It's we Work is growing super fast, which means it's hiring a lot of new people. And every Monday at we Works headquarters in New York City, that means one thing. New hire orientation orientations were massive. They were huge, Like they were every Monday almost. I feel like they were almost every single Monday, huge breakfast spread. Cody Quinn was an executive assistant at we Work. You know, they've got like a projection screen every single morning you walk in, Um,
what's that song? It's um Coldplay. Adventure of a Lifetime was blasting, and everybody's walking around and like fifth pumping and like all these new hires are high fiving and people are standing up and whooping, and I'm like, what is happening now? It like so that was the first time that I really had this like holy moly, this feels cultish, wow wow. Because like and then you've got um, somebody from HR like doing a presentation and they're just like I was excited to the air. It's like just
it's crazy, like a Pepper rally. It was nuts. It was absolutely nuts. Honestly, it's still to this day blows my mind. You're listening to Foundering, I'm your host, Ellen Hewitt. In the previous episode, we heard about the explosive growth in the early days of We Work. The company was opening building so fast that they were launching new offices literally without doors, without bathrooms, with the paints still drying
on the walls. This episode is about hype. As we Work kept growing, It's CEO, Adam Newman, used a very Silicon Valley combination of myth making and salesmanship to accelerate we Works expansion, and he used it to pump up we Works valuation and to attract young, passionate people to build his vision for him. Remember, we Work at its core is a real estate business. It's about renting debt asks. But as it grew, Adam made it so much more.
He hyped it up in two ways. He gave it a super lofty mission statement, one that would eventually become to elevate the world's consciousness. And he was able to convince influential people, especially investors, that We Work was a
tech company and deserved to be valued like one. When We Work first started, the reporters who wrote about it usually covered commercial real estate, but we Work started marketing itself as a tech company instead and They also kept hammering home their mission rather than speaking about the nuts and bolts of renting office space. Here's Teddy Kramer, an early employee. All of a sudden, we became a technology company.
All of a sudden, we were really hiring a lot of engineers and bringing in executives who had experience with big technology companies like get hub, or after I left, they were running people from Spotify or Apple. I was like, wow, are we really a tech company? And again the cynical side of me kind of like, no, we're not a tech company. But myself and some others really questioned it heavily, like how are we portraying ourselves this way? We Work
isn't alone. There are a number of big name startups that say they're saving the world and using technology to do it, you know, ones that sell products like taxi service, mattresses, suitcases, and glasses. And the hype around we Work didn't just
influence the press coverage. It also influenced the talent. That we Work was able to attract ambitious young people drawn in by the mission and the marketing for This episode will focus on one employee's journey, her initial excitement about WE Work and it's promise of bringing community to the world. How that belief kept her going even as things started to sour, and how in the end her feelings turned
to resentment and a sense of betrayal. I took the job at WE Worked because I did not anybody in New York and I was really looking for like a peer group and to like, you know, make a network of friends in a brand new place. Cody Quinn started at WE Work when she was twenty nine. She was originally from Michigan, and she was brand new to New York City. And the moment she walked into WE Works offices,
she was drawn in. This sounds so stupid, but you walk in and like there's like cool, trendy people everywhere, you know, like and and I'm like in this brand new, big city and I'm like, oh my gosh, everybody's cool. Like she's got cool hair, and like she's got a nose ring, and like, I mean, when I interviewed, I had like I was wearing a suit. Everybody was in jeans, Like you know, it was like I was like, this is amazing. Cody had spent the last four years at
a small, family run business. She had never worked in such a big company before, so she had no idea what to expect at we Work. I want to say, like the first three months of working there, I didn't know what was normal. So when Pete, well, are you know There's an executive in the office next to the one that I'm sitting in and he starts screaming and rips a printer out of the wall and smashes it on the floor. I'm like, is this what happens? Like?
