Once WeWork solved its core engineering problems (bookings), engineering job descriptions got more and more abstract - "build the operating system for the workspace", "bridge the gap between physical and digital", "create a sense of community", "humanize through technology" (all copied directly from their engineering website), so it's clear that they are paying thousands of engineers to do nothing.
I know for a fact that they have large data and machine learning teams spread across SF, NYC, Tel Aviv, Shanghai and maybe more that collect and analyze data from all their operations - few hundred offices and few hundred thousand members. At this scale there is zero reason not to use off-the-shelf products (or pay one of the dozens of companies out there that specialize in this), but they decided to custom build all the infra in-house from scratch.
That's going to be an awkward presentation to management when they present their revenue forecasts under different economic scenarios...
And another 480 to change the UI in annoying and unnecessary ways every three days.
I liked the product, and wanted to purchase it. We Co had so over funded Teem that the sales people couldn't keep up. They were doing demos with experienced Sales Engineers and literally couldn't explain how things worked. We had 2 demos in 2 successive weeks and the product fundamentally looked different both times.
Think about that: Imagine having unlimited eng and product resources and pushing code so fast that your sales team can't keep up sounds good right?
Wrong...we didn't buy Teem we went with their competitor who was behind on a few items, but had a concise product and a concise roadmap that met our needs, not the needs of 1000 coworking spaces tied together.
They also were into custom spaces. They needed software to design the office floor plans for big customers like MixPanel.
Lots of software. Not just booking rooms and events.
That sound like some useless bullshit if I've ever heard it.
This is an algorithmically hard problem, and I'm not surprised that there might be significant benefits to investing in solving it very well.
The problem is interesting, but it isn't one you need to set up an entire engineering team to solve.
Binpacking is np-hard but humans still do a very good job of playing Tetris. It is hard to imagine getting a positive return on automating something they (in the long run) will do a few times a year.
”there’s a team of 5 Monday to Wednesday, one of 7 Tuesday that also have a meeting room, one of 4 Tuesday to Friday, one of 3 for the next three weeks, one of 2 that have to sit side-by-side, …. Figure out who to place where, minimizing the times we have to tell customers to move desk, maximizing the ‘cohesion’ of desks assigned to each group. Oh, and do this knowing that the problem may change at any time”
And all of that, hopefully, in a building with a high occupancy rate, all the time.
That's totally fair. I think they actually do some other types of more mundane optimization that are geared towards managing the properties. I think a number of the engineers also work on the learning platform for their education services.
In fact it sounds way more useful than most software projects I see.
No.
And the software to do those things isn't worth billions.
WeWokeUp.
- People book conference rooms.
- Let people check in and check out.
- Let people book hot desks.
- Manage access for members, hot desks, event participants etc.
- Lots of other stuff.
At some point, the off the shelf software is no good, especially if you're looking to... build a single experience around the world for lots and lots of office buildings under your management! The software will have a lot of other admin and reporting doodads. Especially if you're trying to turn your office company into an everything company. Then the scope goes way up.
You might even start thinking about managing everything because you're a control freak... stuff like central air con control and energy use analytics across all properties... I'm just throwing stuff out there, I've never worked for WeWork.
Does this justify hundreds of engineers? It is so easy to hire more people when you have a massive war chest. Projects begin to justify themselves because you'll need them "soon enough". And if the founder pulls it off, then they're a genius! Or not.