
Pros and Cons of Coworking Spaces - dpods
https://money.howstuffworks.com/pros-and-cons-coworking-spaces.htm
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lwhsiao
Some of these social benefits can also be had at your local library, without
the fees. It's nice to just go pull up a desk in the library alongside
students studying for exams, curious readers curled up in comfortable chairs,
and professionals working on their latest reports. It's especially nice when
the library has separate areas for quiet, focused work and open discussions.

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julianlam
Libraries are great for heads-down focused work, but I can't imagine doing
sales calls at the library would be allowed.

My local library blocks vpn and ssh, actually, so that makes it even worse.

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saagarjha
> My local library blocks vpn and ssh

Where is this, and why?

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fimdomeio
It happened to me once. They just blocked all non http(s) traffic. By best
guess was to block people torrenting made by someone that didn't want to spend
more than two minutes working on it.

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mb_72
Quite the dismissive mention of going 'back to the basement'. I work from home
almost all the time (self-employed), and have quite a lovely work room setup
exactly how I want, with plenty of natural light and fresh air. My wife knows
not to bother me, so the only 'forced' interruption is our cat asking to be
taken outside. There is no unnecessary noise or distractions, both things
which have always put me off co-working spaces. If I want to socialise with
respect to tech, I'll go along to a local meet-up or other event.

This might sound terrible, but I don't want to expend each days' stack of
valuable clear-minded 'processing time' greeting people or talking about
whatever is on their mind. Of course, I acknowledge that as a solo guy I have
different needs to the people that find these places useful.

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starik36
I've recently "seen the light" as well. Had been forced to work from home due
to an injury - and it's pretty great. The PC setup is what I make of it. My
chair is the one I like, not the allocated one. The coffee I drink is of my
own choosing.

And there aren't any interruptions or work noise or being face to face in
meetings with people I don't like.

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dba7dba
Years ago my old work's Senior programmer got an expensive motorized standup
desk, in a private room. And I was stuck in an exposed cubicle with extra
narrow desk space, with no hope of getting that kind of treatment.

I thankfully work remote now. I dont have separate room but just a corner of
our bedroom, with a standup desk. I hope I never have to go back to working in
a normal office.

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zachruss92
I work out of own of the first coworking spaces in the country, Indy Hall. I
have been a member of it since 2012. I can say hands down that going there was
the true catalyst to my professional career.

Unlike most high tech "fancy" workspaces, Indy Hall purposefully has the
literal cheapest Ikea desks and an assortment of random chairs to use at them.
I'm not saying it's a dump, but it does not have the "wow" factor that a
WeWork has. Instead of coming to The Hall for the space you come for the
community. It's the people who make it a place where you want to be at.

It has a super diverse community. There are obviously people in tech but there
are also non-profit, journalists from USA Today, WaPo and Gizmodo, artists,
and even a plumber. The collective experience of this community is awe
inspiring.

One of the best parts is the lunch table. On any given day you can engage in
surprisingly intellectual conversations about almost anything (from the
Phillies to social issues to intricacies of the patent law with a lawyer
member).

There is a big downside to the space though, distraction. It literally a giant
open office plan and it is way to easy to get distracted. They have a quiet
zone and I have noise canceling headphones which help - but it's not ideal.

All in all I'm happier at a coworking space than I am at home.

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toomanybeersies
You've described my exact experience with coworking spaces.

Luckily I wasn't self employed and all my colleagues also worked in the same
space, so lack of productivity wasn't a huge bugbear for me. Everyone else was
equally affected and they paid me peanuts anyway so I didn't really care.

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mbrameld
My experience at DeskHub in Scottsdale, AZ wasn't great. There are a few
larger teams that rent portions of the open co-working area. Those teams tend
to be much louder than individuals working there, and they have a culture that
permits F-bombs in casual conversation. I have a standup every morning and
talk to clients briefly throughout the day, so I would have to find a quiet
place for that stuff.