Is this like? Am I a New York or now? Like? What? Like? Is this normal? And I didn't have anything to compare it to. I just want to rewind for a sec. Cody says she actually saw someone pull a printer out of a wall and smash it in a fit of rage. She was pretty green when she joined we Work, which made it harder for her to know when to speak up about the weird things she was seeing in the office, or how to know if it was normal for her to feel so stressed out. This is something that a
lot of former we Work employees told me too. They felt like we Work purposely hired young or inexperienced workers because they were more likely to go along with the sometimes chaotic work environment employees in their thirties with a few different jobs under their belt, felt ancient compared or to their coworkers. Here's Teddy. The kind of people that were being brought in were young folks who didn't have a ton of experience, who were extremely passionate and wanted
to again get on the rocket ship to the moon. Um. But I also believe they were malleable, right. They would believe everything they were told. They wouldn't ask the tough questions. Cody was one of those employees, someone who was excited to have the job and wanted to do well, but was starting to get confused by the behavior around her. She was an assistant to two we Work executives, and she started to notice how the executives lives seemed to
be dictated by Adam. You know, if Adam was like coming down the hall, it's like every executive's like butthole titans. Like everybody just got really like oh my God, like you know, like they like would drop anything for like two seconds to talk to him. And I just started to notice like how much anxiety there was amongst all of these executives when it came to Adam. She noticed that every Monday night, after the all hands meetings, executives
stuck around for another meeting with Adam. Then I started to find out that executives were required to stay until like sometimes two and three in the morning. Here's Adam at an all hands meeting talking about these late nights. And then every Monday night, either I do a second meeting with the leadership team or I said, with the real estate team. Usually ends at two. I am, we do this every Monday. Cody said that sometimes the executives would drop everything they were doing at Adam's win. Adam
would hijack their days frequently. Um, and I again didn't know, is that a CEO thing? Oh? Is that just expected? You know? I'd slave hours and hours on my computer and email and trying to like organize all of their schedules, and then Adam would come in and just drop a bomb, and like you know, and it happened so often that, like I was worried that it was making me look
unprofessional to other people. You know that my executives are supposed to have meetings with that all the time, I'm having to say, like, I know what, you're supposed to be here an hour, but we have to reschedule. She was also running to her executives homes late at night, so they were ready for Adam to pop in at
any hour. Cody was questioning if these assignments really had to be done that night, and sometimes it did just like, well, Adams coming to my house, so yeah, it has to be to night, and he'd come over at like twelve at night, and it's just bizarre. Like it just got more and more bizarre. So this sort of CEO behavior isn't entirely uncommon. A lot of big, splashy startups have work cultures that burn people out and require long, late hours.
There's more than one messianic, demanding CEO in the tech world. But here's where I think it's fair to call out we work. For one thing, we were claimed to be better. Remember we were promised to reinvent work to make it refreshing, so you could argue that they should be held to a higher standard. And also, we were was selling work culture that was their product, so their own internal culture with unhappy, burnt out employees shouldn't have been an afterthought.
And on top of that, much of the we were culture that they were selling was fake, like it was an actual performance. There was a ritual that a lot of we Work employees had to perform when Adam was giving a tour to an investor. He needed the space to look exciting, to make a strong impression. This ritual even had a name. It's called activating the space. That's what it was called activating the space. So yeah, oh my, oh my god, give me a second. I this was
like the thing I hated so much. Um, what it really came down to was like pulling back the curtain like the Wizard of Oz. I was like, this is so stupid, Like it was so fake. It's like we're bringing somebody in that's going to invest and like throw a party, like just throw up. So like all the community managers on whatever floor are like everybody get here now, you know, like they're going around like yanking people out of their offices, like get into the common area, like
we're activating space. And they were used to putting on a good show. Here's Carl Pierre, a community manager in d C. I'd get this frantic email or call Adams coming to d C with investors. You know, activate the space like user company credit, buy whatever you gotta buy, but like make sure, everyone's having fun, so I'd like, I don't order like two dollars worth of like nitrogen
frozen ice cream. And the cool thing was it totally worked because when you walked in, it looked like an ice cream party with a million different companies and everybody was laughing and smiling and having good time. So we made it happen. So when you first walked in, you're like, dude, this place is awesome, Like what is going on? They go into the liquor cabinet and they pull out all the wine and they've got you know, people like doing
feels like they've got a big project. Are screened down and someone's like, look at our growth like Adams walking through people. It was cringe e. That's the best part I can come up with. Cringe E. Activating the space was a good way to lure investors, but it was just a big show. When I was speaking to Cody, she kept saying that it felt fake. She said she felt like she was working in a dystopian sci fi movie.
