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Comment by FussyZeus | Hacker News Reader

Do they seriously have employees at each? I assumed it was either a franchise or contractor thing. Rare for a tech company to actually hire people directly for that sort of thing.

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They aren't a tech company. They are an office leasing and real estate company, and have the appropriate employees for this type of business.

> and have the appropriate employees for this type of business

I disagree. WeWork has 836 locations and 12.5k (now 10k) employees, or ~12-15 employees per location. Regus/IWG has 3,306 locations and 9.6k employees, or ~3 employees per location.

How is 4-5x the number of employees for a comparable non-tech company appropriate?

WeWork is trying to grow aggressively, so they probably have a shit-load of sales people.

You'd have to know how the two companies split functions between employees and contractors. Though I'd not be surprised if WeWork were staffed relatively heavily. To note something random, WeWork has an (unstaffed) booth at Kubecon which suggests they do marketing activities that someone like Regus generally doesn't.

Probably because Regus is more interested in running a business and not advertising to potential investors how cool it is.

Just my guess.

On top of that, Regus pays a huge portion of the employees at center hourly. I know Regus is not sexy, but they should get credit for focusing on economics that work at scale rather than just pumping up some ridiculous valuation with no chance of liquidity outside of getting bought or IPOing.

I have seen Regus people at conferences before. They may be more selective, but they do these things as well.

WeWork has a number of side businesses that have no link to their office business. Regus does not.

Something I love is how companies have been able to convince people that they are a tech company just because they have an app even when they do something which has existed before the internet was even around.

WeWork is not a tech company

Why do people keep referring to WeWork as a tech company?

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