It seems like articles about WeWork take one of two tacks:
1. Isn't this "gig economy" thing weird? Isn't it strange that people don't have stable long term employment? What's up with that? Is it good?
2. Look at these weird people trying to make dating apps for dogs. This is so weird. Instead of working in a trading or ad shop and getting drunk at 3, they work for a tiny "internet company" and get drunk at 3. The sacrilege!
This seems to be a mix of both, though the article is definitely not trying to paint millennial entrepreneurs in a positive light, you can tell by the choice of focusing on a GS alumni.
I do think that anyone who complains about the WeWork aesthetic or whatever should try to rent their own short term office space (that isn't WeWork). It's fucking grim. You wind up in some ancient building with spongy floors, dodgy elevators, and signs in the bathrooms about how the pipes are bad so please basically don't flush anything. Or in a strip mall above a dentists office. Or the attic of a converted condo.
The WeWork goal seems to be to provide some space with decent amenities for a slight premium. What's wrong with that? Maybe their locations will vanish in a puff of smoke when demand dries up, but no one's asking you to invest your money in the future of WeWork. Would you go to a new restaurant opening and say "well yeah the food is good but most restaurants fail"? Who cares! Eat the food. Enjoy it while it's here.
We were in WeWork in Chicago --- there's 3 of them here, we were in West Loop --- for about a year. We left and rented an office, maybe 1100sqft?, about a 7 minute walk away. It has parking, relative (to WeWork) quiet, high ceilings, a kitchen, 2 private bathrooms, and conference rooms we don't need to reserve in a weird app or barter with friends for/with. We're 4 people (in this office). We pay less per person than we did at WeWork.
WeWork is useful! I think it gets a bad rap (though the atmosphere and the general vibe of the clientele probably does not).
But unless you're in SFBA or Manhattan, office space is just not that expensive. As soon as you're making payroll, it's pretty insignificant. If I start from 1-2 people again, I'll probably consider WeWork again. But I'll get out of WeWork much faster next time, too.
At a previous gig we used some shared office spaces like WeWork on occasion and they were "ok". We decided to stop because it just didn't make financial sense in the end.
It turns out that renting a decent-sized office in most metros and furnishing it isn't all that expensive. It's really only in bizarre markets like SF or NYC where they really click.
My thinking is that they work much better for companies in the 1 or 2 person early stage and quickly stop making sense as you near some number approaching 10 people.
I was at WeWork in SOMA ( San Francisco) this week for an interview with a Crypto Exchange startup. Was really surprise at how noisy it was, everywhere except the badge access room (which I'm guessing is very high fees).
The recruitment firm was working out of WeWork. That makes sense for them, cos they are on phone on all day, but what about software engineers and other techies? Do any of them work at WeWork? How do they deal with the noise? I don't see any way to do deep work in a place like this.
EDIT: This particular WeWork was unusually noisier than any other coworking places I've been at. Noisier than Workshop Cafe in Fidi, pariSoma in SOMA, and a couple of others that've since shutdown (I've been coworking on sideprojects nights, weekends since 2008).
We just quit WeWork (WeWork Transbay in SOMA) because of the noise. I think most people don't realize that the hot desk area is supposed to be a quiet area. I repeatedly told the community managers to make sure people know that, but they didn't do anything about it.
At one point, there was even a family with 2 small kids eating lunch there.
Also for 1-2 months half of the tables didn't have a power outlet because they had to remove the extension cords (security reasons) and had to wait until they could install the cords below the floor.And they didn't even offer a discount or something in return. Neither did they inform the customers how long and why this is happening - I had to go up to them and ask. How can this happen?
For a business where operational excellence and customer support must be stellar, they are not doing a very good job. And don't get me started on their software. And we've tried out 3 locations in SF, with similar experiences.
But I've had this experience working at private offices as well. It's basically a problem anywhere with a) open-office plans and b) sales/marketing people who are in the same area as developers (sometimes startups outgrow a co-working space but aren't big enough for a seperated office).
This is why I work with headphones on the majority of the time whenever I'm in an office (coworking or otherwise). I have enough trouble self-regulating my attention without having to distract myself from others.
