Yikes. I have worked in two different startups that imploded quickly, largely due to an inability to find an effective sales and growth strategy. The fact that I was sold on the vision and that vision wasn't realized doesn't make the work I was doing any less challenging, nor did it make the job or business any less real.
As far as WeWork not being a real business, I think this was fairly well documented during the IPO attempt. However, more generally, when I say real business I mean a business that can survive without getting most of its funds from an unrelated source, i.e. investors. All evidence points towards WeWork not being able to continue without continued burning of investor money and there's no path to profitability on the horizon even.
But their employees were heavily compensated with options that are now worthless.
Of course options are a risk, but they didn’t work there if they didn’t think those options would be at least worth something in the future.
WeWork deflated more than any company in HISTORY. You’re technically correct but people are irrational and I’m sure they were being lied to their face in all hands about how great the future would be.
At that stage as an employee you’re counting on those to be able to put down a down payment or do a much needed renovation, or hopefully not payback debt.
Cisco went from 77$ per share in 2000 to $10 per share in 2002, while being public (so the value was much more real than WeWork, you could hit the 'sell' button to make it real money in 5 minutes, unlike WeWork equity).
IIRC it was valued around 500 billions in 2000, so it was much larger destruction in value. It still hasn't recovered, with $45 per share right now, never reaching its 2000 peak during these 19 years.
The employees pretty much got the typical outcome of working at a startup (startup runs along for a couple years, then fails). The fact that Adam Neumann made bank is rankling, but Rich People Burning Money and Also Accidentally Giving Some Away to Undeserving People Because They Did Incredibly Stupid Things isn't exactly something we can or should stop. You can't make it illegal to be stupid.
It does suck for those employees that their risk didn't work out, but for most of them it was a conscious decision to take on the risk, presumably for a high potential upside.
And if you accept the risk, then its unfortunate that it didn't work out, but that is what risk is.