Speaker 1: It's we Work is growing super fast, which means it's
Speaker 1: hiring a lot of new people. And every Monday at
Speaker 1: we Works headquarters in New York City, that means one thing.
Speaker 1: New hire orientation orientations were massive. They were huge, Like
Speaker 1: they were every Monday almost. I feel like they were
Speaker 1: almost every single Monday, huge breakfast spread. Cody Quinn was
Speaker 1: an executive assistant at we Work. You know, they've got
Speaker 1: like a projection screen every single morning you walk in, Um,
Speaker 1: what's that song? It's um Coldplay. Adventure of a Lifetime
Speaker 1: was blasting, and everybody's walking around and like fifth pumping
Speaker 1: and like all these new hires are high fiving and
Speaker 1: people are standing up and whooping, and I'm like, what
Speaker 1: is happening now? It like so that was the first
Speaker 1: time that I really had this like holy moly, this
Speaker 1: feels cultish, wow wow. Because like and then you've got um,
Speaker 1: somebody from HR like doing a presentation and they're just
Speaker 1: like I was excited to the air. It's like just
Speaker 1: it's crazy, like a Pepper rally. It was nuts. It
Speaker 1: was absolutely nuts. Honestly, it's still to this day blows
Speaker 1: my mind. You're listening to Foundering, I'm your host, Ellen Hewitt.
Speaker 1: In the previous episode, we heard about the explosive growth
Speaker 1: in the early days of We Work. The company was
Speaker 1: opening building so fast that they were launching new offices
Speaker 1: literally without doors, without bathrooms, with the paints still drying
Speaker 1: on the walls. This episode is about hype. As we
Speaker 1: Work kept growing, It's CEO, Adam Newman, used a very
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley combination of myth making and salesmanship to accelerate
Speaker 1: we Works expansion, and he used it to pump up
Speaker 1: we Works valuation and to attract young, passionate people to
Speaker 1: build his vision for him. Remember, we Work at its
Speaker 1: core is a real estate business. It's about renting debt asks.
Speaker 1: But as it grew, Adam made it so much more.
Speaker 1: He hyped it up in two ways. He gave it
Speaker 1: a super lofty mission statement, one that would eventually become
Speaker 1: to elevate the world's consciousness. And he was able to
Speaker 1: convince influential people, especially investors, that We Work was a
Speaker 1: tech company and deserved to be valued like one. When
Speaker 1: We Work first started, the reporters who wrote about it
Speaker 1: usually covered commercial real estate, but we Work started marketing
Speaker 1: itself as a tech company instead and They also kept
Speaker 1: hammering home their mission rather than speaking about the nuts
Speaker 1: and bolts of renting office space. Here's Teddy Kramer, an
Speaker 1: early employee. All of a sudden, we became a technology company.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, we were really hiring a lot
Speaker 1: of engineers and bringing in executives who had experience with
Speaker 1: big technology companies like get hub, or after I left,
Speaker 1: they were running people from Spotify or Apple. I was like, wow,
Speaker 1: are we really a tech company? And again the cynical
Speaker 1: side of me kind of like, no, we're not a
Speaker 1: tech company. But myself and some others really questioned it heavily,
Speaker 1: like how are we portraying ourselves this way? We Work
Speaker 1: isn't alone. There are a number of big name startups
Speaker 1: that say they're saving the world and using technology to
Speaker 1: do it, you know, ones that sell products like taxi service, mattresses, suitcases,
Speaker 1: and glasses. And the hype around we Work didn't just
Speaker 1: influence the press coverage. It also influenced the talent. That
Speaker 1: we Work was able to attract ambitious young people drawn
Speaker 1: in by the mission and the marketing for This episode
Speaker 1: will focus on one employee's journey, her initial excitement about
Speaker 1: WE Work and it's promise of bringing community to the world.
Speaker 1: How that belief kept her going even as things started
Speaker 1: to sour, and how in the end her feelings turned
Speaker 1: to resentment and a sense of betrayal. I took the
Speaker 1: job at WE Worked because I did not anybody in
Speaker 1: New York and I was really looking for like a
Speaker 1: peer group and to like, you know, make a network
Speaker 1: of friends in a brand new place. Cody Quinn started
Speaker 1: at WE Work when she was twenty nine. She was
Speaker 1: originally from Michigan, and she was brand new to New
Speaker 1: York City. And the moment she walked into WE Works offices,
Speaker 1: she was drawn in. This sounds so stupid, but you
Speaker 1: walk in and like there's like cool, trendy people everywhere,
Speaker 1: you know, like and and I'm like in this brand new,
Speaker 1: big city and I'm like, oh my gosh, everybody's cool.
