I Was at the Real WeWork. It Was Even Weirder Than 'WeCrashed.'

As unbelievable as the Apple TV+ series is, the actual WeWork was even worse.

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In 2018, I accepted a job at WeWork. The job was actually at a subsidiary of WeWork—Flatiron School, a tech bootcamp—one of the many companies that ex-CEO Adam Neumann bought as he ran the company into the ground. Subsidiaries were subject to WeWork’s culture, though, so it was mandatory that I attended the company’s major meetings and all-hands staff events.

Those mandatory events included something called a Global Summit, where the company flew thousands of employees from around the world to Los Angeles. They also included the infamous Summer Camp—a days-long frat party, or as an event-planning company put it, a place “where attendees mix with like-minded souls, immerse themselves in community, and leave feeling refreshed and inspired.” (WeWork has since canceled its Summer Camps.)

Celebrities like Issa Rae and Jaden Smith were panelists at the Global Summit. Lorde performed at Summer Camp. Alcohol at Summer Camp was excessive. And despite the incessant talk of “elevating the world’s consciousness,” I knew WeWork was an awful place.

I grew up in a cultlike environment. I know one when I see one.

One way that toxic work environments are like cults is how skeptics within the company go on clandestine searches for like-minded people. You make secret Slack channels and group chats. You vet new employees on whether they see through the charade or not. You vouch for others so that they can join the underground community of people who don’t chant or cheer.

I had found a few of those people at Flatiron School, but even our company of shrewd businesspeople and logical software-engineer types had fallen into WeWork’s web—not only financially, but in spirit. One Flatiron School co-founder got a WeWork tattoo on his chest.

Being at a larger WeWork event like the Global Summit or Summer Camp felt like being behind enemy lines. When Adam Neumann said that WeWork would solve world hunger, I scanned the room for anyone rolling their eyes. When Miguel McKelvey would ask an audience of thousands to close their eyes and meditate with him, I pointed my gaze at whoever else kept theirs open. I was desperate for validation that other people saw what I saw. Casual interactions with co-workers became a conversational dance to feel out whether they were the type of person to chant WeWork’s name when they were told to, or pretend to check their phone or go to the bathroom.

I’ll never forget walking into a theater at our Global Summit—but not because of Adam Neumann and Miguel McKelvey’s speeches, or Rebekah Neumann awkwardly interviewing celebrities onstage while our attendance was tracked by digital wristbands to make sure we didn’t leave. The moment I remember came courtesy of Kevin, an instructor at Flatiron School, who was in his first months at the company. We had just met on our way to the convention center, and he had been asking me about the company’s culture. I was proceeding with caution to vet his buy-in. As we walked into chants of “WeWork” from the crowd, he simply said, “Oh. This is a cult.”

He said it so easily. So casually. So honestly.

“Oh. This is a cult.” He saw it, and he wasn’t looking to hide it.

This week, I relived WeWork’s rise and fall in the new Apple TV+ series WeCrashed, based on a podcast of the same name. And as weird and unbelievable as the story seems, it was weirder in real life.

In many ways, WeCrashed makes the WeWork trinity of Adam Neumann, Rebekah Neumann, and Miguel McKelvey look better than they appeared to me in real life. Jared Leto’s Adam is more charismatic than the real-life scam artist. Anne Hathaway’s Rebekah is far less awkward and more charming than the real-life debutante. Kyle Marvin’s Miguel is politely portrayed as the pragmatic, competent-but-spineless loaf behind Neumann’s megalomania. But McKelvey is the person who frustrated me the most. As I see it, his actions weren’t just driven by greed and ambition, but also by willful ignorance, self delusion, and overwhelming cowardice.

WeCrashed / Apple TV+

Despite my frustrations, I binged the series as eagerly as I watch most business-scam stories, like the Fyre Festival documentaries on Billy McFarland or The Dropout series about Elizabeth Holmes, based on the podcast series that I also listened to. I also read the quintessential book on Holmes and Theranos that will become a movie I will also watch.

WeCrashed joins The Dropout and Inventing Anna in a recent slew of popular dramatizations about scammers and con artists, a subgenre that most of us watch for three main reasons:

1. Schadenfreude. These series tend to end with a fall from grace, and it feels good to watch the scammers’ collapse.
2. Lifestyle porn. These series tend to offer voyeurism into the lifestyles of the wealthy and insight into their bizarre worlds.
3. To feel content in our intellectual superiority. There’s satisfaction in knowing you would never be so gullible.

But for me—perhaps for many of us—there’s also a fourth reason: to see how we’re portrayed as the people who, whether skeptically or whole-heartedly, helped enable the scam. Because if I’m being honest with myself, a scammer isn’t a scammer without their marks—and I was one, even if I didn’t believe in the scammers’ lies.

Despite my hatred of the company culture and my never-ending frustration with those who bought into its deception, I enjoyed access to every WeWork conference room, bathroom, and Wifi network in Manhattan. I enjoyed making vacations out of free trips to California and the U.K. I enjoyed knowing that I had an office virtually anywhere in the world I traveled. And I enjoyed the hope of stock options that could pay off my student loans. I enjoyed all those things while also knowing that WeWork was a financial house of cards following the whims of a corporate cult leader. I only hoped the ruse would last long enough for me to cash out.

So I don’t feel entirely fair in my negative feelings toward WeWork unless I’m also willing to face my own willingness to play a tiny part in it. Because although I’d like to think of myself as a person who wouldn’t work for a company that goes against my personal values, I did exactly that. Many people worked—or presently work—in awful places for another list of three main reasons:

1. We’re naive. Despite the evidence, some people don’t actually believe that companies like WeWork are a net negative.
2. We have an inflated view of our personal role. Some people believe they can be instruments of change from within.
3. We have a deflated view of our personal role. Some people believe that somebody is going to do the job regardless, so it might as well be them.

But again, for some of us, there’s a fourth reason: to simply get what we can while we suppress how gross we feel about it for as long as possible. We tell ourselves that the discomfort we feel, and the fact that we see through a company’s bullshit, makes us different. Our awareness makes us feel almost like martyrs, willing to sacrifice our comfort for just one more paycheck, one more project, or one more year.

In short, we’re not much different from Miguel McKelvey. The scale is different, but the reasoning is the same. I didn’t know how awful WeWork was when I joined, but at some point, I knew. I simply stayed for the comfort it provided until WeWork’s scam crumbled. Watching WeCrashed and all the rest is an uncomfortable reminder of a lesson learned: It’s one thing to recognize a scam. It’s another to stop benefiting from it. And my frustration with willful ignorance, self-delusion, and overwhelming cowardice extends far beyond Miguel McKelvey and a lot closer to home.

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Till next time, 28 days until my memoir comes out.