
WeWork Is Cutting About 7% of Staff - coloneltcb
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-03/wework-is-cutting-about-7-of-staff
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liquidise
I'm surprised most of the comments here are on the merits of shared workspaces
instead of the potential overstaffing of WeWork. They have opened a couple of
campuses in Denver in the last couple of months, and i was surprised to see
about a 2:1 company to WeWork staff ratio. I won't pretend to know the list of
the staff's responsibilities, but i can say that often times they appear to be
hanging out in the general area chatting.

As a tenant that lack of things to do is great for me. It means they can be
attentive to our needs when they arise. For WeWork, i suspect it is indicative
of overstaffing campuses.

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tptacek
That is approximately the impression I have of the staff in the West Loop
office as well. The place feels overstaffed.

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colinbartlett
I have visited We Work after hours for meet ups but never during the day.
Could someone describe what the staff does or what they should do? Isn't it
substantially a real estate company, so is it all leasing/sales plus some
facilities work?

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tptacek
At West Loop, there are two front desks, each staffed by 1-2 people; one at
reception, one on the second floor, which I assume is there for member
services? Then there are 3-4 at-large workers in black WeWork t-shirts taking
out trash, delivering mail? No, wait, no they don't deliver anything. I think
they just take out the trash.

Then there's a night crew that comes in and cleans the building.

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moron4hire
I'm a member--through the company I work for--at the WeWork on Dupont Circle
in Washington DC. I've been in a lot of coworking spaces over the years and
this is certainly the largest so far. My 2nd day at work I got lost trying to
remember how to get back to our 6-person office. And that's just one floor,
there is a whole other floor.

There are a LOT of people working there. What's really surprising to see is
how many of them are non-profits. The company I work for can swing it because
we are a very profitable consulting company. But I don't get how the non-profs
do it.

And there are always at least three people behind the reception desk. I don't
ever see anyone actually using the reception desk, but there are three people
manning it just in case. I did a loop around the halls and found no less than
4 custodians working at the same time. It's not like there is anything dirty
going on. Everyone is working with computers.

I mean, there's free beer in the kitchen. How can this not be expensive? My
CEO told me what he was paying for rent not too long ago. It was ludicrous. We
could rent a warehouse in the city I actually live (Alexandria) and have 10
times as much room, and still have enough left over to renovate and make the
warehouse into a "livable" office space.

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clintonb
Non-profits still bring in revenue. If they do well, they may actually turn a
profit. They simply cannot distribute said profits to shareholders. Charitable
giving was around $350B in 2015.

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lowglow
I guess I don't understand why any startup would pay 300-500/per desk. While
I'm building I look to cut all expenses across the board and leave only the
bare minimum required to function and create effectively.

Can someone give an anecdote on when a shared workspace like this was
beneficial to their startup's growth?

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patio11
I've used a coworking space in Tokyo for approximately 2 years, including my
entire tenure at Starfighter. It costs approximately $350 per month. A++ would
use a coworking space again. I have visited the WeWork office that Erin and
Thomas work out of in Chicago, and it is better equipped than my office and
has a variety of features which make it better for doing the kind of work that
I'm routinely doing, including a) vastly more space per person, so that other
people's conversations don't intrude into focused productivity time and b)
closed offices with decent acoustics for calls.

Previously I did substantially all of my work from either my apartment or from
cafes. Offices are better than apartments: you can bracket all time spent in
them as "work" and then _go home_ from work. Offices are better than cafes: it
is expected that you will be working at an office, and you don't have to play
a constant am-I-paying-enough-to-keep-my-table game with the cafe. Relevantly
for Tokyo cafes, offices (even cramped offices) are substantially more
spacious per seat than cafes are, have much better power/Internet situations,
and often include printers and fax machines, for when you need a printer
and/or fax machine.

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radikalus
What's your coworking spot of choice in tko?

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patio11
This is, owing to some of the social peculiarities of work here, a "feel free
to ask me privately" question. My email is trivially discoverable.

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GoRudy
We were a bootstrapped startup for 4 years and profitable. Towards the end of
our 4th year our land lord wanted to increase our rent by 20% or have us sign
a 2 year lease. We were also in the process of discussing a possible
acquisition with several companies and so a month to month lease in a brand
new building in SF was the easiest solution. It also didn't hurt when the
companies came to visit us to see us in such a nice space (they kept the
office).

Is it over priced? Yes. Is it worth the flexibility for most startups, without
question. +20 people i'd look elsewhere.

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redwood
This company's valuation makes no sense to me. The brand is strong in NYC,
sure. But really.

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cmdrfred
If they could deliver this at a larger scale and be able to reduce their
prices it might make a little more sense. You can get an entire office for the
price of a desk.

