
Newest coworking space costs just $2.25 an hour, because it is a parking spot - localhostdotdev
https://www.fastcompany.com/90342223/the-newest-hot-coworking-space-costs-just-2-25-an-hour-because-it-is-a-parking-spot
======
s3r3nity
Welcome to Silicon Valley: where everyone has somehow bamboozled themselves
into believing that working in a cramped parking space is more valuable than
buying office real estate in LITERALLY any other state...

Remember kids: you don’t HAVE to live in California.

~~~
JohnJamesRambo
The irony is that all the companies and startups work on internet companies
which could happen anywhere with internet access. It's not like there is a
gold mine under San Francisco streets that requires on site mining. And before
you say "the people are the gold mine", those people could be interacted with
remotely quite easily.

~~~
SubuSS
I don't understand the push for remote work.

I have been a part of remote teams for over 11 years of my career (16 yrs). I
have worked from home more days than I can count. It has enough drawbacks that
I'd avoid it at any given opportunity. Here are a few reasons:

\- You are not part of the hallway conversations / decision changes / fly by
meetings / face-memory / kitchen run ins and every other benefit of having
people together. When your level is senior enough, these are very much a
deciding factor in whether your last 6 months of work is going to be thrown
out or kept relevant.

\- Video conferencing is terrible. If you notice a pattern, the conversation
is DOMINATED by the side with most power. I have seen very senior engineers
(including myself I suppose) have trouble corralling a meeting / participating
in a discussion that's going back and forth animatedly when there are other
senior folk in one room. When you are junior, there is a high possibility your
chances to speak are just perfunctory because almost all relevant points have
been made already.

\- Yes I have heard and tried the notions of ensuring meeting etiquette. I
have also been part of these meetings where there is someone (or everyone)
trying to police how the meeting is run (let everyone speak, juniors go first,
go in a circle ...). Those have been considerably less productive to put it
mildly. (Remember - I am the one who is remote).

\- There are always mic-hogs who don't make a ton of points - most of the
efficient places weed these out real quick. In a different rant - I hate
optimizing for the bad actors that penalize the good actors heavily. Anyway -
in this case you are left with few folks with real talking points not being
able to convey the whole nuance.

\- Essentially this leads to you doing extra work in ensuring at least some
folks on the other side are on the same page before the meeting to ensure your
points are considered.

So yes - in short remote is bad IMO. Video conferencing pretty much doesn't
work since it doesn't capture the full presence and energy of folks. This is
going to sound metaphysical, but my real presence is a million times better
representation of the full me than my text/video :). It _may_ work when
everyone is remote with an individual screen - the usual situations I am in is
where there are 2 or 3 conference rooms with people.

~~~
mawburn
Having people work remote in a non-remote culture is a completely different
experience than working with a fully remote culture.

If the entire team/division/org doesn't fully embrace it, it usually just
doesn't work. That doesn't mean everyone had to be remote, either.

~~~
SubuSS
Can you please suggest some ways how to fully embrace this? I don't think
offices are going away at least in my fang world.

I saw a note about everyone headphoning in - I can try this, but am skeptical
because those people are still going to be more present than me (I mentioned
this in my op). There are going to be side conversations, notes, glances, eye
rolls, sighs I miss - the things I definitely need to get the full presence.
Not to mention the walkie talkie nature of this - with everyone muting /
unmuting and feedbacking.

I am open to other ideas - but am looking for ones that don't make the human
interaction a lot more measured and artificial. As much as I like to be Spock,
my xp points at emotions driving 90% of real decisions because the logical
ones pretty much are a lay up in a sane group.

~~~
mawburn
Well, we went through the transition at my last job so I kind of have some
incite. We had 3 or 4 people on my project who had came over from Invision,
who are a fully remote company and I have a good friends at other well known
fully remote companies that I gleamed things from to help us transition from 0
remote company to a fully remote project team (50ppl-ish).

1\. Every meeting should be video first. Going without video should be
extraordinarily rare. Even if that's just an impromptu meeting with 2 or 3
people. Kill conference phones completely. Get used to screen sharing. Good
reliable tools like Zoom are invaluable. You miss a lot from body language and
facial expressions if you use audio only, which will fix your major issue. It
also makes people feel more included and that the people working somewhere
else are actually real people and not just voices. Make good use of Slack
video

2\. Every meeting should be able to be taken as remote, even if that means
just from your desk (or personal meeting room if you're in an open office).
This means that the people who are in a conference room must be on video with
an open mic, unless there is uncontrollable excessive background noise or
something. No cross the table talk on mute.

3\. Don't be afraid to make temp rooms with multiple people when you have
conversations on Slack (or whatever you use), it'll help more people get
involved as if you were talking at someone's desk.

The first 2 things are _extremely_ important. Invision has recently released
some blogs about cultivating a good remote culture that are pretty good. I
don't have any links handy, however but it's worth a look if you're
interested.

------
pseudolus
In a similar vein I'm working on an idea to monetize cemetery plots and crypts
in and around San Francisco. They're quiet workplaces with scenic views (lots
of flowers and greenery), often centrally located and many are close to coffee
shops. With a little cabling/wiring and some temporary structures they would
make ideal workplaces.

~~~
derp_dee_derp
I think you are missing the whole point of cemeteries and crypts: to honor the
dead. They are not parks. They are not nature preserves. They are not just
quiet places with scenic views. They are memorials to those who have gone
before.