I was in a WeWork for 2.5 years. Our floor had four phone booths but probably 20 or more people whose entire workday was spent on the phone, which led to multiple people pacing the halls while on a call. No amount of gentle reminders, glaring, or fighting back with my own noise would stop the loud conversations on the other side of the single-pane glass door.
There was a similar problem with the capacity of the men's bathroom.
WeWork should take more care that their physical infrastructure is not overwhelmed by subtenants who are mostly alike.
There are a lot of developers (I am one of them) who don't feel particularly distracted by ambient noise and can still do deep work. Having people and some work buzz around you can also be motivating.
WeWork is super noisy, and even if you go when it isn’t busy, they play loud music through a speaker system that you can’t turn off. Also, there are only 21 songs in the playlist. It does not shuffle, it just loops.
Maybe it is hit and miss, but I was in a WeWork in London for 4 months and it was fairly quiet, but it was 4 people to a glass-separated 'room' (called a 'shared office'). So it would depend on the random draw for the other 3 people. The 'hot desking' area pretty much doubled as reception/cafe/breakout-area and was very noisy, however.
We're also in Chicago, have seen tons of space like WeWork, and decided for the pet person cost it was more effective to get a commercial lease. Yes it was unnerving to sign a 3 year lease (especially as a boot strapped startup), but we just renewed for our 4th year!
As for Co working spaces, I think they have a place, but once you hit 1 or 2 other coworkers, you need your own space. It's worth the lawyer for reviewing what you're getting in to, but I do agree, there's a lot of sketchy places with dodgy and gross problems. But you can find nice spots if you're patient and diligent.
The problem with leasing is if you grow too fast you're stuck, and if you have to make cutbacks you're also stuck with the lease.
This is the real advantage of them. Even if it costs x% more the value of not being stuck with a lease for a long time is definitely worth it. A lot of financial firms in London are moving to them, leases are typically long (10 years with a 5 year break), and with the uncertainty around brexit it makes total sense to transfer the risk to WeWork et al for not much money at all.
I have no clue what terms the UK has, but in Chicago, you can find places all across the spectrum. I've used shared spaces on month-to-month, and I think they can be quite valuable. But once we reached a certain size, we needed to have our own space. Plus, we work in healthcare, so we have other (read:HIPAA) concerns that need to be dealt with as well.
Again, there can be value, and places like WeWork, 1871, Blue1647, et al, serve specific needs. Like I said before, a lawyer and a willingness to hunt for the right space make all the difference. And right now, there's more empty spaces than filled, so it's easier to negotiate something that could even be just yearly...
I worked in a Regus facility. It got the job done, but it just felt extremely corporate and uninspiring, especially when I compare it to WeWork. If you're a solo entrepreneur, or small team it's really nice being able to have the perks you'd get in a bigger firm's office space.
I use Regus currently. I think it’s fine: coming from an open office plan at my last company, the fact I can visually and audibly tune out people via a door and walls is awesome. I hated being forced to live in headphones land. My only complaint about the regus space is the length of the lease: I’ve considered wework to move to once my year is up in a couple months so I can go to a month to month plan. Unsure if I want to go back to a noisier/visually cluttered environment though...
Just don't get stuck on their email list... After unsubscribing countless times and still receiving emails from them, I had to threaten them with contacting the FTC to finally get removed from their mailing list.
My company just switched from a regular office building to Regus, presumably for accounting reasons (or to fire the office manager?). I haven't seen it as I'm remote, but I saw the plan and they have 3 people per office.
I don't like open-plan or cubes but I wonder if having three people in one office is any better, and I also wonder how many companies do that when they go with something like Regus.
I despise open office plans but the Regus approach was workable. When you work within a team in a room, the tendency for random noise was minimal. The only problem was noise leakage from other offices.
We have a local thing similar to wework here, it's OK but I find the aesthetic forced (fake brick wallpaper, fake wood tables, replica pre-distressed sofa's) and the absolute glut of offices around here makes it ridiculously expensive compared to the local market.
It's one redeeming feature is it hosts developer meetups free as a marketing move and has a decent room for that.
They're really nice spaces qua spaces: well lit, clearly designed by someone who is copying a better designer but executing very well at it, and they have everything you need to be a productive Internet person (power, fast wifi, somewhere to put the laptop).