Speaker 1: Like she's got cool hair, and like she's got a
Speaker 1: nose ring, and like, I mean, when I interviewed, I
Speaker 1: had like I was wearing a suit. Everybody was in jeans,
Speaker 1: Like you know, it was like I was like, this
Speaker 1: is amazing. Cody had spent the last four years at
Speaker 1: a small, family run business. She had never worked in
Speaker 1: such a big company before, so she had no idea
Speaker 1: what to expect at we Work. I want to say,
Speaker 1: like the first three months of working there, I didn't
Speaker 1: know what was normal. So when Pete, well, are you
Speaker 1: know There's an executive in the office next to the
Speaker 1: one that I'm sitting in and he starts screaming and
Speaker 1: rips a printer out of the wall and smashes it
Speaker 1: on the floor. I'm like, is this what happens? Like?
Speaker 1: Is this like? Am I a New York or now? Like? What? Like?
Speaker 1: Is this normal? And I didn't have anything to compare
Speaker 1: it to. I just want to rewind for a sec.
Speaker 1: Cody says she actually saw someone pull a printer out
Speaker 1: of a wall and smash it in a fit of rage.
Speaker 1: She was pretty green when she joined we Work, which
Speaker 1: made it harder for her to know when to speak
Speaker 1: up about the weird things she was seeing in the office,
Speaker 1: or how to know if it was normal for her
Speaker 1: to feel so stressed out. This is something that a
Speaker 1: lot of former we Work employees told me too. They
Speaker 1: felt like we Work purposely hired young or inexperienced workers
Speaker 1: because they were more likely to go along with the
Speaker 1: sometimes chaotic work environment employees in their thirties with a
Speaker 1: few different jobs under their belt, felt ancient compared or
Speaker 1: to their coworkers. Here's Teddy. The kind of people that
Speaker 1: were being brought in were young folks who didn't have
Speaker 1: a ton of experience, who were extremely passionate and wanted
Speaker 1: to again get on the rocket ship to the moon. Um.
Speaker 1: But I also believe they were malleable, right. They would
Speaker 1: believe everything they were told. They wouldn't ask the tough questions.
Speaker 1: Cody was one of those employees, someone who was excited
Speaker 1: to have the job and wanted to do well, but
Speaker 1: was starting to get confused by the behavior around her.
Speaker 1: She was an assistant to two we Work executives, and
Speaker 1: she started to notice how the executives lives seemed to
Speaker 1: be dictated by Adam. You know, if Adam was like
Speaker 1: coming down the hall, it's like every executive's like butthole titans.
Speaker 1: Like everybody just got really like oh my God, like
Speaker 1: you know, like they like would drop anything for like
Speaker 1: two seconds to talk to him. And I just started
Speaker 1: to notice like how much anxiety there was amongst all
Speaker 1: of these executives when it came to Adam. She noticed
Speaker 1: that every Monday night, after the all hands meetings, executives
Speaker 1: stuck around for another meeting with Adam. Then I started
Speaker 1: to find out that executives were required to stay until
Speaker 1: like sometimes two and three in the morning. Here's Adam
Speaker 1: at an all hands meeting talking about these late nights.
Speaker 1: And then every Monday night, either I do a second
Speaker 1: meeting with the leadership team or I said, with the
Speaker 1: real estate team. Usually ends at two. I am, we
Speaker 1: do this every Monday. Cody said that sometimes the executives
Speaker 1: would drop everything they were doing at Adam's win. Adam
Speaker 1: would hijack their days frequently. Um, and I again didn't know,
Speaker 1: is that a CEO thing? Oh? Is that just expected?
Speaker 1: You know? I'd slave hours and hours on my computer
Speaker 1: and email and trying to like organize all of their schedules,
Speaker 1: and then Adam would come in and just drop a bomb,
Speaker 1: and like you know, and it happened so often that,
Speaker 1: like I was worried that it was making me look
Speaker 1: unprofessional to other people. You know that my executives are
Speaker 1: supposed to have meetings with that all the time, I'm
Speaker 1: having to say, like, I know what, you're supposed to
Speaker 1: be here an hour, but we have to reschedule. She
Speaker 1: was also running to her executives homes late at night,
Speaker 1: so they were ready for Adam to pop in at
Speaker 1: any hour. Cody was questioning if these assignments really had
Speaker 1: to be done that night, and sometimes it did just like, well,
Speaker 1: Adams coming to my house, so yeah, it has to
Speaker 1: be to night, and he'd come over at like twelve
Speaker 1: at night, and it's just bizarre. Like it just got
Speaker 1: more and more bizarre. So this sort of CEO behavior
Speaker 1: isn't entirely uncommon. A lot of big, splashy startups have
Speaker 1: work cultures that burn people out and require long, late hours.
