WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn

This behind-the-scenes look at the ill-fated workplace startup buys into the capitalist ideals of its subject.

In my final week of a temp job a few summers back, the company I was working for moved into a WeWork. There were DJs, a free dance mat in the lobby, beer on tap, and talk of workout studios being built on the top floor.

I was so bamboozled by the array of amenities that I seriously considered applying for a permanent role, even though the job wasn’t what I wanted to be doing. I imagined a new, glossier life, filled with overly-complicated coffee orders and pre-work yoga sessions; never mind the fact that caffeine makes me anxious and I struggle to exercise without the motivation of loud music.

Herein lies the allure of WeWork. Their slickly-outfitted offices seem to have the power to change how we relate to work. They are not just a place to labour, they are also there for socialising, exercising and relaxing.

According to co-founder Adam Neumann this is part of a world-changing revolution, centring the needs of the worker and fostering a vibrant community. But this blurring of the boundaries between business and leisure ultimately benefits the employers more than the employed, who end up spending even more time at the office.

While Neumann chose not to participate in WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn, the use of archive footage allows his voice to be heard. In an early sequence we see a montage of vaguely cultish images – a crowd of people sitting on the ground, eyes closed, clasping each others’ hands – as he tells us of the failures of technology in connecting people. He’s prone to speaking in platitudes, remarking often on the strength of community over individualism (“Take the ‘me’ and you flip it, you get the ‘we’…”).

Though the film establishes Neumann as an unreliable narrator, with a range of former employees and financial experts disputing his version of events, his idealistic packaging of the company as an anti-establishment utopia is essentially unchallenged. No links are made between WeWork’s quasi-religious following and the problems of a broader culture of workism, which places career at the centre of people’s lives as not only a means of survival but also a calling by which your worth is defined.

Capitalism is at odds with Neumann’s supposed humanitarian aims, but this contradiction remains largely unexplored. The few astute points questioning the financial industry as a whole aren’t given the space they deserve. Less than a minute is spent scrutinising the fact that for CEOs, the thin line between being seen as an erratic liability and an eccentric genius is simply profitability.

The general lack of anti-capitalist critique is perhaps unsurprising given that the film was produced by Forbes Entertainment, the same company that publishes Forbes Magazine who featured Neumann on the cover in 2017.

The film ultimately buys into the dream of WeWork. It accepts the notion that although it became corrupted, at its core the company was about human connection and creating a better world, rather than just making money providing aspirational office space.

Published 13 Aug 2021

Tags: Jed Rothstein WeWork WeWork: Or The Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn