Say you own a co-working space. You probably should have some way to let:
- 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.
It's a classic case of hire engineers first and figure out problems to solve later. This works great if the company already has a massive revenue stream (Google, Facebook etc.) so the engineers can just mess around and once in a while come up with something great. For a company losing $2B+ a year, not so much.
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.
I'm struggling to think what of that couldn't be done with off the shelf software, honestly. Hell, most of it could be done with Outlook and Active Directory.
So Wework acquired https://www.teem.com/ specifically to do this, well the room booking part at least. They actually approached a different company and were rejected so they bought Teem.
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.
WeWork had apps to optimize the space in their office layout for maximum efficiency. They had one of the lowest sqft per paying member in the business.
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.
I kinda wish there was a job for like, DevOps Hatchet Men. I don't want to lay people off, but after they're laid off I feel like I could probably delete about a million dollars a year worth of their AWS bill right now and they'd never even notice the stuff missing.
I sort of did that for a while. The differences between what management thinks they have, what is actually running, what data centers are charging back, what licenses are being invoiced, what finance is depreciating, and what is actually needed for operations can be astonishingly large.
Sounds like a great consulting niche. It's a simple to understand value proposition and I imagine there is somebody powerful at many successful companies that would love to see the huge server cost line item go way down on their P&L.
There are consulting roles like that, but you’ll make more in infosec and it’s an easier sell than arguing why you should capture your share of the value you’re delivering to make it worth your while.
I would never recommend it, but the thought has crossed my mind (definitely more than once) that the scream test could work wonders with cloud infrastructure [0].
If you’ve been inside of a WeWork office, there is a pretty advanced process in place for checking in and alerting different people about you being there. It felt a bit over-engineered when I went there, but I suppose that is the kind of stuff these “tech roles” worked on.
Without meaning any offense to anyone, I am also genuinely curious how is a company such as Twitter have so many employees? Outsiders like myself know what goes into running GE or Tesla (and is easy to understand), but I would really appreciate someone from silicon valley enlighten about various needs for a company such as Twitter (or WeWork, etc.); what really goes on inside the doors, how are teams organized, what are some of the most challenging problems?
If I were running Twitter, I would freeze the feature creep, have a robust security and site-reliability team, perhaps make small improvements to UI/UX by eliminating friction/impedance. Similar to how Craigslist and surprisingly how Ebay is today - it is pretty much the same experience as 2008, I vividly remember. Instead, engineering resources can be channeled to new ventures (or augmentation projects) for additional growth.
A WeWork-like model has appeal to someone like me that would love good coffee and an office/hoteling space! Especially as I travel a lot and sometimes want a reliable private workspace in an arbitrary city. Coffee shops frankly don’t cut it for working/meeting with people all day.
Also there’s often a need for meeting spaces in arbitrary cities. my company would have used an airBNB style conference room scheduling solution half a dozen times last year.
All to say there’s at least a potential customer base here. Whether it’s a profitable business model, well, maybe :)
There's definitely a profitable business there, even. WeWork is absolutely a very reasonable, solid business. It's probably just not worth $50 billion.
Literally last week I got an email from WeWork looking for a Senior Data Engineer with "High Comp". I never understand these companies, aggressively hiring before they lay everyone off
I think it will cause a lot of cognitive dissonance if you treat large companies like you'd treat a single person. Imagine there is one person in charge of everything; it would be super weird if they bring you in for an interview on the day they're firing everyone else. But that's not how these large companies work; one person made the hire someone and some other person that's never met the first person made the decision to lay everyone off. You have to look at it like a distributed eventually-consistent database. In that context, everything should make sense; there was a netsplit and the consensus algorithm produced a different state in each cluster.
(There's a reason why we try not to design database like that. Perhaps there is a management lesson in there somewhere.)
tl;dr They used sensors to determine that people drink coffee in the morning and the line was long. They also used sensors to determine that small groups of people were booking large conference rooms so they made more small conference rooms.
Relevant part:
WeWork’s potential lies in what might happen when you apply AI to the environment where most of us spend the majority of our waking hours. I head down one floor to meet Mark Tanner, a WeWork product manager, who shows me a proprietary software system that the company has built to manage the 335 locations it now operates around the world. He starts by pulling up an aerial view of the WeWork floor I had just visited. My movements, from the moment I stepped off the elevator, have been monitored and captured by a sophisticated system of sensors that live under tables, above couches, and so forth. It’s part of a pilot that WeWork is testing to explore how people move through their workday. The machines pick up all kinds of details, which WeWork then uses to adjust everything from design to hiring. For example, sensors installed near this office’s main-floor self-serve coffee station helped WeWork discern that the morning lines were too long, so they added a barista. The larger conference rooms rarely got filled to capacity–often just two or three people would use rooms designed for 20–so the company is refashioning some spaces for smaller groups. (WeWork executives assure me that “the sensors do not capture personal identifiable information.”)
This is it. A friend who worked in the analytics team mentioned how everything is measured and taken into account when renovating and buying new buildings. Things like exposure to sunlight, time spent at a desk, etc. These analytics are offered to FB/Amazon/big-co along with office as a service.
