
More than one million people will work from coworking spaces in 2017 - imartin2k
http://www.deskmag.com/en/the-complete-2017-coworking-forecast-more-than-one-million-people-work-from-14000-coworking-spaces-s
======
alalonde
After working from a home office for five years, moving into a coworking space
last fall was a game-changer. I'm not the kind of person that gets excited
about much, but I couldn't help but wax poetic about it to every person I
talked to for a solid month. The work-life separation, perks of being
downtown, and network effects of being around other entrepreneurs has hugely
amped up my productivity and opened doors for my businesses. I've heard that
the quality of these spaces varies widely, but as a developer all I need is a
permanent desk to leave my monitor/keyboard/mouse, for the third of the price
of an office.

~~~
wapz
Isn't the third of the price of an office still quite a substantial amount of
money? Can I ask what kind of space you get? I always imagined a small desk or
cubicle for each person (individual renting). I ran my own business for awhile
but jumped out because it was just so expensive and it was very difficult to
separate life and work with a family.

~~~
philfrasty
Here is exemplary pricing for Germany which seems to greatly vary by real-
estate prices:

Berlin 120€ for a flex-desk 200€ for a fixed-desk
[http://agoracollective.org/workspaces/coworking/](http://agoracollective.org/workspaces/coworking/)

Munich 299€ for a flex-desk 370€ for a fixed-desk [http://mates-
muenchen.de](http://mates-muenchen.de)

All include coffee/water/tea, broadband wifi, printing, conference room couple
of hours.

EDIT: prices are pre-tax.

~~~
secfirstmd
Wow. Dublin is on average €400 euro for a fixed desk. Approximately €250 for a
flex-desk.

Including VAT.

------
hamburgerkid
A coworking space sounds amazing compared to our current office setup, somehow
management has landed on the the worst of all worlds. Teams are in horseshoe
shaped areas with managers in glass walled private offices facing into the
horseshoe. The plain old worker scrubs like me, however, are in tiny cubicles
that are about waist high within the horseshoe, and they have three people
crammed into each cubicle in parts of the office. So you get all of the noise
and lack of privacy of an open office layout (your manager is straight up
watching your monitor from his or her private office), but we are on these
crappy desktops so no mobility like one would have in an open office...

~~~
richeyryan
Sounds like someone in your office read about Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon and
they were like "This guy just might be onto something."

Do you plan to stay in that place? It doesn't sound like a very positive
working environment.

~~~
hamburgerkid
I think it began as an experiment in making the ultimate office. Everyone
would have a quiet, private workspace, and the horseshoe space would be this
reconfigurable area with couches and whiteboards for standups and meetings and
the social aspects of business. Of course what happened was when the company
grew, the idealistic horseshoe space turned into temporary overflow cubicles
which quickly became permanent cubicles.

> Do you plan to stay in that place? It doesn't sound like a very positive
> working environment.

It is a tad Orwellian, so no, I'm out after a year or so. :)

------
fourstar
I worked in one and it was awful. Always had to be hoping that your neighbor
was respectful, and even if you got lucky and they were, then you had to hope
that they stayed long enough, before some other neighbor came in and
ultimately created an undesirable co-working space.

It's 2017 and we have the internet. When will (internet) companies start
embracing telecommuting more?

~~~
dheera
The internet still sucks in 2017. I still can't make a 3-way video call
between people in 3 countries without having to say "Can you hear me" every 5
minutes and then having to repeat stuff all the time.

Doubly forget having a productive meeting if one of those people is on
Comcast, has a crappy Wi-Fi router, is in China, can't figure out how to get
their microphone to work, or has babies yelling in the background.

