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.
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.
What is so surprising or notable here? A slightly quirky aesthetic? Espresso?
The whole point of the article is that it's not.
"All its accessories serve to buttress its real product: “office culture” as a service."
It might be more helpful to address the flaws in their argument than merely to state its opposite.
How do you argue that it is, in fact, a drink?
If the article touches anything like 'class' it doesn't touch it in the first couple of thousand words.
I never knew, maybe they should advertise this more.
That said, the building setup itself isn't all that great to work in, since despite the perks, actual basics of office maintenance seem to be ignored/shoved under the rug by the company. If your lifts have problems, you can't afford to give out too many ID cards, the microwaves keep failing and the bathrooms aren't cleaned properly, it doesn't matter how many arcade machines and ping pong tables you have.
The entire message is aesthetic: there's no dialog or text at all, let alone an argument as to why WeWork would benefit your organization. It struck me as more like lifestyle-brand advertising than anything.
Image and marketing matters, as much as engineers wish it didn't
Wow.
Edit: Also, my karma is now a binary number. Please don't up vote.
It always has been, surely? But for a different set of things than mere consumer choice.
When did we become so self centered that we think we can behave however we please while at work under the guise of "it's just a personal choice, man" and any reprimanding of not following company policies is automatically considered "disrespectful?"
When people started having personal choices that affected the people around them. So: since always.
What disrespect? Where was that?
A whole comment thread developed without anybody questioning the alleged "disrespect"...
That time is lost in the mists of history, though which choices this is acceptable for have been different in different times and places.
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".
I freelanced through college, then through grad school, then I worked for a couple of years from home before moving to coworking spaces.
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.
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.
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".
Is that what these places are all like? It looks uncomfortable. It's like doing all your work in a high-end cafeteria.
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?
It would be worth something for larger companies but for these WeWork will have only limited insight since they're unlikely to rent all or even a significant share of their total space from one provider. Lead generation is probably the ceiling.
Maybe they could do some targeted advertising/deals for various additional services. But probably not even that. Let's say they wanted to provide accounting services. Can they beat Mabel Luna? Will they have someone to answer a quick question about cash flow or depreciation?
(WeWork is valued around $22,000,000,000, about the same as GOOG's IPO.)
>Fano sees WeWork buildings as one giant sensor for data collection, and he wants to map them down to the object. Understanding the space means understanding how to make it more efficient and better for members.
https://www.businessinsider.com/weworks-secret-weapon-will-b...
Now Slack, GSuite and others practically have the salary and work history of millions of programmers. Everyone seems to be totally okay with that.
IDK, or I'm absurdly cheap (or am not the target audience)
In London you pay £450-850(!) per month for wework space, from a hotdesk (aka "go to a cafe / library") to a private office.
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 and a place for guests / co-workers to stay when they come to town.
But hey I didnt have to buy a fridge or desks when I opened this office so that's nice.
Puzzling design is definitely not a contemporary trend. It was more common in the 1980-90s, but the style reached its height when CSS wasn't available, most visitors were unfamiliar with the Web etc. so pulling this off in a major publication like the NYT would be risky. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Carson_(graphic_design...
(To wit, it's in The New York Times Magazine: its printed version has had experimental design styling for quite a while)
But I'm guessing you just meant that hip graphic design/typography often confounds your own expectations. If you aren't a design practitioner/enthusiast, I don't know why you would expect your preconceptions of what design should look like to be validated.
i was very pleased renting from regus, and i got an entire small office to myself and my friend for the price of membership with no dedicated space that you'd be paying at wework or similar
