

NYT: They're Working on Their Own, Just Side by Side - twampss
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/20/business/businessspecial2/20cowork.html?ex=1361163600&en=8b327e7ccfd2f790&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

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Electro
I like the idea, but I have rather odd habbits when I'm writing. I don't think
many people can stand listening to one album 4 times while I'm completely
zoned out from the music and haven't noticed it's stuck on loop in iTunes. I
think the worst was when my girlfriend sent me a song, by the time I looked
back into iTunes it said it had played 17 times, which was just about an hour.

So I'll probably just go with the age old, convert a bedroom into an in-house
office and do my socialising after hours.

~~~
twampss
I agree. It's a nice option to have though, for a change of scenery and
networking. Especially for those of us who live in NYC, our home offices are
most likely significantly smaller than in other cities. ;)

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wallflower
I tried a co-working site a couple times. It beats sitting in Starbucks or the
local coffee shop (with free AC outlets and wi-fi) with a bunch of strangers -
instead you are with your peers. And in a co-working space you don't feel like
you have to subsidize your stay with strategically timed-out coffee purchases.
Also, a nice thing is you can go out to lunch and leave your laptop there
(it's secure). The 'can you watch my laptop' when you have to use the bathroom
in a Starbucks-type environment (too much coffee subsidization) is always a
little sketchy and feels imposing.

The weird thing about co-working is that it's like study hall - because other
people are working - you feel the pressure to work as well - to not slack - or
maybe not study hall but cram session before finals in a college library. So
even though the music may be playing loud in the background, there isn't
really a lot of networking going on - everyone's busy with their own gig. So
you might actually get more interaction in an office setting - in my
experience there's not a lot of small talk. Just queries like 'Dave - can you
help me debug this [XHTML layout]?'

As a corporate worker bee programmer, I admire yet just got sorta jealous at
the co-workers there who make a good living designing Wordpress/XHTML/Drupal
(e.g. non-nitty gritty technical) sites for businesses.

Co-working is a powerful idea (like unionizing indie developers). I think it
depends on the work style/personality of the individual. E.g. if you twitter
multiple times daily, you're probably a good candidate.

