Managed by Q’s Staff Hit With Another Round of Layoffs Due to Coronavirus

“In light of the unprecedented health crisis facing all of us, and with most workplaces currently unoccupied, we’ve made the difficult decision to reduce operating costs to weather the global economic turmoil and ensure our company is successful in the long run,” Du Bey said in a statement. “These cost reductions include a reduction in non-personnel cost, executive salary cuts, furloughs, and layoffs with severance. I am extremely grateful to each of the affected team members for their hard work and contribution to our mission thus far.”

A former Managed by Q employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told CO that as recently as last week Eden leaders assured workers there weren’t going to make any layoffs.

“It was pretty disappointing overall to see the lack of leadership over this and how untrustworthy they are,” the former staffer said. “It seems like this was pretty rash and not thought out.”

Eden told CO that the last time it addressed potential layoffs to employees was three weeks ago and noted it did not have an all-hands meeting with staff last week.

The latest job cuts at Managed by Q come a month after rival Eden bought out the company for $25 million from WeWork (WE) and more than 75 employees were let go. A source previously told CO that a number of Managed by Q employees were not offered positions by Eden and received severance packages by WeWork.

In the latest round of layoffs employees were offered one-month severance and a week for every year they were at either Eden or Managed by Q, compared to the four to six months of severance offered by WeWork, a source said.

“It does feel like we were pretty slighted,” the employee said. “It seems like they bought Managed by Q solely to not have a competitor, as opposed to merging the two platforms.”

Du Bey told CO that it offered what he thought was a fair severance package that included health benefits to employees that run until June. (WeWork was required to provide its severance package because it triggered the WARN Act while Eden did not.)

“We were really deliberate to be on the generous side of what is being provided among other similar stage, privately held companies,” Du Bey said.

Managed by Q was founded in 2013 by Dan Teran and Saman Rahmanian and built a single platform for companies to hire vendors like cleaning crew, office managers and IT support. WeWork bought the startup for $220 million in April 2019 as part of a slew of acquisitions the coworking behemoth made in an effort to move past the shared-office business it started with, CO reported.

After WeWork’s botched initial public offering and the company reportedly coming close to running out of cash, WeWork has started to offload those acquisitions. Since November 2019, it sold marketing software startup Conductor, workplace analytics company Teem and its investment in women-focused coworking provider The Wing (which recently cut half of its corporate staff), Bloomberg reported. Late last month, WeWork also sold social network Meetup to venture capital firm AlleyCorp.

Teran — who left WeWork in October 2019 — reportedly pooled together a team of investors to buy back Managed by Q, but the deal fell through after Eden offered to pay a higher price. The plan was for Managed by Q to remain its own brand then phase it out to just become Eden.

The former Managed by Q employee said that Eden did a poor job at integrating both teams, including not providing Managed by Q staff access to Eden’s Slack channel for nearly a week.

“It didn’t feel like they were really trying to make it work from a people perspective,” the former staffer said. “It’s a really unfortunate ending, but that’s life.”

Update: This story was updated to include additional statements from Eden and the number of Managed by Q employees affected.