
The Rise of the WeWorking Class - espressomachiat
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/02/21/magazine/wework-coworking-office-space.html
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dalbasal
What a long winded article.

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?

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bsenftner
I ran a competing CoWorking space in Los Angeles. WeWork is the opposite of
the no-frills aesthetic: they have lots of perks, fun perks, they are not
cheap, and having any one perk is conspicuous. WeWork is how people not in
larger youth communities meet to get laid. That is it. WeWork is a youth
community of people spending mom & dad money, conspicuously in a play-like-
work space, not really working, and being super irritating to those trying to
work.

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rb808
> WeWork is how people not in larger youth communities meet to get laid

I never knew, maybe they should advertise this more.

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meddlepal
I'm not sure what that line is supposed to mean. I work in a WeWork as well
and everyone seems to be working. Maybe some are worse than others...

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jtms
I met my wife at work while we seemed to be working.

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rekshaw
_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._

Wow.

~~~
BucketSort
When did it become acceptable to straight up disrespect someone to their face
for their personal choices? Although I'm 29, I still remember a time where
there was at least the pretense of civility. Civility was the oil that kept
this machine running smoothly, now it's sputtering left and right. We don't
even use formal names like Mr./Ms. as much as we once did, if at all. I felt
that was an important part of creating a barrier of civil respect,
distinguishing personal relationships from civil relationships. We threw a lot
of cultural things away that were actually pretty damn important.

Edit: Also, my karma is now a binary number. Please don't up vote.

~~~
dsr_
People used to be polite to each other as long as they were the right people,
but being polite to the wrong people became a sin called "political
correctness".

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puranjay
I recently moved to WeWork after nearly half a decade of working in plainly
inferior coworking spaces.

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".

~~~
scandox
So would it be fair to say it's like freelancing but you feel like you're part
of a corporation? Like freelancing with the social and motivational aspects of
working at say Google or whoever?

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tonyedgecombe
Presumably without the politics and bullshit you get in a corporation.

~~~
scandox
Or the actual barrels of cash

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code4tee
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...

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crispyambulance
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.

Is that what these places are all like? It looks uncomfortable. It's like
doing all your work in a high-end cafeteria.

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jdpigeon
In my experience, yes. As an individual at the lowest price point you're
paying $450 a month to sit a table in a cafeteria.

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dsr_
I wonder if WeWork has already started an espionage (excuse me, business
intelligence) program or whether that's a future development.

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?

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RankingMember
Sounds like a good way to create an opening for a WeWork competitor to swoop
in and eat their lunch. Companies get a whiff of that kind of level of tech
monitoring even being a _possibility_ and any CSO will have them scrambling
for the door.

~~~
dsr_
Since that didn't happen with Facebook, Google or Amazon, why would you think
it would happen with WeWork?

(WeWork is valued around $22,000,000,000, about the same as GOOG's IPO.)

~~~
RankingMember
WeWork is basically a real estate business, not a tech company. The barrier to
entry to create a competitor is not exceptionally high, technology-wise. Not
so with the companies you mentioned.

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SCdF
WeWork is absurdly expensive.

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.

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Taylor_OD
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).

But hey I didnt have to buy a fridge or desks when I opened this office so
that's nice.

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magwa101
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.

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ohithereyou
Does anybody else feel that ads like this in the NYT should clearly be marked
as such?

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detaro
What is it advertising?

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ohithereyou
The article is one giant ad for WeWork.

~~~
detaro
On first read it totally didn't come across that way, but on second look I
might just be too far out of the target group to recognize as positive what it
advertises...

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bvm
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.

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theoh
The steelmanned version of your comment might be something like "graphic
designers these days really seem to have abandoned every recognizable
principle of 'good' design". That would be a claim that design quality is
deteriorating, like a lot of other aspects of civilization. There's a case to
be made for that perspective.

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.

~~~
ido
Do designers design for laypeople (=i.e. supposedly the audience of most
designs) or for other designers?

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moonbug
It's like no one's ever heard of Regus.

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cryoshon
that's because i think regus is a real place for people who want a small
office and who don't want to pay for extra frills.

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

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everdrive
Toggle Reader View (Ctrl+Alt+R)

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anonymfus
Please don't assume people's browsers. For example in Firefox reading view is
toggled by F9, and in Microsoft Edge it's toggled by Ctrl+Shift+R.

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infinitezest
I am on mobile and these keyboard-centric comments are exclusionary.

