WeWork
Hulu's new documentary on the rise and fall of WeWork focuses on its charismatic, egotistical founder and CEO Adam Neumann, who was ultimately the company's downfall.
In the tale of how the cult-of-personality (rumored to be played by Jared Leto in an upcoming film adaptation) created the coworking empire and subsequently caused its downfall, WeWork: or The Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn interviews employees of the company who were there from the beginning to pinpoint what went right that led to the inescapability of WeWork a few years ago, and what went so horribly wrong.
WeWork went from being valued at $47 billion to collapsing in a matter of months, largely because of the unchecked whims of Adam Neumann, who expanded without consideration of cost, and because of the the false promises made by the company's mission and its overinflated value.
WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn • Official Trailer - A Hulu Originalwww.youtube.com
Above all, the documentary exposes the hollowness of value-driven corporations, and exposes how WeWork used its message of community to fuel the ambitions of those at the top. It also reveals how much of the company fell prey to its idealization of the rat race of hustle culture for very little reward.
So much of the documentary was surprising — the extent to which people bought into their brand's message, the internal cultish loyalty to Adam as the leader — and almost all of it seems, from the outside, insane. Startups are notoriously fickle, but WeWork's meteoric rise and fall was so catastrophic that it makes sense that there was more to its implosion than meets the eye.
The common lore of its downfall focuses on the loss of its major investor, SoftBank, alongside its reckless spending combined with its ambitious growth, but The Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn shows how much was wrong at the core of WeWork and its culture from the start.
Critics of hustle culture and corporate activism (read: us) are not surprised by this capitalist Wizard of Oz story. Here are some of the wildest, most warped aspects of the WeWork documentary, which make us wonder how the employees on the inside didn't recognize their unicorn as an overinflated bubble waiting to burst.
Major Frat Vibes
Start-ups have become notorious for their strange bro-heavy office cultures — which often means various ping-pong tables and lots of flip flops. As a co-working space, WeWork's frat vibes manifested less in the office and more in every single other aspect of the business.
Having grown up idolizing the parties in American college movies, Adam Neumann made sure to integrate them into his business model. The company had retreats for its employees, called summer camps, which looked more like EDM festivals than team meetings.
The summer camp clips looked like outtakes from Project X or Superbad, the kind of unhinged parties thrown by people who have never actually been to a good party and instead compensate by filling the budget with kegs and doing a lot of fist pumping.
But Also Kind of GOOPy
A strange component that was essential to concocting the overall in-cohesive WeWork vibes was Neumann's wife, Rebekah. A cousin of Gwyneth Paltrow, Rebekah's contribution to the WeWork dynamic was the kind of vacuous wellness-talk that feels very GOOPy, which is no real surprise.
Between ragers at the summer camps, the Neumanns would stand on a giant concert-like stage and talk about their vision for the company. Adam's original conception had always been focused on community, and Rebekah's influence made it increasingly more spiritual and less coherent.
Talk of "raising consciousness" became somehow tied to the mission of the company thanks to Rebekah, who was instrumental in founding the children's school that eventually became an offshoot of WeWork, WeGrow.
WeGrow
The whole concept of WeGrow was unhinged, but The Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn exposes just how disconnected and delusional Rebekah and Adam actually were.
Adam's first venture had been for kids — a line of pants that were padded at the knees so young children could crawl comfortably, with the tagline "just because they don't tell you, doesn't mean it doesn't hurt." The company failed, for obvious reasons, but with seemingly limitless streams of money to channel into WeGrow, the children's school didn't meet the same fate despite its glaring conceptual flaws.
WeGrow was essentially an elementary school which claimed to offer a more holistic education, boasting curriculum features such as language immersion, yoga, meditation, music, and weekly farm visits. The school claimed to have community as its focus — but with a price tag ranging from about $36,000 to about $42,000, the community it was fostering was pretty narrow.
After the Neumanns were ousted from the company, WeWork closed WeGrow, but Rebekah quickly bought it back — so it's still standing, churning out the minds of tomorrow… God help us.WeLive
WeGrow wasn't the only offshoot of the co-working part of the WeWork company. Pretty early on, WeWork launched WeLive, an apartment complex for WeWork members. The living community was mostly full of young, single people who could drop everything to essentially live in a WeWork.
Designed with the same functionality and intentionality as the co-working offices, the living spaces were built to foster work and community. One of the interviewees who lived in a WeLive describes being called by a friend about an opportunity for "the coolest people in New York," if he could break his lease without really knowing the details.