Speaker 1: There's more than one messianic, demanding CEO in the tech world.
Speaker 1: But here's where I think it's fair to call out
Speaker 1: we work. For one thing, we were claimed to be better.
Speaker 1: Remember we were promised to reinvent work to make it refreshing,
Speaker 1: so you could argue that they should be held to
Speaker 1: a higher standard. And also, we were was selling work
Speaker 1: culture that was their product, so their own internal culture
Speaker 1: with unhappy, burnt out employees shouldn't have been an afterthought.
Speaker 1: And on top of that, much of the we were
Speaker 1: culture that they were selling was fake, like it was
Speaker 1: an actual performance. There was a ritual that a lot
Speaker 1: of we Work employees had to perform when Adam was
Speaker 1: giving a tour to an investor. He needed the space
Speaker 1: to look exciting, to make a strong impression. This ritual
Speaker 1: even had a name. It's called activating the space. That's
Speaker 1: what it was called activating the space. So yeah, oh my,
Speaker 1: oh my god, give me a second. I this was
Speaker 1: like the thing I hated so much. Um, what it
Speaker 1: really came down to was like pulling back the curtain
Speaker 1: like the Wizard of Oz. I was like, this is
Speaker 1: so stupid, Like it was so fake. It's like we're
Speaker 1: bringing somebody in that's going to invest and like throw
Speaker 1: a party, like just throw up. So like all the
Speaker 1: community managers on whatever floor are like everybody get here now,
Speaker 1: you know, like they're going around like yanking people out
Speaker 1: of their offices, like get into the common area, like
Speaker 1: we're activating space. And they were used to putting on
Speaker 1: a good show. Here's Carl Pierre, a community manager in
Speaker 1: d C. I'd get this frantic email or call Adams
Speaker 1: coming to d C with investors. You know, activate the
Speaker 1: space like user company credit, buy whatever you gotta buy,
Speaker 1: but like make sure, everyone's having fun, so I'd like,
Speaker 1: I don't order like two dollars worth of like nitrogen
Speaker 1: frozen ice cream. And the cool thing was it totally
Speaker 1: worked because when you walked in, it looked like an
Speaker 1: ice cream party with a million different companies and everybody
Speaker 1: was laughing and smiling and having good time. So we
Speaker 1: made it happen. So when you first walked in, you're like, dude,
Speaker 1: this place is awesome, Like what is going on? They
Speaker 1: go into the liquor cabinet and they pull out all
Speaker 1: the wine and they've got you know, people like doing
Speaker 1: feels like they've got a big project. Are screened down
Speaker 1: and someone's like, look at our growth like Adams walking
Speaker 1: through people. It was cringe e. That's the best part
Speaker 1: I can come up with. Cringe E. Activating the space
Speaker 1: was a good way to lure investors, but it was
Speaker 1: just a big show. When I was speaking to Cody,
Speaker 1: she kept saying that it felt fake. She said she
Speaker 1: felt like she was working in a dystopian sci fi movie.
Speaker 1: People were like working themselves under the ground and they're
Speaker 1: just doing it with this like crazy smile, like oh
Speaker 1: my god, I'm so happy to be here. Like it
Speaker 1: kind of felt like I was like, that's what it
Speaker 1: felt like. It's like everybody is miserable, but nobody will
Speaker 1: say anything. So things that we work could get pretty intense.
Speaker 1: But the company also rewarded its employees with massive blowout parties.
Speaker 1: The most infamous one is Summer Camp. Summer Camp is
Speaker 1: an annual festival that we worked through in the countryside,
Speaker 1: first in Upstate New York, then in England. It was
Speaker 1: open to employees and members. Carl went to several of them.
Speaker 1: It first started with this lake in the Randex that
Speaker 1: we work when it was a really small team, go
Speaker 1: there and party for free and like as like a
Speaker 1: way to blow off some steam and take a break,
Speaker 1: and it was so cool. And then it grew to
Speaker 1: them like all right, guys, this is so much fun,
Speaker 1: which definite get a musical act to come and just
Speaker 1: like play for us. And it was like a small
Speaker 1: local band thing and it frontly just like kind of
Speaker 1: scaled from there to my last Summer Camp. Um Chromeo
Speaker 1: opened up for the weekend and the weekend was flowing
Speaker 1: in on a helicopter. The weekend is a musician. By
Speaker 1: the way, one of our editors was confused to me
Speaker 1: as a reporter. Summer camp is just one of the
Speaker 1: strangest and most notable things about we Work. Adam and
Speaker 1: other executives gave speeches on stage during the day, and
Speaker 1: at night they would put on these flashy, giant music performances.
