WeWork Founder Warned Staff in 2016: 'You Do Not Get a Chance Like This Again' (bloomberg.com) 51
To many of its employees, WeWork was much more than a job. Adam Neumann, the co-founder and former chief executive officer, kept workers motivated by invoking a higher calling to community-building and promising a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. From a report: "None of us want to look back and say, 'I could have done more,'" Neumann said in a 2016 staff meeting, captured in hours of tape obtained by Bloomberg. "That's not acceptable. You do not get a chance like this again." In this episode of Foundering, a former WeWork executive assistant, Cody Quinn, describes the tumultuous experience working inside WeWork's New York headquarters. According to Quinn, most employees worked until near-burnout, then were rewarded with trips to Summer Camp and Summit, WeWork's famously raucous companywide parties. And she details the strange things she saw at the office: an executive smashing a printer on the floor, 2 a.m. meetings with Neumann and an elaborate technique designed to lure investors called "activating the space."
2am meetings? (Score:2, Insightful)
Anyone who does 2am meetings for any reason other than having a gun to their head, is so fucking stupid it hurts. There is no company, no entity, that is so nice to you that you feel morally obligated to attend a 2am meeting. There is no fucking sense, at all, to be loyal to a company, because that company is not loyal to you if it's giving you 2am meetings.
Re: 2am meetings? (Score:2, Interesting)
The rest of it is standard startup crazy.
2am meetings: when your company is global you sometimes need to have meetings at insane hours so some people can make it. I've had calls with India, Eastern Europe and other places all hours. 3am with the UK lawyers. 4am with I can't even remember where. 5am sales call with Poland. 6am with French dev team. At least India is usually between 8pm and midnight my time which isn't TOO horrible.
When you've got a few million bucks on the line you often do crazy shit
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The rest of it is standard startup crazy.
2am meetings: when your company is global you sometimes need to have meetings at insane hours so some people can make it. I've had calls with India, Eastern Europe and other places all hours. 3am with the UK lawyers. 4am with I can't even remember where. 5am sales call with Poland. 6am with French dev team. At least India is usually between 8pm and midnight my time which isn't TOO horrible.
When you've got a few million bucks on the line you often do crazy shit like that. OTOH, it also meant I was home and crashed hard right after lunch those days, so it sometimes balances out a little bit. But, yes, it is crazy and not for everyone.
Same here. Global teams can be painful.
Now before taking a job I always ask about team regional makeup
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I'm suffering from global-team-itis right now, and the worst aspect of it is that the day doesnt need to warm up before it starts giving you problems to solve, they are right there in Slack and email from the moment you sit down. No more breathing space while everyone else gets up to speed with the day, because other people are winding down their day and handing all their problems over to you.
I never wanted to be a manager, but somehow I ended up here. I'm not even sure when it actually happened.
Re:2am meetings? (Score:4, Informative)
You've never worked for a global company have you?
I've done some 2am meetings. Most were "emergency" situations (service issues, that sort of thing) but a few were scheduled because that was the only time we could get all the stakeholders together. Now that pain was spread around - sometimes I got the 2am meeting, sometimes they did! Generally though we try to keep it "reasonable" with 6am or 9pm meetings.
Re:2am meetings? (Score:4, Interesting)
that was the only time we could get all the stakeholders together
This. Global companies are a thing. But if you are up at 2AM to coordinate with your developers in Bangalore, you need to ask who really runs your project.
Another reason (anecdote): I used to work for Boeing, doing among other things, supporting shop floor automated test equipment software. System tests were often run on third shift. And when a problem cropped up, all hands were called in to determine whether it was a software, airplane hardware or ATE hardware problem. Fortunately, for my part, software could be fixed over a dial-up connection. So when paged, I'd always ask for the error description, then dial in, check the logs and often fix things in 10 or 15 minutes, sitting in my PJs. But there was a subset of managers that insisted that everyone show up in the plant. There was no reasoning with them. So it was get dressed, toss back some re-heated coffee, drive in for an hour or so and then fix the problem in 10 minutes from what functionally was the same terminal I had at home. But that sure made the manager look like a big-shot. Getting half a dozen people running around in the middle of the night. Production schedules be damned.
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Sure, but that was for high-value, high-stakes aircraft manufacturing or development supporting what could be considered a globally-critical resource. I was on call when I worked at an electric generating station too, and for good reason. WeWork was an office space-sharing real estate speculative investment. Not exactly the same class of urgency.
Re:2am meetings? (Score:4)
Not exactly the same class of urgency.
That depends more on how important the boss thinks they are rather than actual urgency.
I was on call when I worked at an electric generating station too
Want to talk about urgency? How about getting the power turned back on in a town half an hour before the start of the Superbowl.
high-value, high-stakes aircraft manufacturing
Again, that depends on how important somebody thinks they are.
