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I work in a shared office / coworking space. We have 3 desks in a large open plan office with a kitchen area. It's about 10 feet from my desk. Most of the time

by LandR 9y ago

I work in a shared office / coworking space. We have 3 desks in a large open plan office with a kitchen area. It's about 10 feet from my desk. Most of the time it's just me from our company as the other devs work from home or work out the main office. My experience of working in this shared space: * It's noisy. I mean really noisy, noise cancelling headphones are a must. Like I said the kitchen area is near my desk, and people would routinely bang the cupboard doors. I sort of fixed this by putting felt and rubber on the doors to stop the loud banging, but I shouldn't have had to do this. * People are noisy, people whistle, walk around talking loudly on their phones. Some people I'm sure talk loudly on purpose just to try and look like they are important in front of strangers. One guy makes random trumpet noises with his mouth... * No one talks to anyone from other companies, to the point of awkwardness. I often see two people in the kitchen area from different companies and it can be a bit like a comedy sketch as they try to get their kitchening done without acknowledging the other person exists. Absurd, why don't people talk to each other. Especially people you see every day! * When you are remotely working and the only person from your company you have no one to talk to and this is quite isolating and depressing. Especially worse if you end up in a room with 10 others and they are all from the same company. Then they start looking at you like you are in their space. * The kitchen area, despite being an office staffed with supposed professionals, is always a mess. How does this happen? Our office space is also open to a throughfare to conference rooms and such, so you randomly get random people walking through the office, again noisily. But working here I at least don't have all the distractions of working from home.