Speaker 1: It's like if you went to Coachella but it was
Speaker 1: run by your boss. To me, it's just this perfect
Speaker 1: example of how we were going to blur that line
Speaker 1: when your personal and professional life blurrett so completely it
Speaker 1: was basically erased. We have a lot of tape from
Speaker 1: all hands meetings where Adam talks about summer camp. Again,
Speaker 1: this is the tape that was given to me by
Speaker 1: a WEE Work employee, and in the recordings you can
Speaker 1: hear Adam's excitement. Here he is talking about summer camps origins,
Speaker 1: and we said, well, great, let's do a summer camp.
Speaker 1: I've never been to one, but I saw them in
Speaker 1: the movies and thought it sounded awesome. And it took
Speaker 1: a minute to find a venue that would take on
Speaker 1: the liability of such a big party. Why wouldn't you
Speaker 1: want mature cycling intoxicated very we oriented members and employees
Speaker 1: to come to your camp. It ended up getting hosted
Speaker 1: at an executive's parents property. Here's Adam pitching Summer Camp
Speaker 1: to his employees. If it's the first time you're doing it,
Speaker 1: really come and enjoy it. We're gonna go a day
Speaker 1: before as a company, all the employees and spend a
Speaker 1: day getting to know each other, doing a lot of
Speaker 1: social exercises, playing a lot of games, putting on some
Speaker 1: shows in some competitions. By its third year, Summer Camp
Speaker 1: already had some traditions and celebrities of its own. There's
Speaker 1: a guy Adam calls Naked Pete. His Naked Pete coming.
Speaker 1: But for those of you don't know Naked Pete. He's
Speaker 1: one of our members and he loves parties. It's very
Speaker 1: confident when he's in parties. Okay, no idea who Naked
Speaker 1: Pete is, but he sounds fun. Summer Camp was a
Speaker 1: place for people to get into all sorts of shenanigans.
Speaker 1: No reporters this time, by the way, definitely no reporters
Speaker 1: this time. We had a little problem there. The previous year.
Speaker 1: A reporter came to Summer Camp and we work picked
Speaker 1: some members for her to interview. The reporter looks at
Speaker 1: him and says, what do you do last night? And
Speaker 1: looks there mushrooms? What did you do that? Did you
Speaker 1: catch that? We work member told the reporter that he
Speaker 1: did mushrooms at summer camp, which is awkward. PR people
Speaker 1: had to spend the next many hours talking to the
Speaker 1: reporter saying he's a member, not an employee. We did
Speaker 1: not supply it. Please do us a fever and don't
Speaker 1: put it in the article. He never went into the article.
Speaker 1: Was a good thing members pay to go to summer camp,
Speaker 1: but we worked foots the bill for its employees to come.
Speaker 1: One thing I forgot to say for summer Camp, we
Speaker 1: are flying over every single employee in every country, every
Speaker 1: state around the world. It's not cheap. This is a
Speaker 1: sort of extravagant spending that we work became famous for.
Speaker 1: Just for summer Camp. For an example, it costs US
Speaker 1: twelve dollars per employee, not including flights. So just do
Speaker 1: the math and fift employees, you'll see here at two
Speaker 1: million dollars, and you add the flights and this, and
Speaker 1: before you know, to bring everybody together as an investment
Speaker 1: of two and a a half million, and it's a great investment,
Speaker 1: even though it's for a very short time. Two and
Speaker 1: a half million dollars for an employee bonding trip is
Speaker 1: a lot of money, but it made a huge impression
Speaker 1: on his employees. Would be like partying all my an
Speaker 1: open bar with like great tequila and shots, and everyone's
Speaker 1: just like wrecked in the morning that these canoes packed
Speaker 1: with ice and coconut water, and you would just like
Speaker 1: everyone would rehydrate and they'd be like more beach games
Speaker 1: and like team building and then more drinking and then
Speaker 1: it's just you know, and again. I was one of
Speaker 1: the guys who loved I loved my first summer camp
Speaker 1: and my second summer camp and my third summer they
Speaker 1: were all they were. They were dope. I had a
Speaker 1: great time. I will I sole her being super hungover
Speaker 1: at a table and looking over to my right, and
Speaker 1: then St. Lucia, she was like one of my favorite bands,
Speaker 1: was like eating breakfast next to me, and I was
Speaker 1: like this is so cool. Um and I was like, um.
