Two years after its IPO imploded, WeWork is finally going public. The office-sharing company, once left for dead, managed to accomplish a turnaround after deep layoffs, frantic contract negotiations, and shutting down many locations due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In late 2019, following the departure of controversial founder Adam Neumann and reports of massive financial losses, the company sliced roughly 20 percent of its workforce. “We have decided to postpone our IPO to focus on our core business, the fundamentals of which remain strong,” WeWork’s then-co-CEOs Artie Minson and Sebastian Gunningham wrote in a statement at the time. “We are as committed as ever to serving our members, enterprise customers, landlord partners, employees and shareholders.” (The current WeWork CEO, Sandeep Mathrani, argues that the office will remain essential despite the rise of hybrid and remote work.)
For those software engineers and other technologists who work on WeWork’s app, data analytics, and other tech-centric projects, going public is potentially an opportunity to unlock a whole lot of cash. But how much do software engineers at WeWork actually earn? For an answer, we can turn to levels.fyi, which crowdsources compensation data from employees at various tech companies. (As we’ve said many times before: while crowdsourcing isn’t necessarily the most scientific way of determining accurate salary data, it’s good for estimates.)
Based on that levels.fyi data, an L3 software engineer at WeWork can expect to earn $147,778 a year in salary, along with $35,000 in stock and a bonus of $5,000. Things only go up from there:
Despite WeWork’s troubles, it seems the company has managed to continue paying technologists handsomely. Such salaries, of course, can increase if technologists specialize in particularly in-demand skillsets, such as artificial intelligence (A.I.) and machine learning.
WeWork managed to crawl back from the dead, but if it wants to expand and grow, it will need data scientists, expert software engineers, and other kinds of technology talent—none of which will come cheap. It will need to continue paying out high salaries, bonuses, and stock options if it wants its technologists to stay onboard this weird, wild ride.