They have 6 or so conference rooms of various sizes you can use. The agreement
you sign says you get so many units of conference room use per month, but it's
not enforced. They tell you verbally it's unlimited as long as you don't abuse
it. The practical result of this is that a few people camp out in the
conference rooms all day. The staff, instead of confronting the abusers
directly, just sends weekly emails to all users reminding them that conference
rooms are not private offices. With no incentive to change their behavior, the
conference room campers keep on camping.

I lasted almost a year, but now I'm back to the home office with occasional
trips to a cafe down the street when I need to get out of the house.

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sigi45
What do you mean by F-bombs?

Do you mean fuck as a word?

Thats an issue? Or are the people the issue?

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xeromal
He's talking about people like you working at a coworking space. Of course
saying the word fuck while on a standup with a client is wrong regardless of
their culture. It's unprofessional.

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keiferski
In my opinion, a better option (if you can afford it) is:

\- Start your day at the same coffee shop, every morning. Get to know the
people working there and the other regulars. Don't even try to get work done.
Just hang out and talk to people for 30 minutes.

\- Go to your own private office. Shut the door, have no distractions.

\- Meet with friends or clients over lunch or afternoon coffee. Go to evening
meet-ups if you feel like it.

This method maximizes both the ability to focus and social benefits, while co-
working does a mediocre job of both.

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sigi45
What type of social setup is a coffee shop? I mean whut? That feels super
superficial.

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yitchelle
So where do you go to socialise with other folks, if not to a place where a
lot of folks actually do their socialising?

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sigi45
With people i know? To a cafe.

With people i don't know? I really don't know. Perhaps a pub. Or a club (like
sports club). Or political party groups.

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drum
I have nothing but positive things to say about coworking spaces after having
worked at them for the last 3 years. I've met great friends, business partners
and clients. I think they'll continue to be important as the freelance and
remote working economies grow.

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kjksf
Could you share which coworking spaces you've used?

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drum
Coloft (closed), ROC (closed), and now Spaces - which is owned by Regus.

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prawn
I have worked in shared/open-plan offices for almost 20 years and
owned/operated a co-working space for the last few years. I prefer a more
social office, so it suits me. Productivity is one thing, but I'm here for
hours each day and I want to enjoy it. I have lifelong friends that have
arisen from shared offices and would be very hesitant about working in a
private room every day of the week.

I work in a small business environment, so having complementary businesses
around me is useful, but also insightful - I've learned a lot from
copywriters, graphic designers, marketers, etc.

At our coworking space, we fend off the types of tenants likely to be making a
lot of sales calls, and most calls are made outside of the main space. I think
it works pretty well.

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fergie
"Back in 2007, there were a grand total of 14 coworking spaces worldwide"

Really? I mean I don't have any hard evidence to the contrary, but that seems
really hard to believe.

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waylandsmithers
Sure, it wasn't a thing yet. You could probably also say there were only 14
social media influencers back then too.

In all seriousness it has been common for a long time for attorneys who are
solo-practitioners to share an office front and receptionist, but nobody ever
called it a co-working space.

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ausbah
are coworking spaces a "solution" to the lack of community many people in the
modern era seem to have, by turning work into one's community of sorts?

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toomanybeersies
When I was working in a coworking space it absolutely was.

The tech population is very transient, or at least it feels that way to me. It
seems that everyone is from out of town or an immigrant.

When I moved after university to start work in another city, I didn't know
anyone else in my new city. The coworking space I worked in, with a whole
variety of different companies (most of them non-tech), was a great place for
me to meet new people and make new friends.

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hacknat
I work at a non-profit coworking space that strives to put community first. It
is a registered art gallery and has programs for helping women and minorities
get their ideas off the ground. The community has been great and the noise
isn’t anything that a decent pair of noise-cancelling headphones can’t fix.