> Isn't this "gig economy" thing weird? Isn't it strange that people don't have stable long term employment? What's up with that? Is it good?
If you look at it purely from the perspective of economic theory, stable long-term employment is weirder than everybody being an individual contractor. Ronald Coase asks the question "Why do firms even exist in the first place?" [1] and comes to the conclusion that many transaction costs come along with marketplaces, and firms may be well-suited for dealing with those transaction costs internally. In this light, It may be observed that the gig economy firms "solve" transaction cost sub-problems, eradicating the bulwark of the firm and exposing the would-be workers to the competitive forces of the marketplace.
Furthermore, people wring their hands over the gig economy mostly in some specific contexts like Uber drivers. They’re shedding
far fewer tears for their plumber who isn’t available for another month.
It should be noted that Uber isn't cheaper to operate than a cab, they are just operating at a loss to destroy the taxi industry. As soon as it's done with that, prices should rise.
I worked at a WeWork facility for 2 months in Bangalore. Thoroughly enjoyed it. I wouldn't think of renting a place again. It's a fucking nightmare here to deal with landlords, house keeping staff, electricity connection, internet connection and what not.
I just wish they had a better system for printing. It's a goddamn nightmare with the codes and printing queues. Just cut the crap out of printing administration and just make it free already.
I feel WeWork spaces are costlier in Bangalore, compared to the other co working spaces. I have looked around co-working spaces (mostly remodelled houses) which provides a quiet workspace with basic amenities for one third of WeWork's price.
You are bang on point about renting a place on your own. Absolute nightmare in Bangalore.
> The lavatories at the WeWork at 524 Broadway in Manhattan, incidentally, are terrific—enclosed stalls with clever toile wallpaper featuring a repeating print of surveillance cameras partially obscured by roses and leaves.
This. The toilet stalls in US are the worst. No privacy whatsoever. Seems like their design is meant to oppress. Hurry you back to work, grunt!
In WeWork I can go to a quiet dark room, with moody music, and take a shit, in peace.
In our new office, our stalls are laid out in such a way that you can make eye contact with the person shitting across from you.
Aside from all the other myriad god-awful decisions that someone didn't think through, this one weirds me out the most. I know it's hard to see these things on blueprints, but it's as if these people never shit.
(I know, I know - the correct answer is, "this is the cheap best-practice way of installing toilet stalls". Fuck you; I'm glad I have a private unisex bathroom I can typically use to handle private bodily functions.)
Many casinos have two-way mirrored ceilings for observation. Hopefully it's a normal mirror in the restroom ceilings, otherwise I'm not sure how legal it would be.
I am guessing you never use public rest rooms? Many stall doors have a vertical gap by the lock for extra clearance since they are designed to be cheap. Especially public school bathrooms.
I have been in quite a few countries, everyone poorer than the US , yet somehow , as cheap as they made their bathrooms, it isn't possible to look into peoples stalls.
Which is annoying, because there are only a fixed number of stalls (in my WeWork there are 7 total stalls for all the men in a 7 story building). I hate going from to floor looking for a place to take a shit. Unless you had something really sickening for breakfast or lunch, taking a shit should not take more than 2 minutes. I don't know what people are doing in the bathroom that takes them so long, but I suspect it's people taking a break from their work in privacy.
I worked for Google back in the olden days when most people didn't have a smart phone. One holiday season, they did this really cool thing where everybody got a free Android phone. Starting the next day and continuing forever, the toilet stalls were full all the time.
Sounds like an office design problem if people are using the toilets as their private space. Maybe there was no other existing space for the same purpose, that is, a space where you are alone and have complete privacy.
As of 3 years ago, the WeWork at Bowling Green was also tight on bathrooms, but the private stalls automatically unlocked after 5 minutes. It seemed like a genius idea, but there was still always a line of several people (and the building was so cramped that I didn't really blame other people for wanting to get more than 3 feet away from their coworkers for a few minutes).
Nothing worse than the standard American corporate building restroom system - each floor has one or two bathrooms per gender and each company has to give keys to the employees when they go to the bathroom. Aside from being annoying (how many times have you wanted to go but there's no key?), people lose the keys and well, they may not wash their hands.
Do these buildings do this for security? I'll never understand. In my current office we share a few bathrooms with one other company but there's no key at least.
