
Why does all this WeWork thing smells like a Ponzi scheme or something?
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NohatCoder将近 6 年前
I just wonder why banks continue to loan to this company? Their expenses are pretty consistently double their income. They grow by selling the product for way too little. Do they expect that customers are going to stick around if they double their prices?
naringas将近 6 年前
if WeWork is a tech compnay, what&#x27;s their technology?
madengr将近 6 年前
WeWork can&#x27;t crash and burn fast enough. Maybe it will be a trigger for the next crash, when people realize the other &quot;tech&quot; companies are not tech companies. Most &quot;tech&quot; companies are marketing.
paggle将近 6 年前
I mean... it&#x27;s neither? It is a real estate company. Why is everything a &quot;tech company&quot; or a scam?
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endlessvoid94将近 6 年前
This is awful journalism. Just awful.
kickopotomus将近 6 年前
I don&#x27;t disagree with the notion that WeWork is a shady &quot;tech&quot; company but this article is terribly written and hard to follow. I couldn&#x27;t even make it halfway through.<p>&gt; The thing _begins_ with an epigram: “We dedicate this to the energy of we — greater than any one of us, but inside all of us.”<p>Yeah, every S-1 I have read starts with marketing materials. How is this at all relevant?<p>&gt; I am just going to drop The We Company’s org chart here because it honestly leaves me speechless<p>Do not just add random images to your article and not explain or discuss them. The org chart was not even relevant to what you were discussing.<p>I basically gave up after that because it took the author 4 more paragraphs to even fully state their &quot;soap opera&quot; thesis.
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