Re:WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO
by mandevil on Tuesday September 24, 2019 @04:41PM
(#21064385)
"WeWork used [a sensor network that tracked everyone throughout the building combined with machine learning] to learn that people drink coffee in the morning so they should hire a barista."
Source: https://twitter.com/modestproposal1/status/10855834347880202...
Sounds like a reasonable use of tens of millions of dollars of VC money.
Re:WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO
by coredog64 on Tuesday September 24, 2019 @07:38PM
(#21065914)
Not a fan of WeWork, but there actually is something to this. We have two coffee makers in the break room at work, and there's always a line. If they brought in a barista who could work the machines, it's theoretically possible that you'd get better efficiency as there wouldn't be the dance of "who is next in line" or "sorry, gotta block the machine while I get sugar" or "I just want some hot water". I'd love to be able to point building management at some data that says that a barista costs $100/hour for 2 hours, but having them would unlock $1000/hour in lost productivity.
Re:WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO
by roymurdock on Tuesday September 24, 2019 @08:37PM
(#21066366)
Tell your WeWork employed office manager (there is one in every office right?) to look at the line every morning when they're getting their coffee for two weeks. If the line is too long buy another 2 or 3 espresso machines, or supplement them with a few keurigs.
I just saved you $20M per year in sensors, IoT platform subscription, and data scientist salaries for an investment of $5k. Pretty insane how much money is wasted on dumb BS just because there's so much money to waste and it's a trendy way to waste money
Or more likely they wanted an innocuous reason to track all their office users at all times for other reasons
Re:WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO
by ckorhonen on Wednesday September 25, 2019 @02:45AM
(#21068340)
But I’ve never actually seen a barista in any of the WeWork’s I’ve used (including the one which doubles as their HQ).
Re:WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO
by semi-extrinsic on Tuesday September 24, 2019 @03:34PM
(#21063726)
They were trying to find more secret sauce that's less expensive / more cheaply scalable than the Kombucha.
It was some sort of "connectivity and identification team" working to identify people/customers/tenants/whatever. Something like, you'd walk in, and WeWork would know it was you, and like, turn your office lights on or some shit. It was going to start off with keycards and I remember someone talking about bluetooth or wifi recognizing your phone, eventually doing face recognition.
I couldn't figure out the point. A HUGE team. The questions I was being asked were wild system design questions and android app stuff (what? I'm frontend lol). All so that people's desks would be at a certain height or whatever when they came in the room.