'Stone-cold crazy' $1.7b golden parachute for ousted WeWork CEO Adam Neumann
businessinsider.com
businessinsider.com
This is why the general public, and now an increasing number of politicians, are increasingly hating SV in general - the headlines are getting almost as bad as the financial bailout ones in 2009.
I’m not one to defend the valley - I was an outsider for the first decade and a half of my career before moving out here and into the fire. There’s a lot of stupid shit that goes on in tech, but what We did is only create the appearance of working from the same playbook.
Maybe on my latter point we really are saying the same thing - I could see how an observer might relate the behaviors.
This isn't public money. It's their money to lose and if they do it's they who suffer the consequences.
It's their right to be stupid. As long as the do it on their and their non public investor's dime.
Perhaps, but from the outside it looks like at some point Adam decided that instead of running a real company he was going to pump and dump We and run off with as much cash as he and his wife could carry.
SoftBank's action here, while possibly a good strategic choice for them at this point, looks from the outside to be rewarding antisocial behavior with more money than the vast majority of us will ever earn in our lifetimes. People aren't saying that SoftBank can't do it, they're just saying that it's very unpleasant to watch.
It's absolute within softbank's right to act "antisocially" as long as no specific laws were broken.
What, should we take them to thought crime court for improper antisocial thought?
I'm not disagreeing with that. Just as it is likely his right to act in a manner many find to be antisocial, it is my and everyone else's right to be disgusted by Adam Neumann and to shame him online in whatever (legal) fashion I feel like.
>It still doesn't matter for any of the people acting personally offended.
Since you seem to prefer concrete takes on things, consider that I'm not judging Adam on some abstract moral basis. His actions on a broad scale represent a set of behaviors that are at odds with a healthy society. He has harmed softbank, but he has also harmed the employees at We. There are people who left stable jobs to work for him who are now out of work, and many more who will soon join them.
My issue with him is from my belief that a society filled with people who act like he has is destined to far less long term success than one where people are less self-serving.
I'm not saying this isn't bad, it obviously is bad or even terrible for many people involved. But they choose to be there and that's their right as adults in America. If you want to change that fact than make that case but then many people including myself start to take serious issues with those viewpoints. It seems to me that this is the current that underlines most of these complaints. No law was broken but I don't like it so it shouldn't have been allowed.
If you want to make an argument there was fraud then make it. I'm sure people will. And I support them in trying. I don't have any evidence either way yet. But all of this moralizing achieves nothing.
If you want a specific law to be changed than say what it is.
Otherwise your left shaking your fist at the air. It's counter productive to real change.
dear SoftBank I know you have a lot of money to throw around but don't waste it in this crap. Instead use this money to fund hundreds of companies that actually help in the evolution of technology and science.
Stop hating the player because you'll get nowhere. Hate the game and the bullshit religious devotion to these tech companies. Ya'll worship these twats one way or another. From the Jobs, Musks, Bezos, Zuckerbergs, ya'll worshipped them at one point. The Silicon Valley made the joke about this with the pitches that were "Make the world a better place with..." Then you gasp in surprise when you find out they're the same asshole as any other business major.
These are all businesses. For profits. Not non-profits. There is zero difference between a ceo/founder in SV compared to Rockefeller, Carnegie, JP Morgan, or even Donald Trump. They are all the same money and power hungry folks. Some just have better PR teams and self restraint than others. Better wig makers too.
The only stone cold crazy thing going on is that people are surprised.
The point to reading history is to learn from the past so the same mistakes are not made again. Something people STILL don't understand. Nothing here about WeWork or Amazon or Apple is new. New market, sure. New business practices? Hell no. Exploit workers. Exploit consumers. Exploitative contract verbiage. Exploit and lobby the government. Bullshit self-interest deals. Nothing new at all. But even here on HN where it's supposed to be a bunch of smart guys, they all jump like lions on the kill whenever someone mentions one of these silicon valley asses are up to no good. They start reciting whatever xyz fallacy they saw in an article to pretend like their dismissal holds water. Take a look back into earlier this year on HN about WeWork. Some folks were talking about how over valued the company was and it was a silly business model to begin with due to their PR pushes. It wasn't going to hold. Oh no, just a bunch of baby boomers, racists, and uneducated collegeless plebs who don't understand how tech works. They don't know what they're talking about. Let's throw confirmation bias into their face. Hell, the Theranos discussions were even worse before they got exposed. All a bunch of misogynist racist assholes if you questioned the validity of any claims made by Holmes. For a group of people that claim to believe in science and evidence, it's a rather emotionally driven community that uses pop-psychology, middle-school level debate tactics and mass numbers to push weak agendas.
There's a part of me that just thinks, "Fuck it all. Let it burn." But I figure if I go on these rants every now and then, someone else who doesn't believe the hype machine, but feels alone in that, might get a sense of "Well, I'm not completely alone in thinking this company/person is an asshole."
But what really makes me mad, no one here can rightfully claim that if they were in that dude's position with WeWork, that they would do any different. But oh, "How could this happen? Shame on them! Shame! Shame!" You're really going to claim that you entered STEM if it had the same employment prospects as a someone who majors in philosophy or art? Maybe they would have tried to negotiate for an even $2b. I'll take that claim of doing something different and shaming the guy for settling under $2b. But if you had the ability to legally walk away with $1b+ from a company you are the founder of, and you know it won't hold water for too long, you wouldn't take it? People illegally walk away with far less money.
The first time I saw a large cheque waved in front of me, I fell for it hook line and sinker :) Having lived through the dotcom bust/2008 financial crash and all kinds of other events, all I know is Learning takes time.
I had to fall and be miserable to learn. The second time around I didn't take the cheque. I had to also learn financial independence gave me choices. And lots of people don't have choices. All that creates conditions for the contradictions we see. But things change. The world is not static. I also learnt the hard way, naming/shaming/comparing/judging etc is not the most effective in speeding up that Learning process. It creates more defensiveness and counter reactions that drain energy further. There are better routes to create understanding. Search for them and redirect that passion in your comment into those routes.
...not sure why I just said that, but I gotta stick by it. Whatever you say, Stone Cold Steve Austin!
In reality, this is terrible.