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Comment by itcrowd | Hacker News Reader

Running the numbers here. WeWork has 12.500 employees with 500 locations. That means on average 25 employees per location. That sounds absurd for workspace management, especially since construction / renovations / cleaning are most likely outsourced.

Let's cut them some slack and assume that half the workforce is focused on expansion (6250 employees) and that one in 25 are secretarial or HR (i.e. not related to daily operations of a workspace). That STILL means >10 workers per location full time.

No wonder the financials don't add up.

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Surely WeWork has most of their employees in just a few HQs? I'd guess they have a lot less than 25 people per WeWork coworking office.

Sorry in case I wasn't clear. I meant that, on average, 25 WeWork employees manage / oversee a single WeWork location, not that they actually work in that location.

I've been to a location and it seemed more like <6. Maybe <12 if they run shifts. (I could be very wrong). The other 13 would be at the HQ, doing coding or marketing or something

I have no idea how many people it takes to negotiate global real estate deals, maintain locations, etc.

IWG plc which is their major competitor has 9,000 people so I'm not sure it's that crazy. Might explain why they want to trim 25% also!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IWG_plc

IWG has ~3500 locations though, so on average say 3 people per location. WeWork has closer to 25, so basically 10x people per location managed.

IWG has a lot of franchised sites, but so does WeWork, as far as I know China + India are franchise operations or something similar.

When I was in a WeWork (not a good experience fwiw; not horrific, but definitely not good), the cleaning staff seemed to be WeWork employees. Direct hires too, which I liked.

It takes ~11 people to staff two 24/7 desks. That’s just having two people in desks 24/7. 10 workers per location isn’t too too wacky.

Are WeWork offices 24/7? I thought they were only open certain times of the day.

And yet, I had to call / email dozens of time to get a hold of WeLive leasing agent to rent a ~$4,000 month studio apartment

What is the right number of workers per location?

There's not one number, obviously. But if you look at a large hotel, maybe 10? Then again, WeWork isn't nearly as large as a large hotel and doesn't provide equivalent services. >10 on average per location (being generous!) is overkill.

(Remember, excluding cleaning staff)

Do not forget that you need about 5 employees to fill a single 24/24 365/365 work position. About 3 for a 2x8 position.

At least at my location in SF, WeWork is not open during non-business hours. You can have office access if you as a business are leasing office space, but there's nobody there.

I work in a company which rents a floor in a large downtown office tower and I think the number of people working there is less than 10 including cleaning staff. There is 1 security guard who I see around often and someone is usually in the management office and at the end of the day a pair of janitors come around.

I've also visited WeWork offices before and you're right that they have a lot of extra employees. They usually have multiple people at the front desk checking people in, then there are people who are going around to make sure the kegs are full and the shared spaces haven't detoriated into pigstys (this is different from a typical office where Janitors come around once a day or sometimes less than that).

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