WeWork employees were lured in by a non-stop party and the promise of a big payday. Then they saw some sobering signs of trouble.
They hope to staunch WeWork's financial losses and salvage a public offering for some point in the future.
Like many startups coping with the"growing pains" of rapid expansion, WeWork required long hours and a tolerance for disorder and sudden changes.Neumann, now 40, was seen as the fiery, inspirational visionary. Multiple employees who worked closely with him, some from the early days, said his ability to motivate employees and"pitch the living hell out of the company," was remarkable.
As an Israeli who grew up on a Kibbutz — the collective agricultural and manufacturing communities that once dotted Israel — Neumann struck many new WeWork employees as the real deal. At WeWork's Chelsea headquarters, Neumann's office includes a large private bathroom with a shower, sauna, and massage table.
A one time actress who is cousins with Gwyneth Paltrow and graduated Cornell University majoring in Business and Buddhism, Rebekah Neuman was responsible for a lot of the creative elements of We's early slogans like the neon"hustle harder" signs. Some employees described an almost absolutist aesthetic, particularly when it came to a preference for all-white personal technology.
"There aren't enough people in that industry to take on the growth that WeWork was experiencing. It was more of a people shortage than anything else. The whole company was overworked," said a former executive. Neumann often brought in friends and family without much experience for particular roles, and those who didn't succeed floated to other jobs in the company, multiple ex-employees said.
Like her father, Adi Neumann also sat in on meetings. One executive who spent years at WeWork until its recent headaches remembers Adi as being kind and her husband as competent. But sometimes, said another, she treated WeWork assistants — who were not her own staff -"like the help." "Part of that is to build community but it was over the top," the person said."I went again last year and people were like, 'Why do I have to do this?' I loved going out there but the way they forced that on you was unnecessary."Camp was only one of the company's mandatory employee parties. WeWork also throws another, more business-focused event called Summit.
It stuck one employee in the audience as juvenile:"You're not rockstars, you left that mess for people to clean up. They thought they were so cool and they were so badass. It was really unprofessional." "A member of my team, a white male, he pulls out his phone and he said he dressed up as Dr. J [Julius Erving] — the basketball player — for Halloween, and he shows everybody a picture of him doing blackface. He showed the picture around and I looked around and nobody seemed shocked at all."
Others told stories about senior male members of their team inviting young women back to their tents during Camp. A few employees told multiple stories of alleged sexual harassment incidents that they heard about or believed they witnessed.
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