CoStar's Squid Game moment - Andy Florence is a straight up psycho
https://archive.ph/t7IGu

Others see a darker side to Florance's generosity. At a 2019 sales conference CoStar organized in Phoenix, Arizona, Florance arranged to have $100,000 in different denominations stuffed into hundreds of balloons. The balloons hung suspended in netting from the ceiling of a large hotel ballroom where about 500 CoStar salespeople and other staff were gathered.

On Florance's command the balloons were dropped, and the room erupted into chaos, two people who attended the event said. 

People used forks and knives to pop the balloons and grab the money. One of the attendees said at least one person was hit in the head by a fork thrown by someone attempting to knock down balloons stuck in the netting. 

"You could let us have our dignity and just hand us the cash," the attendee, a former salesman at LoopNet, said, adding that the event reminded him of "Squid Game," the Netflix show that depicts a contest where participants risk their lives for a large cash prize. 

CoStar said in its statement that "to characterize the balloon drop as anything other than a unique approach to building excitement among employees would be inaccurate."

The other attendee, a former marketing employee, said she noticed a broad smile on Florance's face as he looked on at his scrambling employees.  

"He seemed so happy," she said, "to watch his team jumping over each other to get the cash."
[{"id": "i2ukezd", "text": "This was done by a publicly traded home builder in 2006. Also in Phoenix, with all the sales people present. I walked with $2,100.\nWhile I was in my young 20's and didn't have much concern for being treated with such disregard, I certainly understand OPs perspective. It was wild.\nShortly thereafter, the market crashed and things became quite depressing. As the abundance party came to a screeching halt and people were laid off in droves, I always thought back to the balloons holding cash.", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "i2v34zf", "text": "CoStar is also notorious for anticompetitive business practices and using litigation to drive competitors out of business and ensure that they keep their monopoly on the real estate data market. \n\nNot a company that I respect.", "replies": [{"id": "i2vh8ic", "text": "Yeah the article has a section about how they sue anyone and everyone. Not sure how they haven't gotten hit with an antitrust yet but karma is winding up to smack them eventually\n\nYou can't burn every bridge every time and keep your client base forever. Sooner or later a couple of the big shops are going to stop giving them their data and create their own solution.", "replies": [], "depth": 2}, {"id": "i2vp9xs", "text": "I think their data is generally shite as well. Unit counts, rents, occupancy data, etc. is often incredibly wrong. \n\nI tend to work in smaller markets, so I'm not sure what it's like in the bigger MSAs, but the data I've seen on their platform differs *greatly* from figures I've researched on my own and/or confirmed with clients that actually own the properties.\n\nThis pisses me off because the big players actually trust CoStar's garbage and I inevitably have to source my own data to refute CoStar's. Moreover, their submarkets are completely nonsensical. They look like gerrymandered congressional districts.", "replies": [{"id": "i2x9j3h", "text": "Their data is crap in mid-to-small markets, but in the big markets they are fairly solid, and more importantly, they are the only large provider of market data.", "replies": [], "depth": 3}], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "i30oe3h", "text": "Boo hoo. Sounds like a bunch of crybabies reaching seriously hard to complain.", "replies": [], "depth": 1}]