WeWork is in the process of massive layoffs this week as the company restructures after its failed attempt at an IPO.
When WeWork released the paperwork for the intended IPO, the company tried to position itself as a tech company rather than a real estate company. Since WeWork makes its money renting shared office space, not software, investors and pundits universally rejected that idea.
But WeWork did pursue all kinds of tech projects, under the auspices of now-ousted CEO Adam Neumann. The company had big hopes to offer its tenants various software apps, and at one point said it employed 1,000 engineers, product designers and machine learning specialists. It even wrote about its technology choices from time to time on Medium.
That might explain why WeWork had a tiny booth at KubeCon, a big conference held in San Diego this week around Kubernetes, a Google-created open source software project that's become something of a standard in the cloud computing industry. The conference has an estimated attendance of 12,000.
WeWork was known to be a user of Kubernetes — or, at least, it was interested in hiring people who knew how to use it. A recent WeWork engineering job posting listed Kubernetes as a "nice to have" skill, among a boatload of other trendy technologies.
Whether the purpose of the booth was to recruit developers, or to try and nab startups to rent WeWork office space, we may never know — because the booth was, apparently, un-staffed for much of the event.
The sight of the empty booth was viewed as a symbol for the struggling company by more than one KubeCon attendee, who posted pictures of it on Twitter over the course of the day. One described the sight as "sad."
—Jay Nichols (@Jayfish) November 20, 2019
—Mary Branscombe @ Kubecon (@marypcbuk) November 19, 2019
—Jonathan Gershater (@jgershater) November 19, 2019
—Jason Baker @ KubeCon 🌴 (@jehb) November 19, 2019
- Meanwhile, WeWork is now shedding all of the people working on projects that are not tied directly to its core business of real estate, its newly appointed chairman has said in emails leaked to Business Insider.
- WeWork declined to comment.
- Now read:
- WeWork warned employees not to put glass cleaner in tenants' mouthwash containers
- WeWork layoffs began on Monday, sources say, with one person calling it a 'small mercy'
- Sex, tequila, and a tiger: Employees inside Adam Neumann's WeWork talk about the nonstop party to attain a $100 billion dream and the messy reality that tanked it
- Insiders say WeWork's IT is a patchwork of cheap devices and Band-Aid fixes that will take millions to fix