People were like working themselves under the ground and they're just doing it with this like crazy smile, like oh my god, I'm so happy to be here. Like it kind of felt like I was like, that's what it felt like. It's like everybody is miserable, but nobody will say anything. So things that we work could get pretty intense. But the company also rewarded its employees with massive blowout parties.
The most infamous one is Summer Camp. Summer Camp is an annual festival that we worked through in the countryside, first in Upstate New York, then in England. It was open to employees and members. Carl went to several of them. It first started with this lake in the Randex that we work when it was a really small team, go there and party for free and like as like a way to blow off some steam and take a break,
and it was so cool. And then it grew to them like all right, guys, this is so much fun, which definite get a musical act to come and just like play for us. And it was like a small local band thing and it frontly just like kind of scaled from there to my last Summer Camp. Um Chromeo opened up for the weekend and the weekend was flowing in on a helicopter. The weekend is a musician. By the way, one of our editors was confused to me as a reporter. Summer camp is just one of the
strangest and most notable things about we Work. Adam and other executives gave speeches on stage during the day, and at night they would put on these flashy, giant music performances. It's like if you went to Coachella but it was run by your boss. To me, it's just this perfect example of how we were going to blur that line when your personal and professional life blurrett so completely it was basically erased. We have a lot of tape from
all hands meetings where Adam talks about summer camp. Again, this is the tape that was given to me by a WEE Work employee, and in the recordings you can hear Adam's excitement. Here he is talking about summer camps origins, and we said, well, great, let's do a summer camp. I've never been to one, but I saw them in the movies and thought it sounded awesome. And it took a minute to find a venue that would take on
the liability of such a big party. Why wouldn't you want mature cycling intoxicated very we oriented members and employees to come to your camp. It ended up getting hosted at an executive's parents property. Here's Adam pitching Summer Camp to his employees. If it's the first time you're doing it,
really come and enjoy it. We're gonna go a day before as a company, all the employees and spend a day getting to know each other, doing a lot of social exercises, playing a lot of games, putting on some shows in some competitions. By its third year, Summer Camp already had some traditions and celebrities of its own. There's a guy Adam calls Naked Pete. His Naked Pete coming. But for those of you don't know Naked Pete. He's one of our members and he loves parties. It's very
confident when he's in parties. Okay, no idea who Naked Pete is, but he sounds fun. Summer Camp was a place for people to get into all sorts of shenanigans. No reporters this time, by the way, definitely no reporters this time. We had a little problem there. The previous year. A reporter came to Summer Camp and we work picked some members for her to interview. The reporter looks at him and says, what do you do last night? And looks there mushrooms? What did you do that? Did you
catch that? We work member told the reporter that he did mushrooms at summer camp, which is awkward. PR people had to spend the next many hours talking to the reporter saying he's a member, not an employee. We did not supply it. Please do us a fever and don't put it in the article. He never went into the article. Was a good thing members pay to go to summer camp, but we worked foots the bill for its employees to come.