These kinds of hyperbolic sales pitches and high stakes trust that the company demanded were embedded in its culture from the beginning, and effectively enough to fill the WeLive spaces immediately upon opening. Residents describe their social lives shrinking to their relationship with other residents, with their outside friends barely visiting more than once.
At its peak, a person could have worked in a WeWork, lived in a WeLive, and taken their child to WeGrow to have a life ruled by a company posing as a "community."
Overall: Very Cultish
If the extensive nature of the "We" company sounds cultish, it's because it kind of was.
In the middle of the documentary, as the tables begin to turn, a former WeWork employee tells an anecdote about trying to explain the company to an outsider, to be met with the question, "brother, are you in a cult?"
From the beginning, the company was inextricable from Adam Neumann and his energy and his vision. More than once in the documentary, Neumann leads chants along the lines of "when I say We, you say Work," and the room erupts in the cacophonous sound of a quasi-cult.
Employees describe being taken in by Neumann's infectious energy and feeling like their work was directly linked to their self worth. Convinced they were changing the world, the work they could do for the company felt like what they could do for the greater good.
So, with the fall of the company and its charismatic CEO came the fall of the ideal, which left employees disillusioned and disjointed.
The Delusion to Disillusionment of Former Employees
What makes WeWork: or The Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn so compelling was the fact that it is mostly filled with firsthand accounts from former employees who had been working at the company for a long time, and most of whom were very close to Neumann and the C-Suite.
It's easy to imagine a version of the WeWork story in which the delusion persists despite Neumann's departure — after all, WeWork is technically still standing. However, from Neumann's assistant to lawyers at the company, the documentary participants describe that the distance from Adam made them realize just how immersed they had been in the world he created.
So much of the classic "toxic workplace" tropes were at play at WeWork, but this was no Devil Wears Prada. The demanding pace was set from the top but it came with a smile, a flick of Neumann's trademark long locks, and a message about community used to cloak the exhaustive grind culture and capitalist hell the company really was.The Hollowness of the “We”
What made work at WeWork so fulfilling was the promise of being part of a greater collective — the promises of the "We." But those promises proved fickle when Neumann ordered large-scale layoffs left and right as the company burned money.
Emails were uncovered revealing executives bragging about how many people they had fired in their departments while Adam was buying a $60 million private jet and investing in wave pools.
The Scale of its Profit Losses
Though it eventually became obvious that WeWork was not making the amount of money it said it was, its valuation made it seem valid enough when they first considered an IPO, and the reality of the company's financials was even more horrifying than anyone assumed.
Neumann, a born salesman, had been spinning rhetoric that the company could "choose when to become profitable" and that its gains were measured on a standard adjusted scale. However, the adjustments WeWork was making to feign profitability were obscene — camouflaging large debt and burning through money with the assumption that their investors would pick up the bill.
Overall, the documentary was an elegy to an "era of easy money and no rules," according to Bloomberg Quicktake. Neumann reaped the benefits of a time when innovative tech startups were hailed as the new frontier, real estate was changing, and co-working was still just an idea.
However, his massive success came with a God complex which was eventually his downfall, all at the expense of the people he had made believe in him.
Artificial Intelligence
Looking for a job? In addition to encountering those annoying never-ending job interviews you may find yourself face-to-face with an artificial intelligence bot.
Companies worldwide increasingly use artificial intelligence tools and analytics in employment decision-making – from parsing through resumes and screening candidates to automated assessments and digital interviews. But recent studies claim that AI does more harm than good.
While AI screening tools were developed to save companies time and money, they’ve been criticized for placing women and people of color at a disadvantage. The problem is that many companies lack appreciable diversity in their data set, making it impossible for an algorithm to know how people from underrepresented groups have performed in the past. As a result, the algorithm will be biased toward the data available and compare future candidates to that archetype.
The City’s Automated Employment Decision Tools (AEDT) law is designed to offset the potential misuse of AI and protect job candidates against discrimination. It was enforced on July 5th, 2023 in New York City - with other cities and states expected to gradually follow suit. Employers must now inform applicants when and how they encounter AI. Furthermore, companies have to commission a third-party audit of the AI software used, and publish a summary of the results to prove that their systems aren’t racist or sexist. Job applicants are able to request information regarding what data is collected and analyzed by the AI. Violations of the law can result in fines of up to $1,500.
Replacing Human Hiring Decisions
However, should a job applicant want to opt-out of such impersonal judgement by a bot, the new law's scope is quite limited.
