Finance

WeWork's CTO, who previously worked at Spotify and Google, is leaving the office company

FILE PHOTO: A WeWork logo is seen at a WeWork office in San Francisco, California, U.S. September 30, 2019.  REUTERS/Kate Munsch - RC1962504960/File Photo
WeWork's chief technology officer is leaving the company. Reuters
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WeWork's chief technology officer is stepping down, according to Friday emails obtained by Business Insider.

Shiva Rajaraman joined the company in August 2017 with a lengthy tech résumé. Before WeWork, he spent a short stint at Apple. He previously was a vice president of product at Spotify and spent eight years at Google before that.

A representative for WeWork declined to comment.

Co-CEOs Artie Minson and Sebastian Gunningham informed the full company about his departure in a Friday email. 

"During his time at WeWork, Shiva built a world-class Technology team and helped deliver digital products and services that create an amazing experience for our members," they wrote. 

Gunningham will manage WeWork's central technology systems. Ralf Wenzel, who joined the company as chief product and experience officer two weeks ago from SoftBank, will manage the technology products. 

Rajaraman isn't leaving immediately — the co-CEOs wrote that he would stay on for a three-month transition period. 

In an email to the technology team, he said he was moving on to "pursue new opportunities." 

"While these past few months haven't been easy on anyone, I'm continuously in awe of how this team approached each challenge with a problem-solving mindset and the determination to build things right that can scale to our ambition," Rajaraman wrote.

Last month, current and former WeWorkers said the company's technology infrastructure is due for an expensive overhaul. At WeWork's start, IT was led by a 16-year-old who dropped out of high school to join the company. WeWork later sued him, alleging fraudulent misrepresentation and other claims in a case the parties ultimately agreed to dismiss.

Redoing what some current and former WeWork IT staff said was outdated and substandard infrastructure could cost tens of millions of dollars — just as the company is looking to drastically cut costs.  

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Meghan Morris
Meghan is the bureau chief in Singapore. She oversees business, lifestyle, and news coverage and leads the company's local hiring and editorial strategy.Singapore's bureau works on global news during Asia's daytime. They also collect tales from around the region about entrepreneurs, Big Tech work culture, FIRE, relocation, consumer trends, and AI, focused on people-centric storytelling.Before moving to Singapore in 2024, Meghan worked in NYC and SF as a senior correspondent, writing deeply-reported business investigations. If you have sensitive information, please email her from a nonwork email or reach out on secure messaging app Signal at @MeghanEMorris.1 (PR pitches only by email.)She enjoys speaking about tech, finance, and news on television, at conferences, and on podcasts. Please email for booking.These are some of her favorite features she has written over the years:She spent the 2022-23 academic year doing Columbia University's Knight-Bagehot Fellowship, where she took courses in statistics, advanced corporate finance, family office management, and other classes at Columbia Business School. During her fellowship, she also led MBA seminars on due diligence and brought Pulitzer-winning authors to the business school.Before she joined Business Insider in 2018, she wrote about private equity real estate for three years at the industry's trade magazine, PERE. Meghan holds bachelor's and master's journalism degrees from Northwestern University.