One thing I forgot to say for summer Camp, we are flying over every single employee in every country, every state around the world. It's not cheap. This is a sort of extravagant spending that we work became famous for. Just for summer Camp. For an example, it costs US
twelve dollars per employee, not including flights. So just do the math and fift employees, you'll see here at two million dollars, and you add the flights and this, and before you know, to bring everybody together as an investment of two and a a half million, and it's a great investment, even though it's for a very short time. Two and a half million dollars for an employee bonding trip is a lot of money, but it made a huge impression
on his employees. Would be like partying all my an open bar with like great tequila and shots, and everyone's just like wrecked in the morning that these canoes packed with ice and coconut water, and you would just like everyone would rehydrate and they'd be like more beach games and like team building and then more drinking and then it's just you know, and again. I was one of the guys who loved I loved my first summer camp and my second summer camp and my third summer they
were all they were. They were dope. I had a great time. I will I sole her being super hungover at a table and looking over to my right, and then St. Lucia, she was like one of my favorite bands, was like eating breakfast next to me, and I was like this is so cool. Um and I was like, um. So we were down by the water at a bonfire and out of nowhere, I hear one of the weekends like really big songs that had come out like that summer,
and I was like, are you kidding me? So I freaked out, and my sister and I hopped on a golf cart and we were like, give us a ride, you know, and like so we're like tearing up a hill and we get to like the big field where the stages, and I was like, this cannot be happening. Like this cannot be happen. Was my one of my favorite artists, and I'm like this, this is unreal. So Cody and Carl had these incredibly memorable and exciting moments
at Summer Camp once in a lifetime stuff. But for Cody, her day to day job at WE Work was wearing her down. She was an executive assistant and her bosses were tough on her. She started to feel stressed and exhausted. She wasn't sure this company was treating her right. As she spent more and more time at WE Work, she started to notice something about Summer Camp. She realized these
big blowouts had another purpose beyond just having fun. I think that they found a formula that worked really well for UM, exhausting their workforce and then just giving them a reason to keep doing it. Cody saw it as a cycle of getting burned out and then reinspired. We all know what we need to do. We all know, like we all have to contribute because it's we and
we're a team. And and then you know, six months goes by and like every you know, a few weeks, like you're just getting you know, more and and more, just like bogged down, dragged out. Things just start to deteriorate. And then you hit summer Camp and so all of a sudden, you're reinspired and like you're reinvigorated. So even though Cody looks back on summer Camp fondly, she also feels like maybe she was being manipulated, like summer Camp was a debauchero's party, meant to distract you from the
not so great parts of the job. You know, when you're in the middle of it, you're just sort of like looking for like any outlets of like okay, it's all it's okay, we're all fine. We're all gonna be fine. We put up with a lot, we worked really hard. We you know, we get yelled at, but it's all worth it in the end because we're working for this awesome company. Is like the kool Aid disillusionment flip flap, flip flap, Like it goes back and forth for most people.
And here's Adam on stage at summer Camp pepping up his employees. Who is here last year? Raise your handy, geer last year. I'm just gonna say, I'm just gonna say one thing. All of this would not be possible without all of you, So I just want to say thank you so much. Adam turned to his favorite topics again, meaning and intention, and he's doing this to inspire his employees to keep going. Thank you, Thank you for being
part of something that actually has a meaning. I think the thing that all of us know is if you want to succeed in this world, you have to build something that has intentions. You have to build something that has true meaning behind it. And what puts us together, all of us here is every one of us is here because it hasn't mean, because we want to do something that actually makes the world a better place and we want to make money doing it. We'll be right back.
I want to revisit the tapes of all Hands meetings that were given to me by we work employee after she handed me the recordings she was sued by the company. These tapes are special because they reveal a different side of Adam. Adam gets really honest. In this clip I'm about to play you, he's saying that we work knowingly pays its employees less than they could earn elsewhere. I can tell you right now and everyone here knows that we are not the highest players in the market. We
just aren't its own purpose. We want people to come here because they truly feel and that's what they want to do. We're very generous with our equity, and in the future we're going to be more generous with our equity. But one of the things we do here to make sure you really want to be here is we we really ask you to tell us what is the bare minimum that you need. We don't want you to lose money, but we really want you to be here for the right reasons. So we know that this employee that came
here is here for the right reasons. By the way, if they're not not gonna last for a long time, so we know that are you here for the right reasons? Are you down for the cause? I remember feeling surprised when I heard what Adam was saying in these tapes. I know some startup managers think to themselves that they want their staff to be motivated by the mission, not money. But it's remarkable to me that a CEO would say out loud to all his employees that he's intentionally paying
them less. When I showed adams quote to we Work, a spokesperson gave me this statement. We Work is committed to compensating employees fairly and competitively. But if you listen to the tapes, you hear Adam come back to the ideas of loyalty and dedication again and again. Here's another all hands meeting where Adam tells his employees that they're part of something bigger than themselves. The bottom line is simple, you guys are all part of this. I don't need
to tell you what's happening here. I can't tell me what's happening here. You know what's happening here, And if you don't feel it and you're not a part of it, then it's it's your problem, and it's up to you because the reason that you're here is because you choose to be here. And I'm here because they choosed to be here, and a lot of our friends are here because they choosed to be here, and making the choice so big here is not an easy choice. I'll be the first one to say, you chose to be here.
