WeWork is planning to lay off up to 25% of its employees

Re:WeWork is planning to lay off up to 25% of its employees by softwaredoug on Thursday October 03, 2019 @06:08PM (#21152785)

The “How I Built This” on WeWork[1] was fascinating. Basically the 2008 financial crises increased vacancies in trendy places a lot. WeWork grew up with the trends in coworking. But really has turned into a very fancy middle man for turning buildings into beautiful coworking office spaces. The brand for a while had some cache, but the thing is many are realizing that they can also build beautiful coworking spaces and there’s no magic secret sauce IP or tech that makes WeWork special here. In this context, WeWork has only gotten weirder and full of itself... they just seem disconnected from reality from what they are while at the same time losing money hand over fist.

1 - https://www.npr.org/2018/08/31/643774290/wework-miguel-mckel...

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Re:WeWork is planning to lay off up to 25% of its employees by dehrmann on Thursday October 03, 2019 @06:33PM (#21152971)

> there’s no magic secret sauce IP or tech that makes WeWork special here

Indeed; they don't really have a moat. For customers who travel a lot, there might be some network effects, but I suspect they're the minority.

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Re:WeWork is planning to lay off up to 25% of its employees by softwaredoug on Thursday October 03, 2019 @06:44PM (#21153039)

I think there could be something to economies of scale, but in the How I Built That podcase, they brag about every space is bespoke!

I’d pay for a version of WeWork that let me camp out for $10 get self serve coffee but was drab, boring, and decidedly antisocial

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Re:WeWork is planning to lay off up to 25% of its employees by mvid on Friday October 04, 2019 @03:50PM (#21161261)

Basically a library next to a coffee shop?

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Re:WeWork is planning to lay off up to 25% of its employees by softwaredoug on Saturday October 05, 2019 @08:33AM (#21165145)

More libraries need to sell coffee :)

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Re:WeWork is planning to lay off up to 25% of its employees by foobar1962 on Thursday October 03, 2019 @06:45PM (#21153050)

> The brand for a while had some cash...

Couldn't resist fixing that for you. The little pun (homonym?) has some explanatory power for the company's current position.

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Re:WeWork is planning to lay off up to 25% of its employees by skookum on Thursday October 03, 2019 @06:52PM (#21153105)

Though the OP misspelled cachet, so I guess it should be "The brand for a while had some cash, eh?" :)

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