Yes. One building we were in had a problem where people would walk in off the street, then hide in the bathroom to attack or mug people. The hope with the key protocol is that potential attackers would enter, try the bathroom door, see it was locked, then leave.
This is not a common thing. This is only going to happen in high crime areas. Full building access control is a necessity if you are in an area like this. Locking the bathrooms is not a good solution.
At two different workplaces there was always a 'class' divide in the bathrooms. For us workers, the standard bright lights, stalls (w/ the gaps people are talking about), uncomfortable temperatures at times, noise, etc.
Then there were client bathrooms on a different floor. At one workplace, it was twice the size of the normal bathroom with the same amenities (2 stalls, 2 urinals), quieter, music, and air spray. The other workplace also had 'client' bathrooms which were two private bathrooms.
Both of the latter were a mainstay for people going off to take private dumps.
Agreed. I've only ever seen toilet stalls like this in the US, where the doors and walls are so low that everything from the navel up is totally on show...it's just fucking weird.
I live and work in the US and have never seen or heard of toilet stalls where the walls and doors are that short. That's bizarre. Where did you see that?
I ran a coworking space in downtown Los Angeles for about 3 years, at the same time that WeWork was rising. I'm also older, I was in my late 40's while operating the CoWorking space called DropLabs. I noticed that the people who preferred WeWork and similar LA coworking spaces were young, under 30, with family money they did not value, so the prospect of a trendy coworking space with lots of other young people for 2-6 times what we charged, seemed really odd to me. So, I tried working there for a week to see what the attraction is - it is all the other young people, WeWork's atmosphere, in the Hollywood one at least, felt like a high school dance, with a surprising amount of flirting and partying between the people at the space. I felt, perhaps a half dozen people out of the nearly one hundred there were actually trying to get work done. the majority behaved like they had no idea what work is. After that week, I returned to my non-fancy coworking space downtown and operated it for another year before closing. WeWork, in Los Angeles at least, captured all the young, flush with family cash "entrepreneur wannabes" and sucks their cash. WeWork is 1.5 to 2x the cost of a office. They figured out youth will pay to be around other youth, creating a "entrepreneur play zone" where they reinforce the idea they are not really wasting their family's money nor their lives.
I remember in early 2000 Newsweek did a whole "tech" issue. In it was a story about a woman who charged $600 an hour helping fledgling startups buy furniture for their offices. This article gave me the same vibe as that one. These tenants don't sound profitable (I could be wrong, they could all be wildly successful) and WeWork is expanding aggressively expecting their to be more of them. When they stop paying the rent, wework stops paying the mortgage.
It's not that dire. They simply wind up renting out entire floors of their real estate to "legacy" companies. Sure they can't charge the premiums that come from leasing small spaces, but they're a real estate firm which makes them a little more resilient to a startup downturn.
It's easy to mock the aesthetics and trends in such a community. But, honestly, focusing on quality of life was long overdue, and has since spread far and wide. For many of the dot-com boom's startups, it may be the most permanent, and beneficial, legacy.
I worked at a startup that used WeWork (Denver) for about 9 months. When I first walked into the lobby, I wondered if I was in the right place, because it felt like a clothing-retail store, complete with constant runway-music playing from overhead.
My first impression was "how am I supposed to work here?" I loved that they had cold-brew and beer on tap, a clean working-space, and interesting events. They seemed really optimized to provide a workspace that was fun.
The problem was, I wasn't there for fun, I was there to get stuff done and for that I needed a place that was peaceful, quiet, with few distractions. The environment at WeWork wasn't optimized for that kind of long, deep work and in fact seemed to actively fight against it.
If your work tasks consist mostly of light, interruptible "busy" tasks, like responding to email, or participating on Slack, WeWork is probably fine. If your work consists of long, deep-dive tasks, I'd recommend getting your own office space until WeWork starts providing an atmosphere that better accommodates peace, quiet, and isolation.
To be fair, a lot of tech company offices are not much quieter than a WeWork e.g. open plan office/many places I've seen put engineers right next to people that have to be on phones all day.
And i don't just mean those floor hopping beer parties that start Friday around noon, but the weekly get togethers that are nothing less than cheap alcohol ragers.
That place is impossible to get stuff done in (but a lot of fun to visit).