Speaker 1: So we were down by the water at a bonfire
Speaker 1: and out of nowhere, I hear one of the weekends
Speaker 1: like really big songs that had come out like that summer,
Speaker 1: and I was like, are you kidding me? So I
Speaker 1: freaked out, and my sister and I hopped on a
Speaker 1: golf cart and we were like, give us a ride,
Speaker 1: you know, and like so we're like tearing up a
Speaker 1: hill and we get to like the big field where
Speaker 1: the stages, and I was like, this cannot be happening.
Speaker 1: Like this cannot be happen. Was my one of my
Speaker 1: favorite artists, and I'm like this, this is unreal. So
Speaker 1: Cody and Carl had these incredibly memorable and exciting moments
Speaker 1: at Summer Camp once in a lifetime stuff. But for Cody,
Speaker 1: her day to day job at WE Work was wearing
Speaker 1: her down. She was an executive assistant and her bosses
Speaker 1: were tough on her. She started to feel stressed and exhausted.
Speaker 1: She wasn't sure this company was treating her right. As
Speaker 1: she spent more and more time at WE Work, she
Speaker 1: started to notice something about Summer Camp. She realized these
Speaker 1: big blowouts had another purpose beyond just having fun. I
Speaker 1: think that they found a formula that worked really well
Speaker 1: for UM, exhausting their workforce and then just giving them
Speaker 1: a reason to keep doing it. Cody saw it as
Speaker 1: a cycle of getting burned out and then reinspired. We
Speaker 1: all know what we need to do. We all know,
Speaker 1: like we all have to contribute because it's we and
Speaker 1: we're a team. And and then you know, six months
Speaker 1: goes by and like every you know, a few weeks,
Speaker 1: like you're just getting you know, more and and more,
Speaker 1: just like bogged down, dragged out. Things just start to deteriorate.
Speaker 1: And then you hit summer Camp and so all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, you're reinspired and like you're reinvigorated. So even
Speaker 1: though Cody looks back on summer Camp fondly, she also
Speaker 1: feels like maybe she was being manipulated, like summer Camp
Speaker 1: was a debauchero's party, meant to distract you from the
Speaker 1: not so great parts of the job. You know, when
Speaker 1: you're in the middle of it, you're just sort of
Speaker 1: like looking for like any outlets of like okay, it's
Speaker 1: all it's okay, we're all fine. We're all gonna be fine.
Speaker 1: We put up with a lot, we worked really hard.
Speaker 1: We you know, we get yelled at, but it's all
Speaker 1: worth it in the end because we're working for this
Speaker 1: awesome company. Is like the kool Aid disillusionment flip flap,
Speaker 1: flip flap, Like it goes back and forth for most people.
Speaker 1: And here's Adam on stage at summer Camp pepping up
Speaker 1: his employees. Who is here last year? Raise your handy,
Speaker 1: geer last year. I'm just gonna say, I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: say one thing. All of this would not be possible
Speaker 1: without all of you, So I just want to say
Speaker 1: thank you so much. Adam turned to his favorite topics again,
Speaker 1: meaning and intention, and he's doing this to inspire his
Speaker 1: employees to keep going. Thank you, Thank you for being
Speaker 1: part of something that actually has a meaning. I think
Speaker 1: the thing that all of us know is if you
Speaker 1: want to succeed in this world, you have to build
Speaker 1: something that has intentions. You have to build something that
Speaker 1: has true meaning behind it. And what puts us together,
Speaker 1: all of us here is every one of us is
Speaker 1: here because it hasn't mean, because we want to do
Speaker 1: something that actually makes the world a better place and
Speaker 1: we want to make money doing it. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: I want to revisit the tapes of all Hands meetings
Speaker 1: that were given to me by we work employee after
Speaker 1: she handed me the recordings she was sued by the company.
Speaker 1: These tapes are special because they reveal a different side
Speaker 1: of Adam. Adam gets really honest. In this clip I'm
Speaker 1: about to play you, he's saying that we work knowingly
Speaker 1: pays its employees less than they could earn elsewhere. I
Speaker 1: can tell you right now and everyone here knows that
Speaker 1: we are not the highest players in the market. We
Speaker 1: just aren't its own purpose. We want people to come
Speaker 1: here because they truly feel and that's what they want
Speaker 1: to do. We're very generous with our equity, and in
Speaker 1: the future we're going to be more generous with our equity.