MrBuddyCasino 9y ago
> No one talks to anyone from other companies, to the point of awkwardness Haha yeah. It helps to have a few women around, but especially when there are lots of male IT coworkers present this is definitely a thing.
- creep 9y ago
  Yes! Men and women actually work better together than groups composed of just men or just women [1] [2] The thinking is, men prefer taking risks, while women prefer to limit risks. In cooperation, men can push women to see the benefit of a risk (and in turn she gains more experience of risk), and women can push men to hold off of risks that might be detrimental. Women are good at synchronizing group thought, in that they make a space for others to talk and they generate talking points by asking important questions, while men generally like taking the floor. So for the man who does not take the floor of his own accord, women are more likely to create a space where he can talk. Personally, in an environment like WeWork, I can see men and women having more conversations and opening up the place a little. 1. https://www.td.org/insights/women-and-men-working-together-more-sustainable-successful-work-environments https://www.td.org/insights/women-and-men-working-together-m... 2. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/nov/01/gender.world https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/nov/01/gender.world
  - MrBuddyCasino 9y ago
    Fully agree. Narcissistic men are annoying - I don't get how they seem to lack self-awareness, and they are toxic for teamwork. Not that women don't have their downsides, too - some can be neurotic, but at least the bitchy ones tend not to work in IT. I'm really glad we have a few female developers.
    - hnzix 9y ago
      Well, if you're guessing people's personality you also have to factor in their star sign and the shape of their skull.
    - creep 9y ago
      I said nothing about narcissistic men. All I'm saying is that men and women work well together. I don't know why you made this comment in such a hateful spirit.
  - softawre 9y ago
    Downvoters care to explain? We always say diversity is good, but when somebody provides an example of why it is good, they get downvoted?
    - MrBuddyCasino 9y ago
      There are always downvotes with these topics. Either you are perceived as a patriarch or an SJW. I suppose thats mostly because different people have made different experiences and are biased in one or the other direction. I personally don't care - I think James Damore made some valid points, and I also like and value my female colleagues. To me thats not a contradiction.
    - whataretensors 9y ago
      I didn't downvote, but maybe because it was a gender-based classification of behavior backed up by two opinion pieces?
- dazc 9y ago
  Funnily enough, the couple of times I've done co-working it was the women who were the problem. One was very aggressive, always having loud arguments on the phone and slamming doors as she left the building. Another one seemed to think that because she and her partner were renting 2 desks this made her twice as a important as anyone else? She was playing music one day so I asked her to turn it down. She never spoke to me again and made me feel very uncomfortable whenever our paths crossed. Of course this isn't representative of all women but, just saying, being female isn't a guarantee of good behaviour.
  - MrBuddyCasino 9y ago
    Didn't want to imply that women are better people - I had a female sales rep in the office for some time that talked on the phone a lot and did so very loudly with complete disregard for everyone else, I wanted to throw her out the window. Never had bad experiences with female software devs though.
sputknick 9y ago
> No one talks to anyone from other companies, to the point of awkwardness. Can you share what part of the US/world you are in? I'm curious if this is cultural.
- LandR 9y ago
  I'm in the UK (Scotland)
- uhtred 9y ago
  I'd probably be guilty of this, but it's not because I am rude or anti-social (I love talking to people one on one or in very small groups), I am just socially anxious and struggle to talk to people in an open office environment where a "private" conversation is really a conversation with everyone in the room. Could be the same reason some people don't talk in a shared kitchen that is in the middle of a shared office! My idea of hell.
  - usrusr 9y ago
    Add to this that everybody there would fall into the uneasy middle ground of being too close for the idle pleasantries reserved for random strangers and too distant and unpredictable to get attached to.
  - isostatic 9y ago
    A few weeks ago I was abroad with a group of people from my company, I knew 3 of the 10 others. We went out to dinner - Awful time, very stressful. Later in the week it had dropped to 3 other people, only 1 whom I knew, far better. (The other nights I had room service - that's the best situation, I can actually relax) That said, I'm happy to Make grunting noises and guesticulatr at milk bottles to the occasional stranger in a shared office kitchen. I guess part of the problem is it takes me a long time to remember a person's face - when watching tv I rely a lot on context. My wife often says "no that's not xxx, he's got the wrong colour hair". I've been known to get skin colour and sex wrong too, but most of the time context works. Took me about 2 seasons to remember the names of the 6 main characters in "friends". When making tea, there's no context to build on. At university I wrote down names of people on my floor in halls, which mostly helped. At school I'd learnt the names of everyone in the class by the middle of the second year, and by year 6 knew about 80% of the c. 120 people in the year group. My children's friends are mostly a blur but I can get 4 or 5 of them with a little confidence - that's after 16 months. In person conversations are far too draining, especially without context, and when there's nothing to gain what's the point?
btbuildem 9y ago
> The kitchen area, despite being an office staffed with supposed professionals, is always a mess. How does this happen? It's a common space, so it's nobody's. Especially in an environment like that, a collection of separated individuals
- skellera 9y ago
  My office has multiple kitchens that are always pretty clean. Everyone washes what they use and clean up after themselves. I don’t see why it should be different anywhere else. Some people just aren’t good at being responsible.
  - jaymzcampbell 9y ago
    I've had this problem in almost every office I've worked at. It shouldn't be different but for whatever reason, people seem to think it beneath them. I often wondered what state some of my co-worker's houses were in.
    - macNchz 9y ago
      I've had the same experience, it seems to be a microcosm of the "tragedy of the commons" that has led to the spoiling of the environment, shared spaces, natural resources etc. That said, I've worked in an office where the company took a nagging/shaming/signs/emails approach instead of upping the cleaning budget as the team grew, which was frustrating and ineffective. Encouraging people to clean up after themselves is good, but if it's not immediately effective the rest of us shouldn't have to live in filth while we try to get the worst offenders in line.
