WeWork employees caught spying on competition | Hacker News Reader

WeWork employees caught spying on competition

nypost.com

47 pointsCPLX26 comments

This seems overly sensationalized - the use of terms like 'infiltrate' and 'spy' are at the very least over to top to describe what is basically a secret-shopper run.

I'm legitimately curious - what 'trade secrets' could one possibly get by posing as a prospective customer?

In my industry it's commonplace for our competitors to use shill resellers to buy our products for testing. It's annoying but nobody ever calls it spying or infiltrating - it's just 'competitive engineering' (unless they actually reverse engineer and steal some IP - that tends to involve lawyers and is incredibly rare).

In other news, every major retailer uses secret shoppers to do essentially the same thing.

> In other news, every major retailer uses secret shoppers to do essentially the same thing.

They send their employees with fake names, trying to lure customers from their competitors? At least that's what the article claims.

The article doesn't actually mention them attempting to lure Knotel customers away - it just says that they didn't:

> No Knotel customers were stolen as a result of the spying episode, Sarva said.

Knotel claims they tried, but there's no actual evidence of this whatsoever.

> The article doesn't actually mention them attempting to lure Knotel customers away

I saw this in the article:

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WeWork, the No. 1 player in the sector, allegedly sent two spies to infiltrate rival Knotel — to steal info and some customers

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But that's not backed up by anything else in the article. Knotel just claims that was the objective, but provides no backup for this.

I went by what the article claims. I didn't independently verify those claims. Presumably OP also didn't talk to either party to know who is right or wrong, either.

It's always funny to me that instead of being angry, most people just say, "oh, well, they're not the only ones."

What a world we live in.

"Apple, Google and others colluded to suppress employee wages."

> Oh, well, they're not the only ones.

---

I just hope people claiming this isn't a big deal never complain about companies screwing them over, ever.

I think ethics is at its demise. No professional seems to value it anymore.

When was the ethics at its peak?

"...pilfer Knotel’s proprietary information and trade secrets"

I really want to know what kind of trade secrets a co-working space uses to its advantage

- Regular coffee mate but ALSO French vanilla coffee mate available

- Member wifi ALSO guest wifi

- Potato chips

How is this news? I'd be surprised if they didn't.

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” - Sun Tzu

It's the NY Post. This is exactly the sort of thing they do: take non-stories and sensationalize them to play on commonly held sentiments, such as a distrust of startups.

> take non-stories and sensationalize them to play on commonly held sentiments

This is also true of almost every startups blog and press releases.

> No Knotel customers were stolen as a result of the spying episode, Sarva said.

Probably because it doesn't sound like that was the intent of this secret-shopping mission, which only "stole" top secrets that are likely available on Knotel's webpage.

The article says that Knotel claims they were trying to steal customers, but offers no evidence of this.

Bit of actual news that just came over the ticker: WeWork to open spaces in Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Chengdu next year according to Caixin

“Mystery shopping” competitive offerings is common in many industries.

This is stupid. Why is this on the front page?

And yet, when Uber does it, there's a huge lawsuit.

From what I remember when Uber did it, it usually involved some degree of theft or the breaking of someone's TOS or both and in this instance this seems like just good old fashioned competitive research.

There's a lawsuit b/c Lyft feels they can show that Uber actually caused monetary damages (and violated their TOS). If Knotel could do the same, they would also have a case. That's how civil law works. AFAIK, Uber wasn't accused of committing a crime in those instances.

WeWork apparently gave one of their customers 1 year free of charge to stop them from going to Knotel. I'm pretty sure they could "prove damages", too.

I don't think this counts as damages anymore than Burger King could sue McDonald's for damages for offering a coupon on Big Macs. Uber actually booked time and fake rides with competing services so they couldn't pick up legitimate riders.

A more apt comparison would be creating fake companies and renting out Knotel so a location fills up and real companies can't rent working space. Then never paying Knotel.

This is not even closely comparable.

I cant even be bothered reading the article why wouldnt you spy on competitors. Time share sales guys were the worst as they would even hang around to collect the 200 fags or 1l red label too, in for penny in for a pound.

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