Coworking spaces are actually terrible businesses so they end up being real
estate plays for most people. The non-profit model is the best, IMO, because
it puts the focus on the community which ends up making the space great. The
non-profit element also ensures that it isn’t a software mono culture: a
couple of political campaigns, and the local ACLU chapter (to name a couple)
work out of the space and it super interesting to chat with them.

Addendum:

I also think coworking spaces are one of the rare times when open offices
don’t suck. I don’t work with anyone there, so if I have my headphones on no
one bothers me.

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steverob
I've been working off a space in Chennai, India for the last 5 months and the
experience has been mixed. Got the chance to meet some interesting people
there and me being on the introverted side, this was a nice opportunity to try
networking and stuff, at my own pace.

Its cost effective and the facility is top notch.

But the downsides are similar to what other people are describing here. People
camping out in Conf rooms / phone booths, speaking loudly over phone, and the
noise and distraction that's ever present.

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toomanybeersies
The concept of coworking spaces as a social space for a bunch of companies to
work in is great.

From a business standpoint you have a whole variety of different people wit
different skills and knowledge who can help you and can bounce ideas off,
often for free. They're great for networking and gaining new customers/clients
too. You also have this flexible working space, meeting rooms, and multimedia
equipment (printers, AV equipment, presentation rooms) that you wouldn't get
in a private office as a smaller company. If you're a member of a space that's
in a network it makes finding a place to work out of a lot easier when
travelling too.

That's the theory, at least. And there are a lot of coworking spaces that
achieve this, or get close. The one I used to work in was pretty much this. I
did have some complaints though about noise, privacy/distraction, and not
having a permanent desk to sit every day and pile up my crap.

Noise was a bit of an intrinsic problem, it was a high roof warehouse and
people had a bad habit of using their phones at their desks (annoying to have
a salesperson sitting next to me all day), but I listen to music all day so
wasn't too upset.

Privacy/distraction was caused by the problem that they didn't have adequate
separators/cubical bits at the desks, so you felt like you were sitting at a
massive dining table. Nice sometimes, but annoying at others when you're
trying to focus.

The hotdesking thing was annoying as shit. This was only a problem because my
boss was too cheap to pay for permanent desks, which would've also solved the
other two problems as we would've been able to customise our space.

And that's the core issue of coworking spaces. There's the theory of what a
coworking space is: this social collaborative etc. etc. thing. But in reality,
far too often they are just a cheap working space, either because companies
cannot afford something better, or are just too cheap to pay for something
better. Hotdesks are fine if you work in sales and are always out of office or
in meetings, or work as a solo founder. But they're horrible if you want to
sit in the same place next to your colleagues and code all day.

Different work environments work for different people, and in an ideal world
everyone would get the work environment they need for optimal productivity.
But in reality this doesn't happen because employers are cheap.

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josh_carterPDX
Coworking spaces are great just from a network effects perspective. Worth the
cost if they have they can make solid connections.

There is a great Portland based company helping people find viable
alternatives to coworking spaces. It's called Workfrom. You can find them at
[https://workfrom.co/](https://workfrom.co/)

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speedplane
Coworking only works if you can find others that work in your space. If you're
building database technology and most of the others at the co-working spot are
bloggers and fashion-tech startups, you're not going to get much out of it.

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alexchamberlain
> financial technology ("fintech") firm Barclays

One of the oldest and largest banks in the UK...

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thanatos_dem
Is your argument that they don’t deal with finances or that they don’t use
technology?

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ian0
Fintech is typically used to describe non-banks operating in the finance
industry (and presumably using technology). Before this it was used to
describe layering technology into banking. Its not used to describe actual
banks. As they have a name already.

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fouc
I wonder how many coworking spaces have a slack chat or similar?

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hiei
Anyone know of some solid coworking spaces in Seattle that are not
WeWork/CloudRoom?

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Bartkusa
Atlas Workbase
[https://www.atlasworkbase.com/](https://www.atlasworkbase.com/)