      - foobarian 9y ago
        Well, privatization is how you deal with tragedies of the commons. Maybe there should be a ID-card unlocked kitchen where you have to accept T&C before every use that stipulate public surveillance and loss of privileges if not cleaned up. If you don't like it don't use it.
josephjrobison 9y ago
100% agree that there is a lot less of the cross-pollination of companies as they kind of advertise. At the WeWork I'm at, it's a mix. You can be friendly and talk to other people if you try. If you don't try it's not going to happen. As far as productivity, I'm a full 50%+ more productive at the coworking space vs being at home. And compared to a coffee shop, it's about the same price and a lot more convenient to have the dedicated desk and guaranteed seat!
- Axsuul 9y ago
  How much do you pay for your WeWork space where it's about the same as a coffee shop?
  - sobani 9y ago
    Given how expensive drinks can be at a coffee shop, I guess WeWork prices are less than the rent of a dedicated office.
kerkeslager 9y ago
> No one talks to anyone from other companies, to the point of awkwardness. I often see two people in the kitchen area from different companies and it can be a bit like a comedy sketch as they try to get their kitchening done without acknowledging the other person exists. Absurd, why don't people talk to each other. Especially people you see every day! Having worked in a number of shared workspaces: while this does seem to be the natural state of things, breaking the barrier is fairly easy. In every workspace I've worked at, I've gotten to know almost everyone there by talking to them in the kitchen, and once people see me doing it, they start doing it. You're not obligated to change the culture of your workspace, but if you don't like it, it doesn't even take much effort to change it. And there are big career benefits to this: I've met a number of my clients this way.
- amatecha 9y ago
  Heck yeah, even the most trivial chatter "by the water cooler" can result in surprising door-opening, whether intended or not. :)
- mourner 9y ago
  Hey, any recommendations for a conversation starter in a coworking kitchen?
  - kerkeslager 9y ago
    Just ask a question about the person, people are almost always happy to talk about themselves. Something not too personal, and ideally related to something present--i.e. if there's something going on in the kitchen or whatever. In the most general case, you're in a coworking space and their ostensibly working for a company there, so "Hey, I noticed you around and was curious about what your company does?" is generally pretty easy. Or if it's obvious what their company does, "Hey I noticed you around and I was curious about what you do at Foo Company?" Don't overthink it, it's just a conversation and the worst that happens is you return to the awkward silence that was there before.
    - Libturd 9y ago
dalbasal 9y ago
No one talks to anyone This happens by default, but isn't hard to change. I suspect this is why the likes of wework are startups while most are just buildings. Not sure it works in every location, but it certainly works in some. I know someone in a south Tel Aviv wework who refuses to move apartments because she likes her local wework, and refuses to change to another one 20k away.
miketuritzin 9y ago
I have worked in several co-working spaces, and this is remarkably similar to my experience. The last one I was in was very loud with people making sales calls. I am currently renting a desk in a friend's small startup office, and it is so much better.
iamben 9y ago
Anecdotal reply, hot-desking at WW in central London. * Some days noisy, some days very quiet. I have great headphones, but find myself more productive than when I worked at home. People are noisy, but generally the 'hum' is a sensible level, and it's only really irritating if someone is on Skype and conversing without headphones in (I'm not sure why that's more annoying that overhearing a face to face conversation, but it definitely is). * Conversation is what you make it. I'm on first name terms with lots of people here, it's easy to make small talk, exchange a name, then intro someone to someone else. Before long, most regular faces know most regular faces. * The one thing I missed most working at home was water-cooler chat. I go out of my way now to offer tea / coffee, ask about people's lives, whatever - I can have headphones on for 95% of the day, but that 5% is important. I didn't know anyone here before I joined. * Our kitchen area is tidy 90% of the time. People are pretty good about cleaning up after themselves, the WW staff are generally very good, and if something is awful, asking it to be sorted is usually pretty painless. I think generally I'm very pro WW. There are some annoyances; it's usually people drinking and drink-chatting too early. But I don't begrudge it and the building is big enough to go work somewhere quiet. Definitely far more productive than WFH.
- akx 9y ago
  > I'm not sure why that's more annoying that overhearing a face to face conversation, but it definitely is My guess (and personal experience) is that it's because the frequency response of the speakers is so tinny and thin compared to what you'd expect a regular face-to-face conversation to be, your brain keeps being distracted by it? Same with people "listening to" music by keeping headphones on their desk on full blast...
- zuppy 9y ago
  > I'm not sure why that's more annoying that overhearing a face to face conversation That's because the brain is trying to fill in the missing part of the conversation, no matter what we want. See: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/hearing-just-one-half-of-a-conversation-is-really-really-annoying-2657804/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/hearing-just-one-h...
- deepGem 9y ago
Yhippa 9y ago
Your experience mirrors exactly the ones I've had at a WeWork on the East Coast of the US. Ours was cleaner but amenities we were paying for were randomly missing or not working. I gave up talking to people after a while. Nobody seemed particularly interested in socializing in the common areas which in retrospect I understand and I got some abrasive reactions from just trying to start conversation. Perhaps they were forced to work there and would have preferred to WFH.
- meddlepal 9y ago
  Northeast, Mid-Atlantic or Southeast coast? Speaking as a Northeast native... cold shoulder / people avoidance is cultural.
beejiu 9y ago
> People are noisy, people whistle, walk around talking loudly on their phones. In my experience of coworking spaces, it is the same one/two people that ruin the space for everybody else. What is missing from co-working spaces is some kind of housekeeping rules and enforcement (in lieu of mutual respect).
- tachyoff 9y ago
