
The WeWork Manifesto: First, Office Space. Next, the World - robertgk
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/17/business/the-wework-manifesto-first-office-space-next-the-world.html
======
gorpomon
There's a lot of people, both here on HN and in our industry who roll their
eyes when issues of diversity and inclusivity come up, but companies and
spaces like WeWork are the result of not having those conversations.

I spent ample time in these places during my "startups are amazing!" phase, it
ultimately was disheartening. The people are kind, and they make some gestures
towards D&I, but those are limited, and the end result are places like WeWork.
The end result is a bland, upper class niceness. The beer is craft, the
sandwiches are tasty, the countertops are marble and the bulbs are always
Edison. But the ideas they generate, they're just... normal. They're not
really strange or weird or delightful.

Furthermore, it's hard to escape the notion that places like this consume more
resources than they create. What's the cost of hundreds of well groomed people
with impeccable design? I'm not sure, but I'd suspect their carbon footprint
is through the roof. But the real cost is that our society has to bend to
support them, and that society has fundamental inequities.

I wouldn't expect any meaningful revolution to come out of a WeWork, not
because they're not smart people, but because they're people for whom this
society works well already, so there's no need for a revolution. What ideas do
come out of these spaces? We've seen them already, they're ideas titled
towards optimizing your life, because of course, your life is already about as
well oiled as you can get. Fine for a small subset of people, but hardly world
conquering.

~~~
mlevental
i think this is a very insightful comment. i'm one of those people that spend
a lot of time discussing and arguing about diversity and inclusion (here and
irl) and what i wish people understood intimately what you allude to here

>but because they're people for whom this society works well already, so
there's no need for a revolution.

it's very hard to convince someone for whom a system is working that there's
potentially something immoral about perpetuating that system. the feeling is
that since they're not proximally personally culpable that it's not a moral
failing to participate but this is true

>But the real cost is that our society has to bend to support them

capital and resources allocated for wework is capital and resources that could
have been allocated else where if our cultural priorities were different and
therefore it's to the detriment of "abnormal" peoples that wework exists and
persists.

i know i'm basically recapitulating everything you've said but (clearly) i
think it merits emphasis.

this prompts the question: how do you do it? i think i'd be interested to know
how you became sympathetic or partial if you're not from a marginalized
community yourself (and we can take that offline) but this is hopeful as well

>But the ideas they generate, they're just... normal. They're not really
strange or weird or delightful.

normative practices by definition normalize status quo. if in 50 years you
still want to be wearing plaid, drinking craft beer, and listening to lcd
soundsystem then go ahead and continue to exult in wework et al but otherwise
you should try to include people that look very much different from you.

~~~
zeth___
>otherwise you should try to include people that look very much different from
you.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation
where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content
of their character. - MLK

Perhaps you should rethink your life choices when you're making offices
"diverse", read exotic, for rich people to enjoy themselves in.

~~~
mlevental
First of all "look" is colloquial for holistically be: "what does a democracy
look like - it looks much different from DPRK". Second i have news for you: to
first approximation on a global scale the easiest way to find someone that
thinks differently from you is to find someone that looks different from you.
Now sure if I bias my sample (picking people that look different from me but
live in the bay area) then that's worthless and I need to investigate second
order effects. Third i think there's something perverse about taking that line
and trying to twist it to substantiate an argument for why we /shouldn't/ hire
more black people (for example)

~~~
zeth___
The idea that there are black people in the first place is a racist one. There
is humanity, there are individuals and there are classes, anything else are
fever dreams of centuries past.

To try and fix original sin by making it into original virtue ends up in a new
apartheid.

There are no black people, there are no white people. Anyone who calls
themselves a leftist should be pushing this line as hard as possible.

~~~
mlevental
i am as left as they come and what you're missing is

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_materialism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_materialism)

~~~
zeth___
If race matters always why aren't we talking about the Saxons and the Normans
of England. Two races which were segregated by law, with each village of
Saxons having group guilt if any Norman was killed on their land.

Race is a construct of the capitalists to divide the working class. That the
American 'left' is the most enthusiastic promoter of race today just show what
a wonderful return on investment the bourgeoisie got from privatizing the
universities and then funding the research in social sciences that benefits
them most: cultural, sexual and racial theory/criticism.

Or as Marx put it:

All industrial and commercial centres in England now have a working class
divided into two hostile camps, English proletarians and Irish proletarians.
_The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who forces
down the standard of life._ In relation to the Irish worker, he feels himself
to be a member of the ruling nation and, therefore, makes himself a tool of
his aristocrats and capitalists against Ireland, thus strengthening their
domination over himself.

He harbours religious, social and national prejudices against him. His
attitude towards him is roughly that of the poor whites to the niggers in the
former slave states of the American Union.

 _The Irishman pays him back with interest in his own money. He sees in the
English worker both the accomplice and the stupid tool of English rule in
Ireland._

 _This antagonism is kept artificially alive and intensified by the press, the
pulpit, the comic papers, in short by all the means at the disposal of the
ruling class. This antagonism is the secret of the English working class’s
impotence, despite its organisation. It is the secret of the maintenance of
power by the capitalist class. And the latter is fully aware of this._

[https://archive.org/stream/MarxEngelsCollectedWorksVolume10M...](https://archive.org/stream/MarxEngelsCollectedWorksVolume10MKarlMarx/Marx%20%26%20Engels%20Collected%20Works%20Volume%2043_%20L%20-%20Karl%20Marx_djvu.txt)

------
madamelic
More and more I agree with the sentiment of "Let's change the world" being
pure BS.