This should be the first post. I can't even believe it wasn't mentioned in the article as far as I could tell. Is Esquire writing puff pieces for SoftBank now? Are they a major advertiser or a controlling interest in one?
The binge drinking starts well before noon there -- nearly every single day, at least all over WeWorks in New York.
You can get noise cancelling headphones. It's like working at an open office floor plan at a big tech company. Also in California they're no longer allowed to have beer on tap; something about underage drinking (for those outside the U.S., the drinking age is set at 21). I'm surprised this hasn't become an issue in other states that are even more conservative.
Active noise cancelling doesn’t really help with the type of noise you get from a lot of people talking in a space, and the best passive noise canceling headphones are generally not comfortable enough to wear for long periods of time.
I used to work in a coworking space at my old company. I loved it, I had just moved to the city and didn't know anyone, so it was a great opportunity to meet people.
We'd have a great big drinking session on Friday afternoon, get absolutely blitzed, and then head to the bar. Coming straight out of university, it was amazing. Sometimes we'd supplement it with a Wednesday session as well.
As far as actually being productive goes though, it was terrible. You never know where you're going to sit, often you're across the office from your coworkers. You can't have any personal desk space, and it's really noisy. But hey, I had fun.
I'm resisting googling this Hater app because reading the whole tale of Brendan reads like the greatest satire of the startup world, ever. But I'm afraid if I Google it I'll find out it isn't satire...
Sometimes I wonder if there is a class of startup founders who are basically only doing what they are doing for their own personal brand building and after a few years or whatever you become semi well known enough in tech circles to parlay that into something else or an acceptance into some b-school and go back to a real job.
That's exactly the vibe I got from the "cofounder" who is Head of PR. At 2% equity and $1,500 a month, that has to be the rawest deal I have heard of for someone who is essentially responsible for all of the company's traction.
Yeah, not sure how you live on $18k/year salary in NYC unless you're being supported by your family, which is what I'm guessing is happening here for both of them. Not many people have a network of exclusively friends and family to fund their seed round to the tune of a few $100k...
Well, "PR" is FAR from an actual growth lead. PR is a tactic within the overall marketing stable. No straight-up PR person is going to actually create, manage, and optimize growth beyond just PR.
True story: I worked for OkCupid Labs a few years ago and we made "Hater Dater" as a hack project. The concept was kind of a joke, but we actually ended up extracting a useful tagging library that we used in other projects. I put a little more time into it after the Labs was closed, but never thought it worth putting _that_ much effort into. So it's amusing to see someone working on this project in earnest, with funding, when internally we couldn't get the OKC/Match/IAC resources to play with it for longer than a week (which honestly is probably the right call). Maybe the moral of the story is that life is kind of a joke?
"...to coincide with some canny PR stunts—coverage on The View, Good Morning America, CBS’s Sunday Morning, and Fox & Friends; features on seven blogs embargoed for the same day; a viral public- art installation depicting Trump and Putin nude and locked in an embrace."
Please could someone on HN tell me how the hell one organises, gets funding and pays for this type of PR. I can dev the apps but I am just unable to promote.
Any help or information is appreciated, thank you.
A bit of both. There's nothing here specific to WeWork itself. You could say a lot of these things about practically anyone who works their day job at any kind of co-working space. It feels like a bunch of anecdotes about freelancers and small business owners who happen to work under the same roof. There wasn't much actual substance and it was hard to tell whether any conclusions were going to be drawn at the end (I'll admit to giving up halfway).
We started our company at WeWork and moved to our offices when we were around 7 people. It was a very convenient solution for a young company that just want to concentrate on what is important (the product). We never participated in any social activities and hardly knew out neighbors (if at all). I'd do it the same way again.
I was looking for a twice a week office in Berkeley and tried out the WeWork. Unless you get the all access package with assigned seat, their offering is absurd. I literally could only hang out in the cafe, which had diner seating or some other awkward arrangements.
I feel like for WeWork style business, it should be a race to the bottom (in terms of prices). Once the idea is validated, there would be (as there are) lots of local clones that would try to make a more cool indie version of WeWork. The resulting price-cutting and heavy competition make business rather difficult.