WeWork Walnut St. Desk[0] - $450

Allegheny Ave Office[1] - $450

[0][https://www.wework.com/locations/philadelphia](https://www.wework.com/locations/philadelphia)

[1][https://philadelphia.craigslist.org/off/5595848731.html](https://philadelphia.craigslist.org/off/5595848731.html)

~~~
davidjhall
I don't know the costs for an office -- but WeWork provides the staff,
internet, electricity, coffee, etc.

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cmdrfred
Certainly they provide a service. I guess they are the 'Hotel' of office space
rentals and I'm thinking there might a huge market for the 'Motel' version at
a lower price point. I bought a house to have an office because having that
office rent cost makes a lot of projects I want to do not viable.

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swingbridge
The WeWork spaces are nice, but when I've visited companies there it seemed
WeWork was struggling to fill the spaces. This news would seem to go along
with that observation.

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justsaysmthng
Cutting 7% staff out of 1000 ...

But then it goes on and says

"WeWork said it hired 175 people in May and expects to add about 500 employees
by the end of the year. The company said it expects to lift the pause on
hiring as soon as next week."

What kind of information should I synthesize from this ? Is it bad is it good
or is it both at the same time ?

In fact, why did I just waste x minutes of my life reading this piece of
malreported doublethink-provoking article ?

My prayers go to the ad blockers ..

~~~
ryanbrunner
I mean, if WeWork is both expanding into new offices and realizing their
current offices are grossly overstaffed, it's completely reasonable to be both
hiring a lot and firing a lot. The pause could just be a breather to see if
the new staffing model makes sense. Office staff isn't generally fungible
between cities or even locations within a city sometimes.

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qntmfred
tldr

The company said it expects to lift the pause on hiring as soon as next week.

“WeWork's growth and expansion continues to accelerate and we expect to add
hundreds of employees between now and the end of the year,” a company
spokeswoman wrote in an e-mail. “Recent employee actions were part of the
company's talent review process to ensure that we have the right teams in
place that align with the company’s priorities.”

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jrcii
Why would I pay hundreds of dollars to work in a noisy public environment when
I could do that for free at a coffee shop? Presumably you're paying for the
social aspect of like minds or something. As a freelance IT consultant in NYC
the value proposition felt very weak. If someone had a $400/mo private micro
office with a desk and a window I'd be on that like white on rice.

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nbevans
The typical Regus office has only 3 to 6 employees. So WeWork's biggest
established incumbent rival is far more efficient.

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Ezhik
I got a WeWork tour a while back, and it seemed quite interesting, being not
only what it says on the tin, a coworking space, but also a nice location to
meet interesting people.

I suppose this is as good of a place to ask as any, are there any good
coworking spaces in South Bay, preferably close to Cupertino?

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qaq
Is beer decent?

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mrgreenfur
no almost always kicked

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qaq
Oh well :( will need to look for alternative options

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thomasatethose
jeez this article and the washington post article on hiring being in a 6 yr
low is really freaking me out. I'm currently in a coding boot camp while
working as a waiter parttime. should I be worried?

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goldenkey
You're totally screwed. Coding boot camps are for suckers. You won't be able
to compete against the "real programmers." They'll dominate you so hard that
your puppy will feel it.

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thomasatethose
thanks for the real talk. what should I enroll in?

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cstigler
In case it wasn't clear, the comment you're replying to is trolling and you
should ignore it.

You'll be fine. There's still a good bit of demand for junior programmers, and
there are no signs of that going away anytime soon. If you're in a top-tier
bootcamp and you do well in it, you will come out ready to take junior
positions, roughly comparable to a new CS grad minus their internships (which
do give them an advantage). Just don't expect a $105K base salary at your
first job - some bootcamps set unrealistic expectations to sell you on the
program.

Keep working on the bootcamp, write some open-source code on the side, focus
as hard as you can at getting better. It'll work out.

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radikalus
If only there was a location more convenient to the Mission =\

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vidoc
The title of the article ironically reminds me

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/80/Labour_Isnt_W...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/80/Labour_Isnt_Working.jpg)

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ArkyBeagle
"The work force is disgusted downs tools and walks

Innocence is injured experience just talks

Everyone seeks damages and everyone agrees

That these are 'classic symptoms of a monetary squeeze'

On ITV and BBC they talk about the curse

Philosophy is useless theology is worse

History boils over there's an economics freeze

Sociologists invent words that mean 'Industrial Disease'"

\- Dire Straits, "Industrial Disease".

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wonkaWonka
I just really don't like the name of the company.

WeWork sounds so much like WeComply, or WeReEnslaved, or perhaps
WeHaveNoSpine.

I'd much rather dwell 8 hours a day in a place run by a company called
CompulsoryDungeon or ItinerantWarden or WeSquat or WeDetain or WeSlum. At
least to dispose of the facade that people are always thinking happy thoughts
about their employment situation.

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mevile
Not a fan of the ad block detection. I'm probably not going to click on
bloomberg links any more. I already stopped clicking fortune links. I'd
appreciate if there was a weight against sites that used that personally.

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tuna-piano
How should the author of this article be compensated for writing it- if not
through ads?

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stephengillie
Did the article need to be written? Did the article need to be written by a
human?

Advertising puts an upper limit on the value of content it's possible for you
(or anyone) to see. With advertising, you are never shown content that is more
valuable than the ads you're being sold to.

Other payment models allow you to buy more expensive content than your time is
worth to advertisers.

Hence why very expensive content (like popular feature-length movies) are
rarely paid entirely by advertising. Even with hundreds of product placements
and an expensive ticket, movie theatres still have to overcharge for
concessions to pay for the movie.