Why grow infinitely until you fail when you could just get really, really good
at a few things for a long time (Oh that's right. VCs and their desire for
unsatiable "growth").

I'd much rather work for a company that focuses on one or two core
competencies than one that tries to everything ok.

~~~
tomc1985
It's the Shareholder Directive that you want destroyed. Executives in this
country have no choice but to maximize value for shareholders. We need to
destroy that rule and its surrounding culture if you want to get rid of
insatiable growth

~~~
pixie_
Stopping optimization, evolution, growth?

Go outside and yell out, "Hey world, I'm good! You can stop evolving now,
thanks!"

~~~
fwdpropaganda
Growth for the sake of growth is how cancer kills you.

------
praulv
" But WeWork takes extra steps to encourage fraternization. Like beer kegs
that never run dry.

More than most companies, WeWork promotes the consumption of alcohol as an
inherent virtue. Posters on the wall encourage people to have a drink. There
are wine tastings at WeLive. Company parties feature top-shelf liquor. Mr.
Neumann has a well-known penchant for tequila, and a well-stocked bar is
prominent in his office.

On a recent Tuesday at 4:07 p.m., the community manager of a WeWork in Midtown
Manhattan sent an email reading: “It’s time to get your creative juices
flowing! Join us on the 5th floor to drink some wine & paint a beautiful
picture.” Just after noon on Valentine’s Day, there was an invitation to share
wine and cake in the common area.

Though alcohol is a social lubricant for some, it can be off-putting to many
others. Many women have shared stories of feeling uncomfortable with what they
described as a frat house culture at some WeWorks, prompting some to leave."

So office space AirBnB for a bunch of frat boys. No thanks.

~~~
orf
Alcohol = frat boys. Ok.

Back in reality it's a very, very common social lubricant, and is a pretty
good... Add-on(?) to we-work that attracts people. Alcohol isn't expensive if
brought through a distributor, but most people attach a high 'bar' price to
it, so see it as an expensive freebie when really it's not.

Just because some people don't drink means we-work is bad? Also not sure if
'wine tasting' screams 'frat boy'....

~~~
praulv
I've worked in one of these trendy tech companies with a bar. They attract
exactly the same kind of employee. Generally a complete bellend twat probably
privately schooled and educated on his parent's money with grand delusions
about his place in society. If you want to get smashed, there's plenty of pubs
near by. No need to enforce your social code on me. I'm here to code.

~~~
orf
Same, except our bar is made of plywood and is tacky as hell. It attracts our
employees. I'm also here to code but some free drinks while I socialize with
my colleagues isn't bad, especially given central London drink prices.

------
fwdpropaganda
Yawn. Present: delusions of grandeur, Near-future: toxic culture. Far-future:
unethical or even illegal corporate behavior.

------
ryanwaggoner
What on earth is the view of WeWork’s core competencies (whatever those may
be, other than taking advantage of cheap money) that would lead one to believe
they should be running for-profit elementary schools?

~~~
peatfreak
They are in the right space at the right time, they have the right image, and
they are probably backed up by a hefty amount of good luck (and investment
money) to boot. There are a million and one co-working spaces, I've spent a
huge proportion of my professional life at one co-working space or another, in
some form or another, certainly ever since they became a "thing", and my rule
of thumb that has come out of all of this is that the fancier and more
salubrious (and expensive) one is, the less likely one is to produce authentic
or meaningful work (obviously according to my own personal definition of
meaningful and assuming that authenticity is important to the worker).

~~~
ryanwaggoner
_They are in the right space at the right time_

See this, what does this mean? Elementary education seems the furthest thing
from their space. Why not start hotels or restaurants or hospitals or grocery
stores? Those have about as much overlap with WeWork (uses physical space) as
elementary education does.

The _only_ thing that seems to make sense is that parents at WeWork can more
easily drop their kids there? But it seems like daycare would be 10x more
useful, since it’s already expensive and hard to find in big cities, whereas
elementary school is universal and free. Granted, some people are going to
want to pay for private school but that’s a minority of parents, whereas
basically all parents of infants and toddlers are paying for childcare one way
or another.

I don’t get it.

~~~
peatfreak
> They are in the right space at the right time

I should have made myself clearer by explaining what "space" I was referring
to. I wasn't referring to any sort of educational space, I was strictly
referring to the abundance of co-working spaces these days, especially "cool"
ones. WeWork is the archetype of the cool (and expensive) co-working space.

The area I live in has an abundance of these types of workspaces. It's almost
comical. One of the newest (it hasn't completed construction yet) is
advertising a creche. I thank my lucky stars that I'm in a privileged enough
position that I (currently) earn enough that my partner can stay home and be
the primary carer of our daughter whilst I go and work in my studio/workshop
in an unfashionable (but surely up-and-coming) part of our city.

------
gatsby
This will not end well: “He believes there’s an energy behind the brand, and
he’s gotten people to invest at that valuation. He has not tried to explain it
in traditional financial terms.”

~~~
raverbashing
Seems like another case of "a fool is born every minute"

------
remir
_“We all understand how complicated and regulated school is compared to the
simpler business that we are already in,” Mr. Neumann said. “But we decided
we’re going to go into education. If you really want to change the world,
change kids when they’re 2.”_

Am I the only one who found this a bit weird?

------
woolvalley
So what is the attraction of something like we-work? I've never been in one
myself. Obviously investors see a lot more into it than the 1000s of other
startups, so it is succeeding despite the haterade.

Is it something like Uber & Amazon? A huge revenue growth trajectory despite
being already huge with an ever shrinking loss trajectory?

