What a long winded article.<p>I don't really understand the fascination/surprise at wework and similar. It's just office space, packaged in a way that suits a few underserved markets.<p>Flexibility is valuable, and was previously underavailable. It also turned out that a lot of the "work-from-home" people would like office space, if it's nice and they can afford it.<p>What is so surprising or notable here? A slightly quirky aesthetic? Espresso?
<i>A recent executive mandate declared the company a “meat-free” organization. When I interviewed McKelvey not long after the Summit, he had a very fuzzy time trying to explain the meaning of the “eight pillars” of its CultureOS and the relationships among them. But when he noticed that the P.R. representative happened to be carrying a single-use plastic water bottle, he admonished her to be mindful of her own consumption.</i><p>Wow.
I recently moved to WeWork after nearly half a decade of working in plainly inferior coworking spaces.<p>It's early days, but I wouldn't be wrong to say that this is probably the first time in my career that I haven't felt, well, "unmoored".<p>I freelanced through college, then through grad school, then I worked for a couple of years from home before moving to coworking spaces.<p>At all these coworking spaces, despite their regular events, I never really felt like I was a part of a broader culture. I don't know how, but WeWork manages to do that. Maybe it's because the people around me there look and act and work like me.<p>Whereas the average coworking space worker felt like he was struggling (heck, even drowning), the people at WeWork feel like they have more time, that they've done the battle, and if they haven't won, they've at least fought enough to win some peace. I don't know if I'm there yet, but I would like to imagine I'm getting there.<p>WeWork, with its pricing and positioning (it's 2x the rate of my last office) seems to attract people who want to buy into the vision of success, who don't want to see themselves as just "digital labor".
The dot-com bubble tells us that when company leadership appears more concerned with meat consumption on premises or water bottle choices of employees vs say addressing actual business issues like losing money hand over fist despite being in business for many years then the future may be a wee bit bumpy for said company...
Every time I see articles of these places there are pics of people with laptops, in rows, on narrow tables, almost elbow to elbow, sometimes sitting on high chairs or stools.<p>Is that what these places are all like? It looks uncomfortable. It's like doing all your work in a high-end cafeteria.
I wonder if WeWork has already started an espionage (excuse me, business intelligence) program or whether that's a future development.<p>Consider: an ordinary landlord knows how many desks you have, how many people show up on an average day, and how much garbage/recycling you put out. WeWork has operatives who can measure what percentage of your employees' days are spent at their desks, what they like to do for fun, when they are taking trips, where they are going, all their internet usage, how much they print (and if they cared, the contents of all print jobs), what they underline or circle on whiteboards. And of course, they can cross-correlate that across thousands of tenant companies, some of whom are certainly in competition with each other, and some of whom are listed on the stock markets already. Some of whom are no doubt conducting mergers, talks to be acquired... there's a wealth of non-public information that WeWork has access to. How long until they start to take advantage from it?
WeWork is absurdly expensive.<p>IDK, or I'm absurdly cheap (or am not the target audience)<p>In London you pay £450-850(!) per month for wework space, from a hotdesk (aka "go to a cafe / library") to a private office.<p>Instead, I just moved from a one bedroom flat to a two bedroom flat, increasing my rent by about £250 per month, and now have both a private office <i>and</i> a place for guests / co-workers to stay when they come to town.
In a WeWork currently. It's fine. Better than the last coworking space I was in but I still don't understand why any company would stay in a WeWork for longer than a year unless they only need 1 or 2 desks. The price is just not worth it. Offices are small and loud (glass boxes).<p>But hey I didnt have to buy a fridge or desks when I opened this office so that's nice.
I like the ability to optionally participate in a work culture, in fact, looks like you could pick and choose between a few. The forced culture of most companies is pretty tiring.
Does anyone else find they can't tell if things are an intentional design decision or an implementation bug anymore? case-in-point: the rendering of the title of this piece.