  > What is missing from co-working spaces is some kind of housekeeping rules and enforcement... What’s missing is simple walls. Four walls with a door. What’s missing is privacy and silence, which we have apparently collectively decided is not necessary for all tech work.
  - woolvalley 9y ago
    You can rent private offices at wework, they just cost more ;)
    - tachyoff 9y ago
      At this point I’m about to start my own anti-coworking company called MeWork. It’s like WeWork, except every office is private. ;)
      - isostatic 9y ago
        I have one of those, it's called a study, far more productive than in the company office (when I go in on occasion). Because I live 50 miles from a large city, the 4 bed house is about the same price as a 1 bed apartment in London or 2 bed house in Manchester, so we actually have two studies at the moment (kids prefer to share a bedroom), one for my wife, one for me. Last week I was in Kenya for business purposes setting up a new office, again far more productive sat on my own in the apps room plugging various things in, than sat with the PM and some other engineers in another part of the office.
  - scottinseattle 9y ago
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
debt 9y ago
"No one talks to anyone from other companies, to the point of awkwardness. ... Especially people you see every day!" Ugh, you clearly don't get some people. It's probably one of the reasons why they have the coworking space to begin with: they don't want to interact with people! Ain't nothing wrong with that! They want to get their shit done and go home and do other shit. Also, if they're halfway competent at their business, why do they need to know what everyone else is doing? I've done the coworking thing for a while, and the social interaction/collaboration thing literally doesn't come close to working the way you think it would. If you're hoping for some serendipitous interaction where you magically find that big project or cool new collaborator or etc. you'll be sorely disappointed. Because, many people at coworking spaces have literally been there since it first opened which can be years. I was at one with a tax attorney. I'm not going to like collab on anything with the tax attorney. Seemed like a nice guy, but I'm a developer and he has no money to spend on software so... Now multiply that story by nearly everyone in the coworking space and you'll see it quickly becomes...a place to do work and that's it. Which is awesome and exactly what we needed!
- tachyoff 9y ago
  Precisely this. I escape to a coworking space for some peace and quiet, which isn’t always possible because the high-pitched cackling from our glass-wall neighbors cuts through most building materials. I don’t want to talk to strangers, I want to get my shit done. If I want to talk to strangers I’ll go to a bar, or the internet.
thatfrenchguy 9y ago
> * The kitchen area, despite being an office staffed with supposed professionals, is always a mess. How does this happen? Have you ever had roommates ? I've never had a clean kitchen and roommates, and never had a dirty kitchen and no roommate (and by my own actions as well !).
- redblacktree 9y ago
  I have actually had a roommate and a clean kitchen, though I'll admit it was the exception to the rule. I think it worked out because we set a cleaning schedule early on. Every Sunday, we'd clean the kitchen and bathroom. (switching off responsibility) And this was a couple of guys in their 20s!
  - jpindar 9y ago
    This! I miss the cleaning parties my old roommates and I had every Thursday evening (so the house would be clean for weekend guests). It's hard to sit still when you turn up the lights and the music and everyone else is cleaning. This also worked at one electronics manufacturer I worked at. We'd all spend some time on Friday afternoons cleaning. It was so much easier to find things when they were put where they belong at least once a week.
- icebraining 9y ago
  I'm the opposite; if I share the area I keep it clean, if I'm by myself it's a mess on the first day. Guilt is the only thing that beats my laziness :|
tomatohs 9y ago
Similar experience at WeWork. At 5pm everyone beelined to the exit. I imagined what it would be like to work with four other people crammed into one of those small glass offices and thought, "yeah, I'd want to get out of there as fast as possible too."
k_bx 9y ago
> * No one talks to anyone from other companies, to the point of awkwardness. I often see two people in the kitchen area from different companies and it can be a bit like a comedy sketch as they try to get their kitchening done without acknowledging the other person exists. Absurd, why don't people talk to each other. Especially people you see every day! This is gold.
gdulli 9y ago
It sounds like the same downsides of working in an open plan area but worse because there's not even an ostensible attempt at making productivity a priority over maintaining a veneer of "fun."
scottinseattle 9y ago
I mean that's a rookie mistake on the part of the kitchen builders, not having felt/rubber pads on the cupboard doors.
whatever_dude 9y ago
> The kitchen area, despite being an office staffed with supposed professionals, is always a mess. This is a pet peeve of mine. What the hell, people? I feel like in a lot of "cool" spaces, people working there are just kids that expect their mom to take care of their space, so they don't care about dishes or cups lying around. Hey, you don't have to do all chores, but at least move your stuff to the dishwasher or sink! Geez.
briandear 9y ago
> But working here I at least don't have all the distractions of working from home. What kind of home do you have where all you have described is less distracting? Perhaps you ought to move!
lsc 9y ago
>The kitchen area, despite being an office staffed with supposed professionals, is always a mess. How does this happen? Are you staffing a professional cleaner? Expecting software engineers to be good at keeping a kitchen tidy is about as rational as expecting your marketing people to be good at maintaining your servers. I mean, sure, there's a basic level of consideration, and even when I'm at work (where we have a pretty excellent cleaning staff) if you drop something on the floor, you are expected to pick it up so that nobody else steps in it and tracks it all over the place, and people do. But... you can tell that the place would get grungy pretty fast if we didn't have the professional cleaners about. Cleaning is a skill like any other,and some of us are better at it than others... and some of us have higher standards than others. The right way to deal with this in a commercial space is to pay a professional to deal with it, imo.
- sobani 9y ago
  Interesting, I interpreted the "mess" as leaving dishes in the sink, and not as not putting on the rubber gloves and cleaning said sink. In the company I work for, you can take the lunch from the lunchroom to your desk. For a week now, at the team next to ours, there's a pile of trays, plates and soup bowls. It seems that whoever is taking the lunch to their desk, can't be bothered to bring the plates back. Not even next day.