Speaker 1: But one of the things we do here to make
Speaker 1: sure you really want to be here is we we
Speaker 1: really ask you to tell us what is the bare
Speaker 1: minimum that you need. We don't want you to lose money,
Speaker 1: but we really want you to be here for the
Speaker 1: right reasons. So we know that this employee that came
Speaker 1: here is here for the right reasons. By the way,
Speaker 1: if they're not not gonna last for a long time,
Speaker 1: so we know that are you here for the right reasons?
Speaker 1: Are you down for the cause? I remember feeling surprised
Speaker 1: when I heard what Adam was saying in these tapes.
Speaker 1: I know some startup managers think to themselves that they
Speaker 1: want their staff to be motivated by the mission, not money.
Speaker 1: But it's remarkable to me that a CEO would say
Speaker 1: out loud to all his employees that he's intentionally paying
Speaker 1: them less. When I showed adams quote to we Work,
Speaker 1: a spokesperson gave me this statement. We Work is committed
Speaker 1: to compensating employees fairly and competitively. But if you listen
Speaker 1: to the tapes, you hear Adam come back to the
Speaker 1: ideas of loyalty and dedication again and again. Here's another
Speaker 1: all hands meeting where Adam tells his employees that they're
Speaker 1: part of something bigger than themselves. The bottom line is simple,
Speaker 1: you guys are all part of this. I don't need
Speaker 1: to tell you what's happening here. I can't tell me
Speaker 1: what's happening here. You know what's happening here, And if
Speaker 1: you don't feel it and you're not a part of it,
Speaker 1: then it's it's your problem, and it's up to you
Speaker 1: because the reason that you're here is because you choose
Speaker 1: to be here. And I'm here because they choosed to
Speaker 1: be here, and a lot of our friends are here
Speaker 1: because they choosed to be here, and making the choice
Speaker 1: so big here is not an easy choice. I'll be
Speaker 1: the first one to say, you chose to be here.
Speaker 1: If you're not excited about it, that's your problem, not ours.
Speaker 1: In this speech, it sounds like Adam is demanding a
Speaker 1: personal commitment, a fidelity to the company. Here's Cody. There
Speaker 1: was like a purity test amongst the executives, like they
Speaker 1: would if somebody wasn't at one of those meetings, they
Speaker 1: would throw that person under the bus. Are you really
Speaker 1: dedicated to this cause, to what we're doing here? Because
Speaker 1: you're not here, so you must not be you know,
Speaker 1: it was a purity test onlike your dedication to Adam's cause.
Speaker 1: I just want to be really clear that Cody Quinn
Speaker 1: is not the person who gave me these recordings, but
Speaker 1: you'll hear her respond to the tapes because Cody was
Speaker 1: often in the audience when Adam was giving these speeches.
Speaker 1: She heard him making these points about believing in we
Speaker 1: works cause and making personal sacrifices for it. Here's another
Speaker 1: meeting where Adam is telling his employees that they might
Speaker 1: not get credit for their ideas and that they should
Speaker 1: be okay with it because it should be enough just
Speaker 1: to see the company succeed. A lot of you come
Speaker 1: to me with amazing idea, but you're not getting the
Speaker 1: credit that it came through you, even though I might
Speaker 1: know that you're the source of it, or ever the
Speaker 1: right executive knows that you're the source of it. We're
Speaker 1: all going to have great ideas now, We're all going
Speaker 1: to contribute in huge ways to the company. Not always
Speaker 1: will we be able to recognize you for it. When
Speaker 1: the company is growing as fast as this company is growing,
Speaker 1: we're always found to miss something like being part of
Speaker 1: this company, in part of something greater than yourself. It
Speaker 1: should be motivating and inspiring to see that pass as
Speaker 1: an organization moved in the right direction. Honestly, listening to
Speaker 1: Adam say these things was a strange experience for me.
Speaker 1: He's telling his employees they shouldn't come lane if they're
Speaker 1: paid under market or don't get credit for their ideas,
Speaker 1: that it's for the greater good. And if they aren't
Speaker 1: wholeheartedly embracing the we work mission, they don't belong there.
Speaker 1: This isn't a side of Adam I had seen before.
Speaker 1: It's stuff he'd never say in front of a journalist.
