WeWork Cuts Workforce 3%, Says It's Nothing To Worry About As Hiring Continues Briskly
The We Company, the newly created parent of WeWork, is laying off about 300 employees, or 3% of its workforce. The company said the move amounts to house cleaning of underperformers, and isn't a reflection of any deeper problem at the coworking giant.
The We Company asserts that it won't be long before its employee base expands to more than make up for the number of recently fired workers.
The company's headcount is about 10,000, and it plans to hire 6,000 more employees this year, or 500 per month, The Real Deal reports.
The latest staff winnowing isn't the first for The We Company. In mid-2016, when the company was simply WeWork and had about 1,000 employees, it cut 7% of its staff.
With a steady stream of investment in recent years, especially from the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group, the company has expanded rapidly since. Most recently, SoftBank pumped $6B into the coworking specialist.
Besides expanding its headcount in the near future, the WeWork division of The We Company has been trying to remake itself into a data-driven tech company via a string of software companies acquisitions.
The most recent of these was Euclid, which specializes in gathering data on people as they move through physical space.
Other investments by The We Company sometimes involve CEO Adam Neumann's personal interests, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Recently the company invested $32M in pro surfer Laird Hamilton's natural foods business; Neumann is an avid surfer.
The We Company has also invested in a wave-pool maker, and it started an elementary school after Neumann and his wife found themselves dissatisfied with local schooling options for their children.
Revenues remain high for The We Company, but it is still losing money. It lost $933M in 2017 on $866M in sales. It lost about $1.2B during the first three quarters of 2018, according to Reuters.