by LandR 9y ago

MrBuddyCasino 9y ago

> No one talks to anyone from other companies, to the point of awkwardness Haha yeah. It helps to have a few women around, but especially when there are lots of male IT coworkers present this is definitely a thing.

creep 9y ago
Yes! Men and women actually work better together than groups composed of just men or just women [1] [2] The thinking is, men prefer taking risks, while women prefer to limit risks. In cooperation, men can push women to see the benefit of a risk (and in turn she gains more experience of risk), and women can push men to hold off of risks that might be detrimental. Women are good at synchronizing group thought, in that they make a space for others to talk and they generate talking points by asking important questions, while men generally like taking the floor. So for the man who does not take the floor of his own accord, women are more likely to create a space where he can talk. Personally, in an environment like WeWork, I can see men and women having more conversations and opening up the place a little. 1. https://www.td.org/insights/women-and-men-working-together-more-sustainable-successful-work-environments https://www.td.org/insights/women-and-men-working-together-m... 2. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/nov/01/gender.world https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/nov/01/gender.world
- MrBuddyCasino 9y ago
  Fully agree. Narcissistic men are annoying - I don't get how they seem to lack self-awareness, and they are toxic for teamwork. Not that women don't have their downsides, too - some can be neurotic, but at least the bitchy ones tend not to work in IT. I'm really glad we have a few female developers.
  - hnzix 9y ago
    Well, if you're guessing people's personality you also have to factor in their star sign and the shape of their skull.
  - creep 9y ago
    I said nothing about narcissistic men. All I'm saying is that men and women work well together. I don't know why you made this comment in such a hateful spirit.
- softawre 9y ago
  Downvoters care to explain? We always say diversity is good, but when somebody provides an example of why it is good, they get downvoted?
  - MrBuddyCasino 9y ago
    There are always downvotes with these topics. Either you are perceived as a patriarch or an SJW. I suppose thats mostly because different people have made different experiences and are biased in one or the other direction. I personally don't care - I think James Damore made some valid points, and I also like and value my female colleagues. To me thats not a contradiction.
  - whataretensors 9y ago
    I didn't downvote, but maybe because it was a gender-based classification of behavior backed up by two opinion pieces?
dazc 9y ago
Funnily enough, the couple of times I've done co-working it was the women who were the problem. One was very aggressive, always having loud arguments on the phone and slamming doors as she left the building. Another one seemed to think that because she and her partner were renting 2 desks this made her twice as a important as anyone else? She was playing music one day so I asked her to turn it down. She never spoke to me again and made me feel very uncomfortable whenever our paths crossed. Of course this isn't representative of all women but, just saying, being female isn't a guarantee of good behaviour.
- MrBuddyCasino 9y ago
  Didn't want to imply that women are better people - I had a female sales rep in the office for some time that talked on the phone a lot and did so very loudly with complete disregard for everyone else, I wanted to throw her out the window. Never had bad experiences with female software devs though.

sputknick 9y ago

> No one talks to anyone from other companies, to the point of awkwardness. Can you share what part of the US/world you are in? I'm curious if this is cultural.