Turning a place of honor into an office space kinda defeats the whole point
and is super disrespectful.

~~~
viklove
I'm pretty sure the comment you're replying to was sarcastic.

------
jontaydev
Has anybody tried to create something like AirBnB for co-working/office
spaces? There must be people willing to rent out a spare bedroom they never
use, etc. All you really need to provide is a desk and internet.

~~~
s3r3nity
A lot of states have laws against office and living spaces being in the same
building, if I recall. Maybe someone else has more expertise and correct me.

This would obviously make it difficult for someone to rent out their living
room to $Startup, for example.

~~~
Scoundreller
Did Uber let local laws strangle its business? NO!

Did Airbnb let local laws strangle its business? NO!

Did PayPal let money transmitter licenses and rampant fraud strangle its
business? NO!

Did YouTube let rampant piracy strangle its business? NO!

Now go start your residential hot-desking business!!’

~~~
cjsawyer
I guess the moral is that if you make enough money fast enough, you can hire
lawyers to keep you out of jail.

------
lprubin
$2.25/hr for 8 hours is $18. I don't know about the SF prices but in Manhattan
you can get a "hot desk" for $30/day at some fairly nice places. I'd guess in
Brooklyn you can probably find/negotiate something comparable to $18/hr.

~~~
candu
I was just going to say the same - and $18 / day * 21-ish working days per
month is...$400 / month.

Hey, that's roughly what a coworking office space costs! Except sitting in a
parking spot, you don't get free wifi, coffee / tea, bathrooms, networking
events, shelter from the elements, facilities security / maintenance...

So: I'm not sure how coworking fits into the larger point they're trying to
make. Yes, residential rent is _insane_ in San Francisco - no argument there.
Yes, parking spaces that sit unused throughout most of the day are an
unfortunate legacy of car-centric urban design. Both of these are solid and
reasonable points to make.

But $400 / month for an office space that comes with a slew of amenities? That
seems entirely reasonable to me, and definitely in keeping with permanent desk
costs in other, less extravagantly priced cities.

~~~
snarf21
The best part of co-working spaces is that the cost scales completely linearly
without signing multi-year leases and deposits and all the other logistics of
having an office.

------
WD-42
This is a fantastic demonstration of how poorly we manage our streets. There
is no doubt in my mind that in the future we will look back at how we
currently treat parking and wonder "What took so long?"

I wonder if anyone has ever calculated the amount of actual acreage taken up
by street parking in San Francisco. Undoubtedly it's a huge amount that you
would consider extremely valuable in a place like San Francisco. Yet we're
letting people dump their single passenger vehicles in public and it's no big
deal.

------
slashcom
That is the actual plot of the SheWork episode in Broad City.

~~~
nickthegreek
Clip of the SheWork concept.

[https://youtu.be/Sk-WvSvQbKk?t=93](https://youtu.be/Sk-WvSvQbKk?t=93)

------
cowpewter
That makes me wonder what else you could repurpose as an office in places
where offices are disproportionally expensive. What about a climate-controlled
storage unit? A quick Googling tells me you can get a small (but large enough
for a desk) climate controlled storage unit in San Fran for about
$100-150/month. That's vastly cheaper than a co-working space. I know you can
get storage units with power, they're pretty popular as practice spaces for
bands around where I live. You'd need a mobile hotspot for internet, and no
windows might be a bit depressing, but for the price...

~~~
Invictus0
Met a guy in DC that actually lived inside a warehouse storage unit. He had
installed lights, walls for multiple bedrooms, a kitchen/bar, and a lot of
cool art. I'm awful at estimating distances but I'd guess the main room was
about 800sqft and the bedrooms/bathrooms were divided from another 400sqft.
With a little love, any place can become a home.

~~~
fyfy18
I haven't ever seem a storage unit with plumbing before...

~~~
dsfyu404ed
I think he meant rented warehouse space, not an actual storage unit. Storage
units rarely have more than a single electrical outlet and many lower end ones
don't even have that.

------
gumby
Was the reporter too credulous or were they in on the joke?

------
Abishek_Muthian
They should invest in getting those large collapsable umbrellas for shade,
working in 'on-road parking' during summer doesn't sound practical.

~~~
Cthulhu_
Or an RV or van converted to an office space.

~~~
JohnFen
I did this (in an RV) for a few years in my younger days, when starting my
first business. It worked very, very well for me and came with the added
benefit that I could move my office any time I wanted to be in a place that
was more convenient or enjoyable.

------
localhostdotdev
the website: [https://www.wepark.us](https://www.wepark.us)

the original twitter thread (first test drive):
[https://twitter.com/VictorPontis/status/1121521771633500160](https://twitter.com/VictorPontis/status/1121521771633500160)

~~~
Scoundreller
It’s $2.75/hr. Talk about inflation!

------
keeganjw
Good on them for bringing attention to how much space is wasted for parking in
cities! A clever way to raise awareness.

~~~
Luc
Apparently a bit too clever for a lot of people, going by many of the comments
here.

------
zck
The group Improv Everywhere did a similar thing, playing it more for laughs:
[https://improveverywhere.com/2018/11/13/phone-booth-
coworkin...](https://improveverywhere.com/2018/11/13/phone-booth-coworking/)

------
Tomte
Twenty people working in a space about the size of a parking spot? I call
bullshit.

------
amelius
I've seen someone being literally bumped out of a parking spot by a car,
because the driver wanted to park there.

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larrydag
I hope they have the added cost of theft, vandalism, and medical. That looks
really risky.

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jotm
This is getting ridiculous.

~~~
phalangion
That appears to be the point.

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humanbeinc
What a time we live in...

