[fennecfoxen]

Contrast this with WeWork, where people have been raising concerns about its business model (short-term revenues and long-term lease liabilities) from its inception.

WeWork is dead. The main question now is what specific necromancy the venture capitalists will be performing on its corpse.

[thaumasiotes]

There's nothing wrong with, or unusual about, the business model. Short-term revenues and long-term liabilities is how every other real estate company operates. It's also how every bank operates.

[Kye]

Banks are required to keep 10% of deposits in reserve and pay into a deposit insurance system. The FDIC can shut banks down or put them under control of another in a crisis.

[mylons]

yup, airbnb is almost the inverse of wework, and is way more of a tech company too.

[CocaKoala]

Now I find myself wishing Max Gladstone would feature venture capitalism in his next Craft Sequence book.

[mlthoughts2018]

I think people have been raising the fundamental moral hazards, lack of business viability and externality problems of gig economy / “marketplace” startups for a long time. But braindead rich people who want to believe in unicorns still pour money into saccharine VC fake shit, giving people of deplorable moral status huge piles of cash, sociopathic ego-stroking soap boxes to stand on, and every incentive to pursue regulatory capture strategies as temporary props to lever up an IPO and foist the inevitable market correction losses onto unwitting regular people who come to own toxic business stocks through dark patterns in their retirement plans with “target date” mixes and automatic adjustments hard to opt out of.

At some level you have to be angry at consumers who use and defend these businesses, and be angry at employees who agree to work for them and smugly believe it’s all untouchable becuz tech.

If you are an engineer for Airbnb, Bird, Uber, Lyft, etc., you are the problem.

You have to be responsible for the business model of the jobs you take. What is the value proposition? Not just internal to the company, but to the external world.

Until rank and file engineers start saying no to these jobs, nothing is going to get better. We have to say no to horrible working conditions like open plan offices, braindead infantilizing office spaces where video games and catered lunches matter more than basic health benefits, severance pay, and work life balance.

It’s not going to get better until we just refuse to participate in these sham businesses and we stop glorifying some manifest destiny founder trope as if it’s worthy of admiration or good for the world.

[mylons]

i think you’re overestimating the integrity of the average rank and file employee in san francisco.