We had an issue with a dead network drop on the shop floor once (fortunately during first shift). I get called out and diagnose the problem as some IT a*hole had unplugged the drop in the network closet. Some manager probably wanted networking in some dark corner of the factory so he could surf porn (happened quite often). So I call IT and ask them to come out, unlock the closet and fix it. Nope. 24 hour turn around on trouble tickets. Factory manager (pretty cool guy) hears my side of the conversation and says "Give me the phone." Tells the IT desk that we can fix it ourselves if we could just get into the closet. "The Boeing flight line fire department is just downstairs and we'll have a guy bring up an axe." IT sent a guy out in 15 minutes.
Re:2am meetings? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yes, flexible, core, etc. hours are good. Those are the best.
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What do you mean? Give me $10k and I'll do a 2 am meeting. Two even.
I have this time tracker app that counts up in dollars instead of minutes. It makes me *much* happier putting up with time wasting bullshit.
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I live in California. The majority of my company is in France, 9 hours ahead of me. They are normally very nice to us West Coasters and they agree to schedule meetings at around 8-8:30am our time, which is the end of the day for them. They don't demand that we do any 2am meetings. But let's face it, sometimes what I really need to do is get my goddamn work done (or set expectations if it can't be done until someone else does their part), and spending a half hour on a meeting at 2am is a lot more efficient t
Re: 2am meetings? (Score:2)
Although Iâ(TM)m only in London, my boss is in Germany. It makes for a very nice arrangement when they have more holiday than you and respect and expect to take it. I hope I donâ(TM)t have to work in a company with an American work culture again.
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Try to coordinate a meeting with people from Europe, Central America and New Zealand.
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We're turning over ever larger parts of our economy (and society) to your basic monomaniacal sociopaths that are the 'visionaries' that VC-types like to fund and hype. And to some extent, that's not a horrible thing. Nothing like letting a crazy person do all the work for you.
But once these companies go public, the combination of their 'driven lunatic at the top' culture and the stock market's demand for constant growth is a toxic mix indeed.
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Anyone who does 2am meetings for any reason other than having a gun to their head, is so fucking stupid it hurts. There is no company, no entity, that is so nice to you that you feel morally obligated to attend a 2am meeting. There is no fucking sense, at all, to be loyal to a company, because that company is not loyal to you if it's giving you 2am meetings.
If your company is global, things like this can happen... I was managing a Norwegian engineering team. We got acquired by a Canadian company with a Californian presence, and a development team in China. So some of the Scrum ceremonies were often in the middle of the night for the Product Owner in California, early in the day for the senior developers in Norway and late afternoon/early evening for the teams in Beijing and Xi'an.
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I have worked for a number of multinational companies where 2AM meetings (for me) where not uncommon. I have found American companies often assume everyone else runs on American time. It's always funny when you get on a call and abused for not answering an email which was sent to you 3 hours ago when 3 hours ago it was 1AM where you are based.
Re: 2am meetings? (Score:2)
I lived in Shanghai for a while: I was single and the company paid for my apartment in the centre of the city. Of course Iâ(TM)m going to join a few middle of the night meetings with my Californian colleagues. Same when I chose to go and live in Melbourne for six months with my future wife. Donâ(TM)t be so quick to judge (although admittedly, WeWork sounds like it was a horrendous place to work)
Are most startups actually cults/ pyramid schemes? (Score:2)
Or is that just the startups we hear about?
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no most aren't you only hear about the bad ones, and sometimes the real sucesses. That being said, it does take a certain type of risk adverse personality to run a startup. High loss / high gain potential, needs to be something you are willing to accept.
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Also I feel there is a disconnect from the Founders/Leadership with the employees, even for a small company where the Founder knows all the employees.
For the Founder the company is an extension of them they have put a lot of hard work in getting the company to where it is. It is what they focus on all the time, often putting aside their own family life and personal down time. If the company succeeds they get paid a lot of money.
They think the employees should too have that same level of dedication, however
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risk adverse personality
I think what you are trying to say is "risk averse," but what you really mean is the opposite. "Risk averse" means you're reluctant to take risks. People who can found and run startups aren't like that, for sure.
But it doesn't always have to be a "personality." I work for a startup right now. I have no illusions about its potential for massive success: maybe, maybe not. I just happen to be in a position in my life (no kids, not a lot of bills) where I can still take risks. I'm not the person whose life come
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Just the ones that get VC funding.
Don't forget the wierdos who can't work for others (Score:5, Interesting)
I've worked for a handful of startups, mega fortune 500 and now big tech. I like big tech best. You get functioning HR and a stable paycheck, but reasonable flexibility. I worked high risk startups in my early 20s. They were like a hardworking fraternity...very unprofessional, lots of sex among cowokers, no one over 30 in the office, way too much drinking/drugs. It was really easy to transition from college to the dot-com-era startups. I worked for 2 in my 30s...much tamer. They have a much better group dynamic and social aspect, but I regret every year spend in those. They fed my need for purpose. I made good friends, even good salary, but moving to big tech, I am getting 50% of my salary in profit from stock grants and options.