I'm all for telecommuting as a concept but we aren't there yet.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Check out Zoom. We have 50+ participants on video conf calls weekly without
any issues; participants are global.

~~~
riffraff
I can vouch for Zoom, I use it daily in chats with 5-10 people in 5+ countries
and frequently with more, it works flawlessly given a decent connection (basic
DSL).

I wish the UI was a bit better though (e.g. consistently working way to see
who is talking is a feature that is not there or, it seems, sometimes it is
and then disappear).

------
toomanybeersies
I mostly love working in a coworking space, the one I'm in is something around
150-200 people.

I work in a small company (6 in the office, and 2 remote/roaming), and I think
that working in a coworking space gives me the best parts of a larger company,
and the best parts of a small company.

There are lots of social events and opportunities to hang out with other
people in the space, we have different events and presentations on all the
time. I also get all the nice parts of a smaller company, like knowing all my
coworkers and the CEO personally, and a lack of office politics and a chain of
command, I don't quite report directly to the CEO, but I am in regular direct
contact with him.

Not everyone here is tech either, there's quite a few small non-tech startups
and small businesses, which is great to get that contrast.

There are some disadvantages though. Some people are inconsiderate or ignorant
of the fact that it is an open office and that you're sitting next to other
people, and they have extend conversations, or phone calls (which are the
worst, some people practically shout into their phone). We have dedicated
noise dampened phone booths that work great, as well as meeting rooms and
meeting booths for people that need to be loud, as well as a corner of the
space that's for people that need to be noisy.

By and large the majority of people are fine though. Hot desking isn't too bad
either, since most people are there every day, so everyone has a seat they
usually sit in. I'm pretty minimalist too, so all I need is some paper and my
laptop, I don't need external keyboards, mice, or monitors.

It's a great community, it sounds really cliche, but it's more than just a
place to work at. It's a great community.

------
mark_l_watson
I might be tempted to try a coworking space, except that I live in a small
town in the mountains of Central Arizona: no coworking spaces here!

I have a beautiful home office, nice views of red rocks and mountains, and I
can deal with interruptions from my wife and pet parrot. Physically, my home
office is about as good as the very best private offices provided by
employers.

Sometimes some background random noise and activity is nice while working, in
which case I go to the public work areas in the public library or a coffee
shop.

------
kiddz
Co-Founder of www.SwingSpace.com here: We recently launched with the goal to
become the "kayak for coworking"\--see top coworking options in Atlanta,
Boston, DC & Chicago. We film every single one ourselves + show prices.

If I can be helpful email me at zak@swingspace.com

~~~
provost
Cool - any plans to include European cities? Digital nomads would like to be
able to look up the prices with ease. Also, as a Texan, I'd personally be
interested in Dallas and Austin

~~~
kiddz
Yes! We will be in DFW this year & our team is coming out to SXSW. Europe
later. . . we're a small team right now and we literally fly out and canvas
the community and go to all the co-working places ourselves--so it's a bit of
a lift.

------
insteadof
Noticed a local coworking space added a coffee bar and small brewery as well
as a open mic platform area. From that it appears as though it's heading the
reverse of where cafes ended up being co-working spaces from those sipping a
latte for six hours.

Coworking spaces don't feel comfortable enough to even work at in the first
place. It's as noisy as a coffee shop, but at least you have a desk you might
not get the next day.

------
kpennell
I really hoped that coworking spaces could help with the isolation I feel from
working remotely. But they really haven't helped all that much. The challenge
is that you're just going to a slightly more comfortable working space than a
coffee shop to be around other people working with headphones in. You're not
working with them, just around them.

It sort of makes the isolation feel worse for me.

~~~
Arizhel
I've done some work in coffee shops (but on my own personal projects), so I
actually understand firsthand how this is a nice way to do some work. But I
don't really understand the coworking space concept. It seems to be worse than
the coffee shop, but for a lot more money.

With a coffee shop, it's basically free, except you need to buy some drinks
and snacks to justify taking up space there for so long. Not a big expense,
plus you need to eat anyway. Good coffee shops will even have nice sandwiches,
so you can cover your lunch that way. Coworking spaces don't have readily-
available food and drinks; you'll have to bring your own.

Coffee shops don't have people yakking away on the phone. A bunch of people in
this discussion have complained about this being a problem with coworking
spaces. Of course, if your job requires you to talk on the phone a lot, coffee
shops are out and coworking spaces would make perfect sense, but my job
doesn't.

So I don't really get it, unless you don't have a good coffee shop around that
lets you camp out there for many hours a day.

------
wildchild
Lack of personal space hell is to where realty bubble leads. Sigh.

~~~
PostOnce
Land and buildings are still cheap in the middle of nowhere, probably always
will be, since we're all urbanizing.

~~~
Arizhel
The problem with "the middle of nowhere" is the lack of socialization
available. That's why a lot of people move to cities, even though the cost is
a lot more.

Sure, it's great if you can work remotely and afford a really nice place in
the sticks. But lots of people here even complain about going "stir-crazy"
from sitting at home too much. Even if you're married, you're going to get
tired of only socializing with that one person all the time, and never having
any outside friends. You'll also get tired of never having any activities to
do which involve interacting with other people. In a city, you have all that
available: lots of other people, groups for various interests, etc. In rural
areas, all you have are the people who live there, and their values and
lifestyles will be so diametrically opposed to yours that you won't be able to
socialize with them at all. So if you're not into fundamentalist religion,
guns, off-roading, etc., moving to the sticks will condemn you to a very
lonely life. And if you're an ethnic minority, it could be downright
dangerous.

------
mkagenius
The article doesn't say how many work now? does it?

------
antoniuschan99
Any recommendations for a coworking space in Toronto?

~~~
danmax
We're working out of Acmeworks in the west end. It's not bad, great location
and good company. However, it's a little expensive and the internet
occasionally cuts out.

~~~
antoniuschan99
How is the networking opporunities there? Are there a lot of entrepreneurs
that you can meet and potentially become clients?

~~~
danmax
I mean, it depends on what you're selling. But probably not.