While the law specifies that instructions for requesting an alternative selection process must be included in the AI screening disclosure, companies aren't actually required to use other screening methods. Not to mention that the law only applies to AI in hiring and not any other employment decisions. It also wouldn't apply if the AI, for example, flags candidates with relevant experience, but a human then reviews all applications, making the ultimate hiring decision.
Some civil rights advocates and public interest groups argue that the law isn’t extensive enough and that it’s even unenforceable. On the other hand, businesses say that it’s impractical, costly, and burdensome, and that independent audits aren’t feasible.
Responsible use of AI in hiring
Although this law may be a good first attempt to assign more regulatory guardrails around AI, it remains to be seen if it ensures the responsible use of AI in hiring processes. At the end of the day, perhaps recruiting talent should remain a human-made decision.
The good news is that AI can help companies without harming potential job candidates in many ways – such as connecting new employees with internal organizational information and company benefits during onboarding. Or helping employees to do their jobs more effectively rather than replacing them.
The world of travel is not the same as it was two years ago. From the surge in "revenge travel" to the TikTok-inspired itineraries that make the most random destinations suddenly the most popular, there's so much about traveling that's out of your control.
What you can control — to some extent — is how much you pay for it.
According to CNBC, “Between dining out and taking trips, Americans are now spending an average of $765 more a month compared with last year when much of the country was shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to the MassMutual Consumer Spending & Saving Index … Young adults, in particular, are determined to make up for lost time. Millennials and Gen Z, who reported feeling the financial impact from the rise in reopenings and social gatherings, said they are shelling out $1,016 more a month, on average, than they did during the summer of 2020. MassMutual polled 1,000 U.S. adults from July 21 to 28.”
While some are okay with making up for lost time by gleefully spending all their money, not everyone has the desire to blow up their budgets on trips. Yet, the allure of travel still calls. Thus, the appeal of travel hacking.
Travel hacking has been around as long as credit card rewards have. But during the pandemic, travel hacking gurus found unprecedented fame on TikTok and Instagram. With time to learn about the points and miles community, suddenly people were planning for future travel using tips and tricks gleaned from experts sharing their knowledge on social media.
Though it might sound complex, anyone with a fair credit score can enter the travel hacking game. Here’s how:
What Is Travel Hacking?
Travel hacking is using reward points and miles from airlines, hotels, and credit cards towards free or heavily discounted travel. This ranges from opening a number of credit cards for the reward bonuses, optimizing your normal spending in order to max out your points per shopping category, and leveraging loyalty and status for awesome perks.
To a lot of people, the term “travel hacking” can sound shady. The “hacking” scares people off. Is it illegal? Is it a scam? Can you get punished for opening too many cards? Will you ruin your credit score? The answer to all of these concerns is no.
There’s no hidden trick to travel hacking. It’s not a game of risk or cheating, it’s a game of research and planning.
Travel Hacking 101
Most commonly, travel hacking hinges on the points you can get from certain travel credit cards. Credit cards aren’t merely a way to manage cash flow. Many offer rewards programs that give you points for each purpose. These points can then be repurposed to pay for part or all of a trip.
Different networks have different systems, but most can be transferred to a range of partners. Top credit cards are with Chase, Amex, Citi, and Capital One. Simply accumulate points on your credit card, then you have the option to transfer those points to airlines, hotels, and more — for free.
When learning travel hacking, The best tip is to go backward. Don’t just open popular cards with high bonuses. Identify where you want to go, then find out what actions to take. Which airlines travel there? Which cards’ points can be transferred to that airline? Where do you want to stay? Which hotels can you book with points? Once you’ve planned out your dream vacation, see how many points you need. Then strategize for the best way to nab them.
Choose which cards are right for you, then start stockpiling those points towards free travel.
One way to quickly amass points is to take advantage of sign-up bonuses. Many credit cards use sign-up bonuses to entice users. And if you play smart, just one or two sign-up bonuses can account for one entire flight cost. However, there’s one catch: you must meet a minimum spend requirement to qualify for the bonus.
The best way to approach this is to funnel all of your regular expenses through those credit cards to chip away at the minimum spending. Pro tip: open your card right before you need to make a lot of purchases. The holidays are a good time to open a card so the cost of festivities ends up working for you.
And remember: it’s key to always pay off your monthly credit card balance before the due date! The benefits of those points are useless if you go into debt to accrue them.
And here’s a hack for you newbie travel hackers out there — be sure to manage your money and keep track of how much you’re spending for that bonus with the MeetCleo app.
MeetCleo is the personal finance tool that’s actually fun to use. Taking control of your money while “earning” free travel using your credit cards? Finances have never been more fun.
