Because of the vegetarianism thing, everyone was forced to eat WeWork-provided food, sans meat (though fish is okay!). This totally broke my ketogenic diet, which made me quite mad. See other comments about this being a form of group control.

For the first day and a half, we were subjected to a number of corporate "talks" which largely revolved around the cult of personalities of Adam Neumann and Miguel McKelvey. Adam Neumann particularly styles himself a televangelis or Jesus-wannabe and walks out into the audience, asking people about their deepest fears, delivering some ersatz corprorate sermon on the mount. There is no "me", only "we".

See also the time when Rebecca Neumann commands the gathered WeWorkers to hold hands, close their eyes, and pray.

Or the time that Deepak Chopra comes out and shows a disturbing video about childbirth (people were like, "is this an anti-abortion video?) and talks about how evolution and child development are intimately related, and how we should take our shoes off to let the ions flow, and leads a meditation session.

A fish rots from the head down, and this is one crazy fish.

Absolutely infuriating. As a diabetic a high-protein diet is just about the best thing for me. I'd quit on the spot.

GL!!

I mean, I won't hold it against any individual to be into Deepak Chopra, I won't even hold it against a company of 100 people to invite Deepak Chopra provided the employees are aware that the company has a New Age vibe, a subtle scent of potpourri that just never goes away. 5000+ people though? Holy crap.

If you’re a devout believer in religion A and your employer forces you - unknown to you at the time you were hired - to attend religious ceremonies of religion B as a condition of your continued employment - that is surely massively illegal

I prefer keto diets too, but I think this would piss me off way more. I have really bad OCD. I wash my hands a lot; coworkers notice. I'm already self conscious about it. I can go camping but it takes a lot of mental prep (and I typically throw everything in the wash or away when I get home).

If a company forced me to camp like that .. da fuck?!

Not to mention everything else about that sounds pretty insane too.

People who have the audacity to do big things are frequently not reasonable people at all, and many times can be quite wacky. Sometimes this turns out well, like with Isaac Newton and Nikola Tesla. Other times this turns out very badly, like with Josef Stalin or Adolf Hitler.

Have you considered leaking to like techcrunch or something? Hell even a major paper would probably take it up.

https://theoutline.com/post/6133/the-keto-diet-is-a-recipe-f...

The rest of what you describe sounds like a nightmare though.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2716748/

Your medical professionals are misinformed. A celebrity chef promoting a diet, quack as they may be, doesn't mean it's without merit.

FWIW I've both lost weight and improved my T1 diabetes control through a paleo/keto style diet I've been following for the past four years. My endocrinologist has never had anything negative to say about my diet or lifestyle.

There are health and religious reasons why one may want to eat meat, but also vegetarianism for environmental reasons is a fairly US/Euro-centric phenomenon, and doesn’t have anywhere near the same following in parts of Africa, Asia, and other places.

Here’s a good thread on the topic: https://twitter.com/SarahTaber_bww/status/100636379997523148...

Wow. I am speechless. I am without speech.

It has all the trappings of a cult. It is well known that cults use a low-protein diet for indoctrination. http://www.leaderu.com/common/cults.html

That isn't particularly surprising to me. Not because of anything specific to WeWork, but just because of general tech industry dynamics. Job advertisements want people who are "passionate", who "believe", who want to "change the word". We have had decades of "holy wars" and quasi-religious behavior, starting with editor choice [1] and OS [2], going up to the present moment [3][4].

It's pretty common for exposes of tech companies to talk about cult-like behavior. E.g., Dan Lyons on Hubspot [5] or John Carreyou on Theranos [6]. I don't think all startups are this way, or even most of them. But the seeds of cult-ish behavior are clearly commonplace. E.g., charismatic leaders, a group dedicated to a non-mainstream vision, people spending a lot of intense time together, hazy boundaries, top-down power structures, and a lot of young, impressionable people.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editor_war

[2] https://tidbits.com/1995/06/26/computings-holy-war/

[3] https://www.recode.net/2018/5/30/17386068/brad-garlinghouse-...

[4] https://www.recode.net/2017/12/6/16680816/elon-musk-spacex-t...

[5] https://www.amazon.com/Disrupted-My-Misadventure-Start-Up-Bu...

[6] https://reason.com/blog/2018/06/07/theranos-elizabeth-holmes...

They have a barely functioning mobile app and portal, but that's about it. Even the IT (which I wouldn't even count towards them being a tech company) seemed ridiculously broken at the locations I've been staying in the past.

Their business is built on the deployment of custom (if not particularly sexy) office technology and quite simply could not exist without it. There's also another certain very significant tech company they outright acquired to enhance their overall operations and portfolio.

So - they're not a traditional tech-only company; but a tech company quite definitely.

In that sense every company is a tech company. Like if McDonalds “deploys” custom deep fryers are they a tech company too?

A successful tech company, through and through.

I have a genetic disorder. I need about 1.5 to 2x as much nutrients as normal people to not be malnourished. I eat smaller portions of meat than your standard American diet and some of my meals are meatless. My meat-and-potatoes relatives have accused me of being vegetarian because of it. I've improved my overall nutritional status while eating semi-vegetarian by American standards.

Some B vitamins are a serious problem for some vegetarians. But you would really have to be doing something wrong to not be getting adequate protein eating vegetarian.

You can be on a diet of beef and pork, get plenty of protein, and still be undernourished.

Okay, but this reads as non-sequiter because a lack of meat in a diet does not mean that the diet is one with low-protein consumption. Certainly if one is determined to be protein deficient then cutting out some food that is high in protein would be beneficial for their goal, but that's like saying if you don't use git you are managing a project wrong and aren't using version control. If you didn't want to use version control, then that would mean you wouldn't use git, but not using git doesn't mean you don't use VC.

The morally reprehensible thing about a non-compete for a barista or janitor is that the knowledge of how to make coffee or clean is widely available and unless WeWork has some kind of proprietary technique for cleaning offices the non-compete is really a form of indentured servitude. And assuming there's no particular consideration given to what would happen to the janitor or barista should they lose their job and not be able to find similar work it's the kind of contract that should be illegal. It also makes me glad that I asked my employer to hold off on leasing an office for me from WeWork as I don't like doing business with companies that are that predatory.

But there's nothing particularly cult-like about it.