As such, I'm not sure where the economy of scale will come from and why should this be a sustainable business? To be fair, Starbucks and other coffee/restaurant chains also have similar general business characteristics.
Along this note, I don't understand why WeWork is a venture-backed business as opposed to a normal bootstrap business (with more emphasis on early cash-flow and less on growth) as it's usually the case with the above type businesses.
There's a certain network effect, at least for some people: you can just take your business on the road and work in a different city every week.
With the name recognition they're getting, they may also get really good deals on office space: I've personally witnessed a co-working space gentrifying a whole city block. The whole block was also owned by the same investor, who apparently gave them a 50% rebate on a ten-year contract. She has easily gotten a 10x ROI on it, since rents in the rest of the buildings tripled within two years.
That's a great point. Hip, cool, modern entrepreneur types can easily work as agents of gentrification which as you pointed out can lead to massive increase in wealth for nearby properties owners (at the expense of previous occupants/patrons, some will argue).
The decreased wealth of occupants is the entire source of the landlord's increased wealth when rent increases, are there really people who will argue that isn't the case?
I guess purely logically, you are right. But I would be against the underlying theme behind that general type of thinking. If you take that line of thought and extrapolate it, it starts getting close to a socialistic/anti-economic progress point of view.
The answer is probably the same as it is for Starbucks et al: execution is a lot more difficult than it looks like from the outside, and nailing scalable execution is an order of magnitude harder yet.
any idea how to unsubscribe from their mail list? this week I got at least three spasms from this shady company, yet I font remember providing them with my email address and they are missing unsubscribe link in e-mail, so my whole impression of this company summed to two keywords - shady spammers
How the hell is WeWork “pre-revenue” or even “recent revenue” — they have been around since 2010.
Yet the CEO is admitting that the valuation is pretty much bullshit; how can “spiritually” make a single note but of difference for how much a company is worth? Imagine if a company said they were highly valued because they were committed to prayer and going to church every Sunday.
> For a pre-revenue or just recent revenue product
WeWork started in 2010. If they aren't making money after 8 years, then they aren't pre-revenue at a $20,000,000,000 valuation but scammers. Every other lease company says these types of rentals are lucrative, so why aren't they for WeWork?
What's funny is, Adam is from New York and this reminds me more of east-coast style. East coast tech companies think west coast companies run on flower power and try to imitate their success, while west coast companies tend to really be much more numbers-driven.
"Plenty of big companies are now tenants with their own floors or wings in WeWork: Microsoft, IBM, GE, Spotify, Bank of America, NBC Left Field, a fledgling unit of the network aimed at cord-cutting millennials." I personally find this trend problematic. Getting in to WeWork is not a challenging task. ONLY requirement is that you are able to pay your daily/weekly/monthly dues. If all of this is being done by large corps. for PR purposes than I can understand the whole "connect to Millennials bandwagon aspect". But of it is being done to actually hire "good" talent then I am not sure if it is always guaranteed that 3 out of 20 WeWork-ers are more than "good" coders. For me WeWork is like that coffee shop that never closes, there is always a table available for the coder in you and you have to paya premium price for average coffee.
1. Isn't this "gig economy" thing weird? Isn't it strange that people don't have stable long term employment? What's up with that? Is it good?
2. Look at these weird people trying to make dating apps for dogs. This is so weird. Instead of working in a trading or ad shop and getting drunk at 3, they work for a tiny "internet company" and get drunk at 3. The sacrilege!
This seems to be a mix of both, though the article is definitely not trying to paint millennial entrepreneurs in a positive light, you can tell by the choice of focusing on a GS alumni.
I do think that anyone who complains about the WeWork aesthetic or whatever should try to rent their own short term office space (that isn't WeWork). It's fucking grim. You wind up in some ancient building with spongy floors, dodgy elevators, and signs in the bathrooms about how the pipes are bad so please basically don't flush anything. Or in a strip mall above a dentists office. Or the attic of a converted condo.
The WeWork goal seems to be to provide some space with decent amenities for a slight premium. What's wrong with that? Maybe their locations will vanish in a puff of smoke when demand dries up, but no one's asking you to invest your money in the future of WeWork. Would you go to a new restaurant opening and say "well yeah the food is good but most restaurants fail"? Who cares! Eat the food. Enjoy it while it's here.