It's Southwest Companion Pass Season. Here's Why It's The Best Flight Deal on the Market
Southwest Companion Pass
There’s all this talk about solo travel. And for good reason — no wasting precious time waiting for others to get their act together, take the plans out of the group chat and actually buy the tickets. Going solo, you can be spontaneous. You can plan your trips according to your precise tastes. You can hop on any flight and fly awayyyyyy.
But what if each time you flew you’d get a free ticket? That’s what you get with the Southwest Companion Pass.
Award status, upgrades, lounge access — there are many perks in the frequent flier game. But one of the coveted holy grails is the Southwest Companion Pass.
What is the Southwest Companion Pass?
The Companion Pass is part of Southwest’s Rapid Rewards program. You get to choose one person to be your “companion,” and they fly with you for free (plus some taxes and fees) on every flight. That’s right. Two for the price of one. That’s half off each ticket if you split it! Whether you’re flying with a partner, family member, friend, or anyone else, they can tag along for free.
And it gets better: once you earn the pass, you can reap the rewards for that full calendar year … AND the next. That’s why people go mad trying to earn a companion pass during the early months of the year. The sooner you qualify, the longer you can use it.
There are also no blackout dates. There are no limits. And if you didn’t purchase the ticket (think: work travel, your companion, or a generous benefactor), there are no restrictions! As long as you’re the one on the plane, your companion can also … be on the plane.
You can also switch out your designated companion 3x a year. So, no need to stay in a relationship simply to get the most out of your companion pass! Ghost and fly away — with a whole new companion!
If this sounds too good to be true — it’s not. But there is one small catch. It’s kinda tough to earn this mega reward.
How to qualify for the Southwest Companion Pass?
You can qualify for the pass in one of two ways:
- Fly 100 qualifying one-way flights
- Earn 135,000 qualifying points in a calendar year.
Clearly, this is no small feat — especially if you’re trying to qualify ASAP.
So how do you actually earn the Southwest Companion Pass?
Don’t worry, there’s a path to earning this amazing reward without climbing on 100 flights or spending an exorbitant amount of money.
Earning 135K reward points may seem completely impossible, but it’s easier than it sounds. Simply sign up for a Southwest Credit Card and turn those spending habits into a rapid rewards account. Through the Rewards Priority Credit Card, earn points when using local transit and commuting, plus score major points and miles whenever you spend.
Stay with me here. This is not some scheme to get you into credit card debt. Many airline cards come with potential savings, giantic rewards, awarding you points, and cashback with every purchase you make that can be redeemed for travel. And often they can come with passive sign-up bonuses. If you spend a specific amount of money within a certain timeframe of opening the card, you can be in for a windfall of points.
Now that’s where the companion pass comes in:
- Southwest Rapid Rewards Premier
- Southwest Rapid Rewards Plus Credit Card
- Southwest Priority Credit Card
- Southwest Rapid Rewards Premier Business Credit Card
- Southwest Performance Business Credit Card
Southwest has three personal cards and a business card. Each of these cards offers rewards between 30K-80K points. In the past, people could open two cards and get a bonus that granted enough points to almost meet the minimum. However, with new restrictions on personal cards, you can only get one bonus every 24 months. Boo!
However, this doesn’t apply to business cards. If you’re eligible, have good credit, and not likely to spiral into insane credit card debt, you can open a business card and a personal card, and accrue 100K+ points. The Rapid Rewards Priority Credit Card will get you points after you spend money in no time.
Now to earn the rest of them.
The secret to gaining these credit card points is to plan your card sign-ups around big purchases. Just before a recent move, I opened a card . . . and the rewards came rolling in — a small balm to ease the pain of how exorbitant moving can be.
Put everyday spend — especially big purchases or bulk items — on your Southwest credit card and watch your award points quickly add up. Typically, you earn 1 point per $1 spent on your Southwest card and 2 points per $1 on actual Southwest purchases.
But there are other ways to earn points, including:
- Flying Southwest: Booking travel on Southwest earns more points. The cost of this travel will be worth it with your companion pass
- Shopping from Rapid Rewards Partners: Purchases with Southwest’s “Home & Lifestyle” and “Shop and Dine” Partners also earn Companion Pass qualifying points. While you shouldn’t make gratuitous purchases, browse Southwest’s partners to see if you could earn extra points for items you'd be purchasing anyway. All this, simply from enrolling in their Dining Program and shopping with their partners.
So there you have it! And since it’s almost Spring, get to earning and soon you’ll be flying two for the price of one!