WeWork may seem 'glamorous', but toxic work environment with unskilled managers - Anonymous employee WeWork Employee Review

3.0
Aug 26, 2019
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

-Beautiful HQ offices, global access, barista coffee bar, lots of events, resume builder

Cons

-It's truly difficult to list all cons here. If you read other reviews on Glassdoor, you'll see the common theme of the case of a start-up that grew way too astronomically fast to be able to hire a diverse and truly experienced employee workforce. -I definitely drank the kool-aid and fell in love with the seemingly fun workplace environment and culture. Only started to realize about 1 year into the company how little employees' hard work is valued and toxic the environment actually is. Managers don't care about you and your growth. -I had a manager tell me that if you want to be noticed and have your work or team taken seriously, it doesn't actually matter how hard you work; you have to "appear" to be working hard and make people notice you. So basically if you want to work hard and keep your head down, definitely not the place for you. -Constant restructuring and re-orgs left me being on 4 different teams during my 2 years at WeWork. -Managers are mostly inexperienced and lacking people skills. -Frat-bro culture pervades all aspects of the company. -Extreme nepotism in hiring practices (26-year olds running entire departments because of being family with C-level execs). -Promotions based on 'who you know', how well you can suck up to a higher-up, and often a popularity contest; rarely based on merit. -Upper-level management does not listen to its employees. They claim they have email accounts set up for employees to provide feedback, but those email accounts are rarely actually read. -The way the company internally handled lawsuits (specifically the sexual harassment suit) was truly appalling. WeWork lost a lot of good talent following that suit, of employees who were disgusted by how the company handled it (i.e. the plaintiff was shamed and bashed via company emails from the co-founder). -I can't stress enough how happiness and upward mobility on the Commercial teams (Marketing, Sales, Account Management, etc.) is a popularity contest. True knowledge and ability is rarely rewarded. -Inexperienced "managers" and "directors" and ill-equipped to lead and manage the teams they run. Find a different company that isn't run by ego-crazed lunatics whose false sense of self is virulent.

Explore other reviews about WeWork

5.0
Mar 16, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Weekends off Solid structure that you couldn’t find in a normal cafe Base rate that would be equivalent to working a busy cafe with tips

Cons

Depending on location, the customer flow can be insanely heavy. Members tend to come multiple times a visit.

3.0
May 25, 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

VERY cool HQ--beer, fruit water, and other treats on tap, free breakfast, amazing decor, lots of events and cool trendy vendors who bring free stuff--if you like to humblebrag via Insta, you'll love this place. Some cool people --celebrities come in and out, your colleagues are generally very attractive folks, there's a sense of excitement and true commitment to the work (borderline evangelism) depending on who you work with and what you do. Name recognition and valuation -- company is a rising star and it's worth having on your resume. A cool mission on the surface--bringing community together, helping people do what they love (making work a passion rather than a chore) through connection.

Cons

This place is like drinking from one continuous Kool-Aid jug. VERY cult-y and cliquey. You are either in or you're out, and if you're out, rather than cut you loose right away, they gaslight you. It's actually kind of shocking how many people I've seen be treated so poorly here, and perhaps no coincidence that they were folks of color. Kind of hard to find the down to earth people I did find. I enjoyed the Community teams and Security/Ops/Real Estate people I met, probably because they were constantly "hustling," but the HR team (the PEOPLE team, for goodness sake) and a lot of other "prominent" faces were consistently rude, with an overinflated sense of self and zero idea of how the WeWork "values" translate into behaviors/contributions from a prospective employee POV. You have to have been there since the start, or be prepared to ingratiate yourself, to get any traction in your professional development or career path. I was always shocked how badly my manager wanted to be liked, and how much they were willing to do to be liked, to get any kind of clout and/or promotion just bc they hadn't started out at WeWork as a community team member. Never mind that they were super qualified for their job. Pay varies depending on who you are; some people earn market value...some people very very much don't, and there doesn't seem to be any consistency that determines which is which. TGIM. Thank God it's Monday. Mandatory Monday meetings. Sometimes they circulate tequila shots. Is that a plus? Not sure. Summer Camp. Adult Summer Camp. With EDM, people in salmon colored shorts, and lots of loud rowdy entitled folks. If that's anything but a con for you, you probably belong here and godspeed.

617
See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All