Once I had kids, I prefer stability. I like real office furniture and functioning HR, time off, and people who actually think about the long-term quality of their work.
I work well with others and like doing a good job more than I like high adrenaline and maximum freedom. The people I saw thrive in startups were much different than me...much more anti-social....much more difficult to work with...bullies who like to put down those who feel are lesser...good superstars, but terrible collaborators and teammates.
Re:Don't forget the wierdos who can't work for oth (Score:4, Interesting)
Are most startups cults/pyramid-schemes? I don't actually know. However, there are certain personalities that gravitate towards them. In particular, those who hate following rules. If you've worked in tech before, you've met a few. They're the types with long hair and lots of conspicuous tattoos or an abrasive personality that doesn't fly in corporate America. They're a dream for those who just can't fit in anywhere else. If they're talented, they will be admired and exploited.
Right, and as you imply, eventually after working for such an iconoclast, you realize there are good reasons for most of those boring corporate rules they eschew.
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Perhaps not so good at determining if they are doing the right thing, or if the thing they are doing needs to be done at all.
Gets Stuff done...in a short term sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps not so good at determining if they are doing the right thing, or if the thing they are doing needs to be done at all.
Exactly. It's one thing to get an app running from nothing. It's another thing to get one that scales, is secure, easy to ramp up contributors to, etc. They're different skillsets. I just know that those lone-wolf verbally abusive types thrive in startups much more so than profitable companies. I am not a fan of cult of personality driven groups. I am often get hired to bring these monstrous groups inline with modern best practices. They had a good idea, they got customers interested...then folks like me need to get their ship straightened and running efficiently....automated testing, release quality, documentation, correctly validating user inputs, ensure the application is secure, all the boring skills that make a company run efficiently. They're truly impressive in a short-term sense, but outright toxic when left unchecked.
There's a similar phenomena with well educated employees. They get bored easily. They don't like writing unit tests. They don't like checking their documentation every release to ensure it's still accurate. They don't comment their code consistently. Many don't even want to use popular frameworks. What happens to their application 5 years down the road?...who cares, not their problem. I've inherited a lot of bad code from brilliant people. It got the job done, but was twice as much code as needed...because they're too brilliant to read the documentation of the frameworks they were working with, little to no unit tests, little to no documentation...and often just a mess...but boy do they have a glorious story of how many late nights and how much work they put into delivering it. To an extent, they are right. They got the VC funding, they got to grow, they got to hire me or someone like me to turn their idea into a scalable business.
I warn everyone that will listen is that you need to keep sharp creative people in proper ratio with dull efficient ones. Superstars are only useful when paired with hardworking crews who dot the i's and cross the t's to ensure their vision actually scales, can be maintained, and isn't broken into on day 1. Not everything in building a successful company is exciting and glorious.
Superstars, especially those who dominate in most startups, have little patience for the dull mundane steps that are so essential to success. I appreciate their contributions and admit I generally need them...to pave the way, to get the initial funding etc, I wish they appreciated how much they people like me to apply best practices and make their ideas profitable.
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Generally you only hear about two kinds of startups. One kind is the lucky few who go public, have a real business model backed by talented people, and become massively successful. The second kind is the far more numerous ones who managed to secure funding, but hid incompetence or malfeasance behind smoke and mirrors.
The kind that's most common that you don't hear much about are the ones who secure some funding but who either become mildly successful and may or may not be absorbed by other corporations an
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I'm so old I remember when the third type you describe was called "building a business from the ground up". Somehow our culture absorbed the Sand Hill Road idea that if a new business doesn't have 500%/year growth by its third year it is a failure and should be shut down.
Oh good, a Podcast (Score:5, Funny)
A podcast with no transcript. If you thought /. readers didn't engage with the article before....
I thought the title said UpWork (Score:1)
Amatuers (Score:2)
no sign they spent investors' money on cocaine and hookers.
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Re:Amatuers (Score:4, Informative)
WFH (Score:4, Funny)
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*WWFH
Too close to an existing trademark. [cagesideseats.com]
Nice! (Score:3)
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Welcome to 1997 (Score:1)
My Priceline webhouse stock talk was the same shit. Surprise it ended the same way
A GREAT New Idea! (Score:1)
Meh (Score:2)
All "tech" companies are run like cults (Score:2)
WeWork is just a more egregious example than most tech companies, but all of them seem to be run like cults. They're smart-people-traps, designed to extract every waking hour possible out of new grads who have no idea that it isn't normal. Not all groups within these companies are like that, but I've seen enough examples similar to WeWork where total dedication to the job is expected in return for every cheap "perk" imaginable. It's pretty cheap in the grand scheme of things to pay for 3 meals a day, beer,
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WeWork is not a tech company (regardless of how badly they wanted to portray themselves as one). They're an over-hyped, short-term, office-space landlord.
Startup Flashbacks (Score:1)