LandR 9y ago
I'm in the UK (Scotland)
uhtred 9y ago
I'd probably be guilty of this, but it's not because I am rude or anti-social (I love talking to people one on one or in very small groups), I am just socially anxious and struggle to talk to people in an open office environment where a "private" conversation is really a conversation with everyone in the room. Could be the same reason some people don't talk in a shared kitchen that is in the middle of a shared office! My idea of hell.
- usrusr 9y ago
  Add to this that everybody there would fall into the uneasy middle ground of being too close for the idle pleasantries reserved for random strangers and too distant and unpredictable to get attached to.
- isostatic 9y ago
  A few weeks ago I was abroad with a group of people from my company, I knew 3 of the 10 others. We went out to dinner - Awful time, very stressful. Later in the week it had dropped to 3 other people, only 1 whom I knew, far better. (The other nights I had room service - that's the best situation, I can actually relax) That said, I'm happy to Make grunting noises and guesticulatr at milk bottles to the occasional stranger in a shared office kitchen. I guess part of the problem is it takes me a long time to remember a person's face - when watching tv I rely a lot on context. My wife often says "no that's not xxx, he's got the wrong colour hair". I've been known to get skin colour and sex wrong too, but most of the time context works. Took me about 2 seasons to remember the names of the 6 main characters in "friends". When making tea, there's no context to build on. At university I wrote down names of people on my floor in halls, which mostly helped. At school I'd learnt the names of everyone in the class by the middle of the second year, and by year 6 knew about 80% of the c. 120 people in the year group. My children's friends are mostly a blur but I can get 4 or 5 of them with a little confidence - that's after 16 months. In person conversations are far too draining, especially without context, and when there's nothing to gain what's the point?

btbuildem 9y ago

> The kitchen area, despite being an office staffed with supposed professionals, is always a mess. How does this happen? It's a common space, so it's nobody's. Especially in an environment like that, a collection of separated individuals

skellera 9y ago
My office has multiple kitchens that are always pretty clean. Everyone washes what they use and clean up after themselves. I don’t see why it should be different anywhere else. Some people just aren’t good at being responsible.
- jaymzcampbell 9y ago
  I've had this problem in almost every office I've worked at. It shouldn't be different but for whatever reason, people seem to think it beneath them. I often wondered what state some of my co-worker's houses were in.
  - macNchz 9y ago
    I've had the same experience, it seems to be a microcosm of the "tragedy of the commons" that has led to the spoiling of the environment, shared spaces, natural resources etc. That said, I've worked in an office where the company took a nagging/shaming/signs/emails approach instead of upping the cleaning budget as the team grew, which was frustrating and ineffective. Encouraging people to clean up after themselves is good, but if it's not immediately effective the rest of us shouldn't have to live in filth while we try to get the worst offenders in line.
    - foobarian 9y ago
      Well, privatization is how you deal with tragedies of the commons. Maybe there should be a ID-card unlocked kitchen where you have to accept T&C before every use that stipulate public surveillance and loss of privileges if not cleaned up. If you don't like it don't use it.

josephjrobison 9y ago

100% agree that there is a lot less of the cross-pollination of companies as they kind of advertise. At the WeWork I'm at, it's a mix. You can be friendly and talk to other people if you try. If you don't try it's not going to happen. As far as productivity, I'm a full 50%+ more productive at the coworking space vs being at home. And compared to a coffee shop, it's about the same price and a lot more convenient to have the dedicated desk and guaranteed seat!

Axsuul 9y ago
How much do you pay for your WeWork space where it's about the same as a coffee shop?
- sobani 9y ago
  Given how expensive drinks can be at a coffee shop, I guess WeWork prices are less than the rent of a dedicated office.

kerkeslager 9y ago

> No one talks to anyone from other companies, to the point of awkwardness. I often see two people in the kitchen area from different companies and it can be a bit like a comedy sketch as they try to get their kitchening done without acknowledging the other person exists. Absurd, why don't people talk to each other. Especially people you see every day! Having worked in a number of shared workspaces: while this does seem to be the natural state of things, breaking the barrier is fairly easy. In every workspace I've worked at, I've gotten to know almost everyone there by talking to them in the kitchen, and once people see me doing it, they start doing it. You're not obligated to change the culture of your workspace, but if you don't like it, it doesn't even take much effort to change it. And there are big career benefits to this: I've met a number of my clients this way.

amatecha 9y ago
Heck yeah, even the most trivial chatter "by the water cooler" can result in surprising door-opening, whether intended or not. :)
mourner 9y ago
Hey, any recommendations for a conversation starter in a coworking kitchen?
- kerkeslager 9y ago
  Just ask a question about the person, people are almost always happy to talk about themselves. Something not too personal, and ideally related to something present--i.e. if there's something going on in the kitchen or whatever. In the most general case, you're in a coworking space and their ostensibly working for a company there, so "Hey, I noticed you around and was curious about what your company does?" is generally pretty easy. Or if it's obvious what their company does, "Hey I noticed you around and I was curious about what you do at Foo Company?" Don't overthink it, it's just a conversation and the worst that happens is you return to the awkward silence that was there before.
  - Libturd 9y ago

dalbasal 9y ago

No one talks to anyone This happens by default, but isn't hard to change. I suspect this is why the likes of wework are startups while most are just buildings. Not sure it works in every location, but it certainly works in some. I know someone in a south Tel Aviv wework who refuses to move apartments because she likes her local wework, and refuses to change to another one 20k away.

