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Yeah this is the argument I don't get. Tons of companies just give employees who travel a per diem for travel expenses. A per diem for remote work expenses to s

Yeah this is the argument I don't get. Tons of companies just give employees who travel a per diem for travel expenses. A per diem for remote work expenses to spend on whatever shared office space you want is not that hard. Filing expenses is trivially easy now and there are tons of apps/services out there that do text recognition on receipts and credit card statements to make the value addition of something like this very close to zero.

amerine 7y ago
Imagine you work for, say, IBM, and your badge grants you a desk, on-demand, at any WeWork office. Or, let’s pretend that you, still at big blue, want a dedicated space for a small project, you work with your WeWork rep to secure a secure dedicated space for the timeline. At no time in those examples did I have to exchange funds, pass my corporate card, etc. Speaking as a home remote worker (Salesforce/Heroku not IBM or WeWork) that likes to visit offices sometimes and travels quite a bit, having the option of on-demand access to working spaces with other humans, and a facility-access processes I can rely on, and a facility I can mostly assume will work would be a pretty great upgrade to my work experience. Expense reports suck. It’s not just the process burden, but making that the norm rather than an exceptional process means that today’s automated-scanning systems will probably put more false-positive-powered issues onto your already full plate. Removing the process makes it a tool that more people will use. That’s the value prop I see.
- naravara 7y ago
  The problem is WeWork would end up being just one of a ton of possible vendors who do this. The only thing that's hard to replicate about that business model is the up-front cost of acquiring the properties, but if it turns out to be a thing people value then CBRE and every other big commercial real estate company will dive in. In that environment where your IBMs now have competing products to choose from I don't see WeWork able to pull much in the way of margins.
  - amerine 7y ago
    I agree with you. Which is why I find the companies valuations to be, uh, silly.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

amerine 7y ago

Imagine you work for, say, IBM, and your badge grants you a desk, on-demand, at any WeWork office. Or, let’s pretend that you, still at big blue, want a dedicated space for a small project, you work with your WeWork rep to secure a secure dedicated space for the timeline. At no time in those examples did I have to exchange funds, pass my corporate card, etc. Speaking as a home remote worker (Salesforce/Heroku not IBM or WeWork) that likes to visit offices sometimes and travels quite a bit, having the option of on-demand access to working spaces with other humans, and a facility-access processes I can rely on, and a facility I can mostly assume will work would be a pretty great upgrade to my work experience. Expense reports suck. It’s not just the process burden, but making that the norm rather than an exceptional process means that today’s automated-scanning systems will probably put more false-positive-powered issues onto your already full plate. Removing the process makes it a tool that more people will use. That’s the value prop I see.

naravara 7y ago
The problem is WeWork would end up being just one of a ton of possible vendors who do this. The only thing that's hard to replicate about that business model is the up-front cost of acquiring the properties, but if it turns out to be a thing people value then CBRE and every other big commercial real estate company will dive in. In that environment where your IBMs now have competing products to choose from I don't see WeWork able to pull much in the way of margins.
- amerine 7y ago
  I agree with you. Which is why I find the companies valuations to be, uh, silly.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]