If you're not excited about it, that's your problem, not ours. In this speech, it sounds like Adam is demanding a personal commitment, a fidelity to the company. Here's Cody. There was like a purity test amongst the executives, like they would if somebody wasn't at one of those meetings, they would throw that person under the bus. Are you really
dedicated to this cause, to what we're doing here? Because you're not here, so you must not be you know, it was a purity test onlike your dedication to Adam's cause. I just want to be really clear that Cody Quinn is not the person who gave me these recordings, but you'll hear her respond to the tapes because Cody was often in the audience when Adam was giving these speeches. She heard him making these points about believing in we
works cause and making personal sacrifices for it. Here's another meeting where Adam is telling his employees that they might not get credit for their ideas and that they should be okay with it because it should be enough just to see the company succeed. A lot of you come to me with amazing idea, but you're not getting the credit that it came through you, even though I might know that you're the source of it, or ever the
right executive knows that you're the source of it. We're all going to have great ideas now, We're all going to contribute in huge ways to the company. Not always will we be able to recognize you for it. When the company is growing as fast as this company is growing, we're always found to miss something like being part of this company, in part of something greater than yourself. It should be motivating and inspiring to see that pass as
an organization moved in the right direction. Honestly, listening to Adam say these things was a strange experience for me. He's telling his employees they shouldn't come lane if they're paid under market or don't get credit for their ideas, that it's for the greater good. And if they aren't wholeheartedly embracing the we work mission, they don't belong there. This isn't a side of Adam I had seen before. It's stuff he'd never say in front of a journalist.
Adam had succeeded in projecting the image of being charismatic charming and gregarious, someone who won people over, but internally he was a divisive figure. There were some employees and exects who would have followed him to the ends of the earth. There were others who were put off by him, Like Cody, I just yeah, I just wanted to stay out of his way as much as possible. Sometimes it made her act a little awkward. I got trapped in
a hallway once. It was like just him and I, and I was like, like, there was no turn to take, and like he walked by with this like giant frame and was just sort of looked at me, okay, And I was like like, I was like, oh, just like kept going. Cody wasn't the only one who was having these doubts about her job. Karl and the rest of his coworkers on the Community team were exhausted by the highs and lows. Their jobs were demanding, but also sometimes
incredibly rewarding. People called it the cult of we work for a reason because when you were in it, and because I witnessed this myself, community was a very powerful thing. That value of community of people helping each other was really motivating to him and his coworkers, even when things
felt overwhelming. I hate calling it a cult, but it really was, like you know, everybody that we worked that was basically what drove them was the idea of like community can solve everything, Like this idea of like if we work together, we can overcome it all. And um, that was a big part of us working. It was kind of like that belief that you know, if we failed, the community would fail, like we have to never give up,
always keep going. And these people rely on us and their businesses are doing so well, They're doing so many cool things. We're really supporting an ecosystem of entrepreneurs who are trying to change the world, like we are part of that change in the world. And that was like a drug. It was so powerful. It got us through the worst days and and it was real. Of course, Adam loved talking about community too. So community is not something that we just say that we are community, something
that we are in. Every single department in this company has community, and it if it's how you interact with your fellow employees, how you interact with other departments, and then how you interact with any members or anybody else that you meet as a group, the more we we will be the more communal we will be, the more successful we're able to be as a as a company and as a corporation, to be able to change the world and make the difference. That it is the difference
that which really care about it. Did you catch him saying the more we we will be, the more successful we will be. Adam uses the word we in weird ways. It's like a catch all for this special energy at we work, the power of we, the we generation. Years later, he'll actually rename we Work the We Company, a decision
that will backfire in a spectacular way. Carl's boss has talked a lot about the idea of community, but what's funny is that Carl and his coworkers discovered another kind of community with each other when they bonded over how tough their jobs were. Carl said, it was like being war buddies. It's almost like comparing generals and foot soldiers, like the guys who would die for you in a foxhole, completely different than the general sitting in a nice room.