miketuritzin 9y ago

I have worked in several co-working spaces, and this is remarkably similar to my experience. The last one I was in was very loud with people making sales calls. I am currently renting a desk in a friend's small startup office, and it is so much better.

iamben 9y ago

Anecdotal reply, hot-desking at WW in central London. * Some days noisy, some days very quiet. I have great headphones, but find myself more productive than when I worked at home. People are noisy, but generally the 'hum' is a sensible level, and it's only really irritating if someone is on Skype and conversing without headphones in (I'm not sure why that's more annoying that overhearing a face to face conversation, but it definitely is). * Conversation is what you make it. I'm on first name terms with lots of people here, it's easy to make small talk, exchange a name, then intro someone to someone else. Before long, most regular faces know most regular faces. * The one thing I missed most working at home was water-cooler chat. I go out of my way now to offer tea / coffee, ask about people's lives, whatever - I can have headphones on for 95% of the day, but that 5% is important. I didn't know anyone here before I joined. * Our kitchen area is tidy 90% of the time. People are pretty good about cleaning up after themselves, the WW staff are generally very good, and if something is awful, asking it to be sorted is usually pretty painless. I think generally I'm very pro WW. There are some annoyances; it's usually people drinking and drink-chatting too early. But I don't begrudge it and the building is big enough to go work somewhere quiet. Definitely far more productive than WFH.

akx 9y ago
> I'm not sure why that's more annoying that overhearing a face to face conversation, but it definitely is My guess (and personal experience) is that it's because the frequency response of the speakers is so tinny and thin compared to what you'd expect a regular face-to-face conversation to be, your brain keeps being distracted by it? Same with people "listening to" music by keeping headphones on their desk on full blast...
zuppy 9y ago
> I'm not sure why that's more annoying that overhearing a face to face conversation That's because the brain is trying to fill in the missing part of the conversation, no matter what we want. See: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/hearing-just-one-half-of-a-conversation-is-really-really-annoying-2657804/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/hearing-just-one-h...
deepGem 9y ago

Yhippa 9y ago

Your experience mirrors exactly the ones I've had at a WeWork on the East Coast of the US. Ours was cleaner but amenities we were paying for were randomly missing or not working. I gave up talking to people after a while. Nobody seemed particularly interested in socializing in the common areas which in retrospect I understand and I got some abrasive reactions from just trying to start conversation. Perhaps they were forced to work there and would have preferred to WFH.

meddlepal 9y ago
Northeast, Mid-Atlantic or Southeast coast? Speaking as a Northeast native... cold shoulder / people avoidance is cultural.

beejiu 9y ago

> People are noisy, people whistle, walk around talking loudly on their phones. In my experience of coworking spaces, it is the same one/two people that ruin the space for everybody else. What is missing from co-working spaces is some kind of housekeeping rules and enforcement (in lieu of mutual respect).

tachyoff 9y ago
> What is missing from co-working spaces is some kind of housekeeping rules and enforcement... What’s missing is simple walls. Four walls with a door. What’s missing is privacy and silence, which we have apparently collectively decided is not necessary for all tech work.
- woolvalley 9y ago
  You can rent private offices at wework, they just cost more ;)
  - tachyoff 9y ago
    At this point I’m about to start my own anti-coworking company called MeWork. It’s like WeWork, except every office is private. ;)
    - isostatic 9y ago
      I have one of those, it's called a study, far more productive than in the company office (when I go in on occasion). Because I live 50 miles from a large city, the 4 bed house is about the same price as a 1 bed apartment in London or 2 bed house in Manchester, so we actually have two studies at the moment (kids prefer to share a bedroom), one for my wife, one for me. Last week I was in Kenya for business purposes setting up a new office, again far more productive sat on my own in the apps room plugging various things in, than sat with the PM and some other engineers in another part of the office.
- scottinseattle 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

debt 9y ago

"No one talks to anyone from other companies, to the point of awkwardness. ... Especially people you see every day!" Ugh, you clearly don't get some people. It's probably one of the reasons why they have the coworking space to begin with: they don't want to interact with people! Ain't nothing wrong with that! They want to get their shit done and go home and do other shit. Also, if they're halfway competent at their business, why do they need to know what everyone else is doing? I've done the coworking thing for a while, and the social interaction/collaboration thing literally doesn't come close to working the way you think it would. If you're hoping for some serendipitous interaction where you magically find that big project or cool new collaborator or etc. you'll be sorely disappointed. Because, many people at coworking spaces have literally been there since it first opened which can be years. I was at one with a tax attorney. I'm not going to like collab on anything with the tax attorney. Seemed like a nice guy, but I'm a developer and he has no money to spend on software so... Now multiply that story by nearly everyone in the coworking space and you'll see it quickly becomes...a place to do work and that's it. Which is awesome and exactly what we needed!