Speaker 1: Adam had succeeded in projecting the image of being charismatic
Speaker 1: charming and gregarious, someone who won people over, but internally
Speaker 1: he was a divisive figure. There were some employees and
Speaker 1: exects who would have followed him to the ends of
Speaker 1: the earth. There were others who were put off by him,
Speaker 1: Like Cody, I just yeah, I just wanted to stay
Speaker 1: out of his way as much as possible. Sometimes it
Speaker 1: made her act a little awkward. I got trapped in
Speaker 1: a hallway once. It was like just him and I,
Speaker 1: and I was like, like, there was no turn to take,
Speaker 1: and like he walked by with this like giant frame
Speaker 1: and was just sort of looked at me, okay, And
Speaker 1: I was like like, I was like, oh, just like
Speaker 1: kept going. Cody wasn't the only one who was having
Speaker 1: these doubts about her job. Karl and the rest of
Speaker 1: his coworkers on the Community team were exhausted by the
Speaker 1: highs and lows. Their jobs were demanding, but also sometimes
Speaker 1: incredibly rewarding. People called it the cult of we work
Speaker 1: for a reason because when you were in it, and
Speaker 1: because I witnessed this myself, community was a very powerful thing.
Speaker 1: That value of community of people helping each other was
Speaker 1: really motivating to him and his coworkers, even when things
Speaker 1: felt overwhelming. I hate calling it a cult, but it
Speaker 1: really was, like you know, everybody that we worked that
Speaker 1: was basically what drove them was the idea of like
Speaker 1: community can solve everything, Like this idea of like if
Speaker 1: we work together, we can overcome it all. And um,
Speaker 1: that was a big part of us working. It was
Speaker 1: kind of like that belief that you know, if we failed,
Speaker 1: the community would fail, like we have to never give up,
Speaker 1: always keep going. And these people rely on us and
Speaker 1: their businesses are doing so well, They're doing so many
Speaker 1: cool things. We're really supporting an ecosystem of entrepreneurs who
Speaker 1: are trying to change the world, like we are part
Speaker 1: of that change in the world. And that was like
Speaker 1: a drug. It was so powerful. It got us through
Speaker 1: the worst days and and it was real. Of course,
Speaker 1: Adam loved talking about community too. So community is not
Speaker 1: something that we just say that we are community, something
Speaker 1: that we are in. Every single department in this company
Speaker 1: has community, and it if it's how you interact with
Speaker 1: your fellow employees, how you interact with other departments, and
Speaker 1: then how you interact with any members or anybody else
Speaker 1: that you meet as a group, the more we we
Speaker 1: will be the more communal we will be, the more
Speaker 1: successful we're able to be as a as a company
Speaker 1: and as a corporation, to be able to change the
Speaker 1: world and make the difference. That it is the difference
Speaker 1: that which really care about it. Did you catch him
Speaker 1: saying the more we we will be, the more successful
Speaker 1: we will be. Adam uses the word we in weird ways.
Speaker 1: It's like a catch all for this special energy at
Speaker 1: we work, the power of we, the we generation. Years later,
Speaker 1: he'll actually rename we Work the We Company, a decision
Speaker 1: that will backfire in a spectacular way. Carl's boss has
Speaker 1: talked a lot about the idea of community, but what's
Speaker 1: funny is that Carl and his coworkers discovered another kind
Speaker 1: of community with each other when they bonded over how
Speaker 1: tough their jobs were. Carl said, it was like being
Speaker 1: war buddies. It's almost like comparing generals and foot soldiers,
Speaker 1: like the guys who would die for you in a foxhole,
Speaker 1: completely different than the general sitting in a nice room.
Speaker 1: When when you talk with the camaraderie amongst employees on
Speaker 1: a very base level, people who have worked in community,
Speaker 1: everybody supports each other because they all understand how rough
Speaker 1: the job can be, the awful things that have happened
Speaker 1: to them, and there is a level of um sympathy
Speaker 1: and emotional connection that you have or like again that
Speaker 1: crying things like if you have to cry at where it,
Speaker 1: come talk to me, come find me, or come find
Speaker 1: another of your teammates and they'll help you. There's another
Speaker 1: thing that kept we Work employees going, the promise of
Speaker 1: getting rich someday. When employees joined the company, they're given
Speaker 1: some shares, and Adam would suggest that those shares were valuable.
Speaker 1: Here's how Cody first heard that message. It was Hanuka
Speaker 1: party and I just started. He wanted all new hires
Speaker 1: within a month to go up on stage, so I did.
Speaker 1: He was talking about like we're investing in you too
Speaker 1: by like giving you shares, and so he definitely framed
Speaker 1: it in a way that was like felt like it
Speaker 1: was an even trade of sorts, and I think that
Speaker 1: a lot of people like took that to heart. I
Speaker 1: think that had a big effect on a lot of people.
