Thousands of WeWork employees will spend this holiday season searching for new jobs. The massive layoff comes just months after former CEO and co-founder Adam Neumann walked away from the company with $1.7 billion.
A CNBC report stated that 2,400 WeWork employees will be let go in order to boost organizational efficiency. The New York-based office-sharing startup made headlines this summer for all the wrong reasons. Valued at nearly $50 billion earlier in 2019, WeWork attempted to go public but ended up pulling its initial public offering (IPO). Following the IPO disaster, the company came under scrutiny for its major financial losses and corporate mismanagement.
Neumann, one of the company’s three co-founders, has received most of the blame for the company’s slippage. After Neumann left the company in September, Softbank, one of WeWork’s investors, acquired an 80 percent stake in an effort to salvage the once highly-valued startup.
WeWork will be providing former employees a severance package, continued benefits and other forms of assistance. However, after crunching a few numbers, those 2,400 ex-employees probably won’t feel too happy about what they are worth to their former boss.
A quick calculation shows that Neumann will make more than $700,000 for each of the 2,400 employees who got axed in his wake.
It’s safe to say that any severance package will pale in comparison to Neumann’s $1.7 billion parting gift.