Death by management - Software Engineer WeWork Employee Review

2.0
4 Jun 2020
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Most of my direct coworkers were very talented and engaged Solid salary Unlimited access to WeWork's network of bathrooms around the globe

Cons

Crippled by bureaucracy Management seemed far more concerned with protecting themselves and their jobs and making stakeholders / upper mgmt happy than ensuring their engineers were informed and able to produce quality output Caught between too many hands in a codebase and not enough actual engineering output - simple things were often made unnecessarily complex, and complex things often dealt with with oversimplified, inefficient solutions Absolutely zero effective communication from higher ups on the repeated layoff cycles, and no real effort to curb the cataclysmic decline in morale. It was like a morgue from the IPO failure to the moment i left. Equity worth effectively nothing. Extremely cult-y and wants you to treat the company like a family, while the company itself treats you like a highly disposable metric. For the past six months it has been a regular cycle of new upper management coming in, doing nothing, then leaving with a massive severance package.

Explore other reviews about WeWork

5.0
11 Dec 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Still one of the best companies I have worked for in terms of staff relationships, perks, and challenge

Cons

I would still. bethere if they didn't implode :(

3.0
25 May 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

VERY cool HQ--beer, fruit water, and other treats on tap, free breakfast, amazing decor, lots of events and cool trendy vendors who bring free stuff--if you like to humblebrag via Insta, you'll love this place. Some cool people --celebrities come in and out, your colleagues are generally very attractive folks, there's a sense of excitement and true commitment to the work (borderline evangelism) depending on who you work with and what you do. Name recognition and valuation -- company is a rising star and it's worth having on your resume. A cool mission on the surface--bringing community together, helping people do what they love (making work a passion rather than a chore) through connection.

Cons

This place is like drinking from one continuous Kool-Aid jug. VERY cult-y and cliquey. You are either in or you're out, and if you're out, rather than cut you loose right away, they gaslight you. It's actually kind of shocking how many people I've seen be treated so poorly here, and perhaps no coincidence that they were folks of color. Kind of hard to find the down to earth people I did find. I enjoyed the Community teams and Security/Ops/Real Estate people I met, probably because they were constantly "hustling," but the HR team (the PEOPLE team, for goodness sake) and a lot of other "prominent" faces were consistently rude, with an overinflated sense of self and zero idea of how the WeWork "values" translate into behaviors/contributions from a prospective employee POV. You have to have been there since the start, or be prepared to ingratiate yourself, to get any traction in your professional development or career path. I was always shocked how badly my manager wanted to be liked, and how much they were willing to do to be liked, to get any kind of clout and/or promotion just bc they hadn't started out at WeWork as a community team member. Never mind that they were super qualified for their job. Pay varies depending on who you are; some people earn market value...some people very very much don't, and there doesn't seem to be any consistency that determines which is which. TGIM. Thank God it's Monday. Mandatory Monday meetings. Sometimes they circulate tequila shots. Is that a plus? Not sure. Summer Camp. Adult Summer Camp. With EDM, people in salmon colored shorts, and lots of loud rowdy entitled folks. If that's anything but a con for you, you probably belong here and godspeed.

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