Speaker 1: They're like, I'm working twelve hour days and I don't
Speaker 1: get paid overtime, but like it's going to come back
Speaker 1: to us tenfolds, like at a later date. Basically, I
Speaker 1: can understand why some employees thought they might get rich.
Speaker 1: When Cody joined We Work, it was valued at five
Speaker 1: billion dollars. And keep in mind the company was only
Speaker 1: four years old at the time, and by the time
Speaker 1: Cody left We Worked just two years later, the company
Speaker 1: was valued at seventeen billion dollars. So equity and we
Speaker 1: Work was a tantalizing thought. Cody, like a lot of
Speaker 1: her coworkers, had never held equity in a company before.
Speaker 1: It's an extremely complicated topic. Even people with a lot
Speaker 1: of experience have trouble assessing how much shares like this
Speaker 1: might be worth in the future. In general, startup employees
Speaker 1: can only cash in on their equity if the company
Speaker 1: goes public or if it gets bought by another company.
Speaker 1: But back then things were looking optimistic for We Work.
Speaker 1: Many employees were working under the assumption, don't worry about
Speaker 1: the details. It's all going to work out someday in
Speaker 1: a really big way. Even if Adam didn't say those
Speaker 1: words exactly, I think that, you know, he was pretty
Speaker 1: smart about the way that he would word things like
Speaker 1: he wouldn't out right say like we're gonna have a
Speaker 1: lot of money someday, Like you wouldn't say anything like that,
Speaker 1: but he definitely made people feel and believe that all
Speaker 1: of this stuff that they're doing and putting up with
Speaker 1: on a day today basis is going to reward them later.
Speaker 1: I remember specific conversations with other employees that this person
Speaker 1: in particular was like, it's your your shares gonna be
Speaker 1: worth so much money, Like like, don't even worry about it,
Speaker 1: Like how do you how do you know that? It's
Speaker 1: like I just do. I just know, Like it's like
Speaker 1: there's no way this is going to fail. And that
Speaker 1: was that was a real conversation. Cody eventually left the company.
Speaker 1: In when I left, my parents drove out with the
Speaker 1: U haul and moved me home. Um I also, I
Speaker 1: was like I gotta get out of here, Like you know,
Speaker 1: I love New York and it's an amazing place, but
Speaker 1: like I can't do this on my own, and I
Speaker 1: definitely cannot sustain my life working for this company and
Speaker 1: for these people. After she moved back to Michigan, she
Speaker 1: was hired as an administrator for a design and company
Speaker 1: where she's still working. She said it took her a
Speaker 1: long time to get over the fear and stress that
Speaker 1: had accumulated while she was at WE Work. It took
Speaker 1: me six or eight months to not go into work
Speaker 1: with like a panic or to like assume that somebody
Speaker 1: was going to be like yelling at me or mad
Speaker 1: at me. I was just like on guard all the time,
Speaker 1: all the time, just like waiting for somebody to like
Speaker 1: come at me with something. We reached out to representatives
Speaker 1: for WE Work in Adam Newman to ask them to
Speaker 1: respond to the things we covered in this episode. They
Speaker 1: largely declined to comment. But back in WE Work was
Speaker 1: known for its high pressure and intense environment, and Adam
Speaker 1: justified this by saying they were working on something with
Speaker 1: really high stakes. It was an idea that Adam was
Speaker 1: drilling in again and again. Working at WE Work is special.
Speaker 1: It's not like any other job. So don't mess it up.
Speaker 1: And none of us want to look back and say
Speaker 1: I could have done more. I could have been there
Speaker 1: a little bit more, This could have been bigger, This
Speaker 1: couldn't been better. That's not acceptable. You do not get
Speaker 1: a chance like this again, none of us do, and
Speaker 1: therefore we need to own this. You do not get
Speaker 1: a chance like this again. A little foreboding right. That's
Speaker 1: the message. Adam told employees to motivate them, to make
Speaker 1: them stay and to make them work. For many years,
Speaker 1: employees accepted this. But next week we'll give you a
Speaker 1: look at two employees who fought back. At some point,
Speaker 1: someone stood up and said enough, I won't take this anymore.
Speaker 1: Foundering is hosted by me Ellen Hewitt. Sean When is
Speaker 1: our executive producer. My Aquava is our associate producer. Raymondo
Speaker 1: mixed the show today. Mark Million and Vander May and
Speaker 1: Alistair Barr are our story editors. Francesco Levi is the
Speaker 1: head of Bloomberg Podcasts. Be sure to subscribe and if
Speaker 1: you like our show, leave a review. Most importantly, tell
Speaker 1: your friends see you next time.