tachyoff 9y ago
Precisely this. I escape to a coworking space for some peace and quiet, which isn’t always possible because the high-pitched cackling from our glass-wall neighbors cuts through most building materials. I don’t want to talk to strangers, I want to get my shit done. If I want to talk to strangers I’ll go to a bar, or the internet.

thatfrenchguy 9y ago

> * The kitchen area, despite being an office staffed with supposed professionals, is always a mess. How does this happen? Have you ever had roommates ? I've never had a clean kitchen and roommates, and never had a dirty kitchen and no roommate (and by my own actions as well !).

redblacktree 9y ago
I have actually had a roommate and a clean kitchen, though I'll admit it was the exception to the rule. I think it worked out because we set a cleaning schedule early on. Every Sunday, we'd clean the kitchen and bathroom. (switching off responsibility) And this was a couple of guys in their 20s!
- jpindar 9y ago
  This! I miss the cleaning parties my old roommates and I had every Thursday evening (so the house would be clean for weekend guests). It's hard to sit still when you turn up the lights and the music and everyone else is cleaning. This also worked at one electronics manufacturer I worked at. We'd all spend some time on Friday afternoons cleaning. It was so much easier to find things when they were put where they belong at least once a week.
icebraining 9y ago
I'm the opposite; if I share the area I keep it clean, if I'm by myself it's a mess on the first day. Guilt is the only thing that beats my laziness :|

tomatohs 9y ago

Similar experience at WeWork. At 5pm everyone beelined to the exit. I imagined what it would be like to work with four other people crammed into one of those small glass offices and thought, "yeah, I'd want to get out of there as fast as possible too."

k_bx 9y ago

> * No one talks to anyone from other companies, to the point of awkwardness. I often see two people in the kitchen area from different companies and it can be a bit like a comedy sketch as they try to get their kitchening done without acknowledging the other person exists. Absurd, why don't people talk to each other. Especially people you see every day! This is gold.

gdulli 9y ago

It sounds like the same downsides of working in an open plan area but worse because there's not even an ostensible attempt at making productivity a priority over maintaining a veneer of "fun."

scottinseattle 9y ago

I mean that's a rookie mistake on the part of the kitchen builders, not having felt/rubber pads on the cupboard doors.

whatever_dude 9y ago

> The kitchen area, despite being an office staffed with supposed professionals, is always a mess. This is a pet peeve of mine. What the hell, people? I feel like in a lot of "cool" spaces, people working there are just kids that expect their mom to take care of their space, so they don't care about dishes or cups lying around. Hey, you don't have to do all chores, but at least move your stuff to the dishwasher or sink! Geez.

briandear 9y ago

> But working here I at least don't have all the distractions of working from home. What kind of home do you have where all you have described is less distracting? Perhaps you ought to move!

lsc 9y ago

>The kitchen area, despite being an office staffed with supposed professionals, is always a mess. How does this happen? Are you staffing a professional cleaner? Expecting software engineers to be good at keeping a kitchen tidy is about as rational as expecting your marketing people to be good at maintaining your servers. I mean, sure, there's a basic level of consideration, and even when I'm at work (where we have a pretty excellent cleaning staff) if you drop something on the floor, you are expected to pick it up so that nobody else steps in it and tracks it all over the place, and people do. But... you can tell that the place would get grungy pretty fast if we didn't have the professional cleaners about. Cleaning is a skill like any other,and some of us are better at it than others... and some of us have higher standards than others. The right way to deal with this in a commercial space is to pay a professional to deal with it, imo.

sobani 9y ago
Interesting, I interpreted the "mess" as leaving dishes in the sink, and not as not putting on the rubber gloves and cleaning said sink. In the company I work for, you can take the lunch from the lunchroom to your desk. For a week now, at the team next to ours, there's a pile of trays, plates and soup bowls. It seems that whoever is taking the lunch to their desk, can't be bothered to bring the plates back. Not even next day.