When when you talk with the camaraderie amongst employees on a very base level, people who have worked in community, everybody supports each other because they all understand how rough the job can be, the awful things that have happened to them, and there is a level of um sympathy and emotional connection that you have or like again that crying things like if you have to cry at where it, come talk to me, come find me, or come find
another of your teammates and they'll help you. There's another thing that kept we Work employees going, the promise of getting rich someday. When employees joined the company, they're given some shares, and Adam would suggest that those shares were valuable. Here's how Cody first heard that message. It was Hanuka party and I just started. He wanted all new hires within a month to go up on stage, so I did.
He was talking about like we're investing in you too by like giving you shares, and so he definitely framed it in a way that was like felt like it was an even trade of sorts, and I think that a lot of people like took that to heart. I think that had a big effect on a lot of people. They're like, I'm working twelve hour days and I don't get paid overtime, but like it's going to come back
to us tenfolds, like at a later date. Basically, I can understand why some employees thought they might get rich. When Cody joined We Work, it was valued at five billion dollars. And keep in mind the company was only four years old at the time, and by the time Cody left We Worked just two years later, the company was valued at seventeen billion dollars. So equity and we Work was a tantalizing thought. Cody, like a lot of her coworkers, had never held equity in a company before.
It's an extremely complicated topic. Even people with a lot of experience have trouble assessing how much shares like this might be worth in the future. In general, startup employees can only cash in on their equity if the company goes public or if it gets bought by another company. But back then things were looking optimistic for We Work. Many employees were working under the assumption, don't worry about the details. It's all going to work out someday in
a really big way. Even if Adam didn't say those words exactly, I think that, you know, he was pretty smart about the way that he would word things like he wouldn't out right say like we're gonna have a lot of money someday, Like you wouldn't say anything like that, but he definitely made people feel and believe that all of this stuff that they're doing and putting up with on a day today basis is going to reward them later.
I remember specific conversations with other employees that this person in particular was like, it's your your shares gonna be worth so much money, Like like, don't even worry about it, Like how do you how do you know that? It's like I just do. I just know, Like it's like there's no way this is going to fail. And that was that was a real conversation. Cody eventually left the company. In when I left, my parents drove out with the
U haul and moved me home. Um I also, I was like I gotta get out of here, Like you know, I love New York and it's an amazing place, but like I can't do this on my own, and I definitely cannot sustain my life working for this company and for these people. After she moved back to Michigan, she was hired as an administrator for a design and company where she's still working. She said it took her a long time to get over the fear and stress that
had accumulated while she was at WE Work. It took me six or eight months to not go into work with like a panic or to like assume that somebody was going to be like yelling at me or mad at me. I was just like on guard all the time, all the time, just like waiting for somebody to like come at me with something. We reached out to representatives for WE Work in Adam Newman to ask them to respond to the things we covered in this episode. They
largely declined to comment. But back in WE Work was known for its high pressure and intense environment, and Adam justified this by saying they were working on something with really high stakes. It was an idea that Adam was drilling in again and again. Working at WE Work is special. It's not like any other job. So don't mess it up. And none of us want to look back and say I could have done more. I could have been there a little bit more, This could have been bigger, This
couldn't been better. That's not acceptable. You do not get a chance like this again, none of us do, and therefore we need to own this. You do not get a chance like this again. A little foreboding right. That's the message. Adam told employees to motivate them, to make them stay and to make them work. For many years, employees accepted this. But next week we'll give you a look at two employees who fought back. At some point, someone stood up and said enough, I won't take this anymore.
Foundering is hosted by me Ellen Hewitt. Sean When is our executive producer. My Aquava is our associate producer. Raymondo mixed the show today. Mark Million and Vander May and Alistair Barr are our story editors. Francesco Levi is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. Be sure to subscribe and if you like our show, leave a review. Most importantly, tell your friends see you next time.