As someone else mentioned, cool/potentially profitable company. Just not worth 40B.
[+] [-] youeseh|6 years ago|reply
- 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.
[+] [-] paxys|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] appleiigs|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheSpiceIsLife|6 years ago|reply
And another 480 to change the UI in annoying and unnecessary ways every three days.
[+] [-] cwyers|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zndr|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] unreal37|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ulfw|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codesushi42|6 years ago|reply
No.
And the software to do those things isn't worth billions.
WeWokeUp.
[+] [-] cagenut|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Merrill|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] encoderer|6 years ago|reply
There are LOTS of companies spending a million a month or more on AWS.
[+] [-] lprubin|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cfors|6 years ago|reply
[0] https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/anitag/2012/06/07/i-scream-...
edit: I suppose Chaos Monkey could be purposed for this task in hindsight.
[+] [-] paxys|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryanSrich|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kunle|6 years ago|reply
If you're affected by the WeWork layoffs and looking for a new role, fill this out: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdx4TOVN7AdgvyAZGbq...
If you're interested in recruiting ex-WeWork folks, you can look them up here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14CAtBsn3ZTL59tNMVbew...
[+] [-] dvtrn|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rocketpastsix|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] archeantus|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ulfw|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spectramax|6 years ago|reply
If I were running Twitter, I would freeze the feature creep, have a robust security and site-reliability team, perhaps make small improvements to UI/UX by eliminating friction/impedance. Similar to how Craigslist and surprisingly how Ebay is today - it is pretty much the same experience as 2008, I vividly remember. Instead, engineering resources can be channeled to new ventures (or augmentation projects) for additional growth.
[+] [-] hdra|6 years ago|reply
[0](https://vicki.substack.com/p/you-dont-need-kafka)
[+] [-] marcinzm|6 years ago|reply
edit: This is based on some of the pointless pie in the orbit of pluto projects I've heard they were trying to work on.
[+] [-] joejerryronnie|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] undefined3840|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] webscalist|6 years ago|reply
- API on top of Kubernetes: 2 people
- Tools around the API on top of Kubernetes: 1 person
- API and tools specific for continuous integration: 2 people
- Database operation: 2 people
- Event/Data pipeline: 5 people
- Authentication: 3 people
- Mobile API: 2 people
- Mobile App: 2 people
- Web API: 4 people
- Web App: 4 people
- ETL/Data science: 5 people
- Document writers, testers, new tech on-boarding evangelists: 5 people
That's 40 people for one feature. And you have 12 features, you need 500 people.
[+] [-] softwaredoug|6 years ago|reply
A WeWork-like model has appeal to someone like me that would love good coffee and an office/hoteling space! Especially as I travel a lot and sometimes want a reliable private workspace in an arbitrary city. Coffee shops frankly don’t cut it for working/meeting with people all day.
Also there’s often a need for meeting spaces in arbitrary cities. my company would have used an airBNB style conference room scheduling solution half a dozen times last year.
All to say there’s at least a potential customer base here. Whether it’s a profitable business model, well, maybe :)
[+] [-] darawk|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tempsy|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tootie|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unreal37|6 years ago|reply
These exist. They exist all over the world. Regus being one.
[+] [-] tga|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hourislate|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fourstar|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codingslave|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrockway|6 years ago|reply
(There's a reason why we try not to design database like that. Perhaps there is a management lesson in there somewhere.)
[+] [-] weare138|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xiphias2|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joejerryronnie|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tempsy|6 years ago|reply
tl;dr They used sensors to determine that people drink coffee in the morning and the line was long. They also used sensors to determine that small groups of people were booking large conference rooms so they made more small conference rooms.
Relevant part:
WeWork’s potential lies in what might happen when you apply AI to the environment where most of us spend the majority of our waking hours. I head down one floor to meet Mark Tanner, a WeWork product manager, who shows me a proprietary software system that the company has built to manage the 335 locations it now operates around the world. He starts by pulling up an aerial view of the WeWork floor I had just visited. My movements, from the moment I stepped off the elevator, have been monitored and captured by a sophisticated system of sensors that live under tables, above couches, and so forth. It’s part of a pilot that WeWork is testing to explore how people move through their workday. The machines pick up all kinds of details, which WeWork then uses to adjust everything from design to hiring. For example, sensors installed near this office’s main-floor self-serve coffee station helped WeWork discern that the morning lines were too long, so they added a barista. The larger conference rooms rarely got filled to capacity–often just two or three people would use rooms designed for 20–so the company is refashioning some spaces for smaller groups. (WeWork executives assure me that “the sensors do not capture personal identifiable information.”)
[+] [-] jrvarela56|6 years ago|reply
As someone else mentioned, cool/potentially profitable company. Just not worth 40B.
[+] [-] downrightmike|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] autotune|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jfb|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gbjw|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] egdod|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codesushi42|6 years ago|reply
The morale there must be terrible. Anyone good who survives the cuts will GTFO to greener pastures.
Anyone who stays or anyone desperate enough to join will be terrible.
Good bye We, consider this my eulogy, we hardly knew ye, and may you rest in peepee.