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Does anyone here on HN use WeWork spaces and enjoy them? I'm not suggesting they are bad, I honestly don't know. Ignoring the business model, the CEO, the fail

Does anyone here on HN use WeWork spaces and enjoy them? I'm not suggesting they are bad, I honestly don't know. Ignoring the business model, the CEO, the failed IPO, do YOU or do you not enjoy that actual offering of WeWork?

vr46 7y ago
Typing this from my desk in a WW. The location is great, building is good, the facilities are good, there's quite a nice dynamic about the place. No complaints, it's very smooth and well-organized. Lots of staff to run the place too.
question_away 7y ago
I just started working out of a space in Boston last month and it's been sublime. There's always a WeWork in whatever city I'm traveling to and at 25$ per day (beyond my usual credits), it's really affordable to have an office while traveling to both work and host clients.
sasper 7y ago
It's been fantastic for our fast-growing SaaS startup. We've been able to spin up offices in 4 international cities in the last 18 months with very few issues, and our teams are productive and happy with the spaces. I manage one of the new offices and have LOVED the responsiveness of the local WeWork team, the facilities, the infrastructure, and it's lightyears better than the previous office we were occupying. I don't have to worry about office-related issues any longer. That is, if WeWork stays solvent and doesn't go bankrupt. It's really too bad because their core business (renting office space) is done really well. Maybe a bankruptcy and restructuring would be good for their business, or maybe it will cause them to explode.
- remarkEon 7y ago
  It seems like the value that they are offering is just outsourced-office-management then. Am I wrong in thinking that? It's hard for me to parse what WeWork was "trying" to become. A real estate company that manages offices? An office management company that also does real estate?
  - hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
    That's kind of exactly the point. IMO there are a lot of unicorns out there that have pretty decent business models (Uber/Lyft, WeWork, delivery services, etc.) The problem is they are probably worth much less than their investors paid for them, because everyone is discovering that once the VC subsidies go away after the "growth at all cost" mentality, these are actually pretty low margin businesses that don't warrant their "tech" valuations.
    - htfu 7y ago
      Yup. Other issue for many of them (which WeWork actually should be less exposed to) is that, most of it hardly being rocket science, "blow money until monopoly" seems to forget that customer subsidies A. aren't r&d/infrastructure, B. will have to be earned back, and not just 1:1 either... So even if whatever competition is knocked out, anyone entering the space after that, and not saddled with legacy funnycost, won't need your efficiencies and economies of scale to manage an edge in pricing. And market dominance can't negate lack of friction for eg drivers and riders to run a second, third, fourth app all at once. But the sun appears to be settling on bizarro cargo culting Amazon being seen as a viable business model. As a consumer I'll miss it!
  - AgloeDreams 7y ago
    Management, location, and community. Hospitality. Basically, Wework is a hotel for awake business-focused people, with all the tweaks needed to make that work. It's kinda why Arlo SoHo NYC (hotel) reminded me of one. The real estate line never made much sense to anyone who ever was in one, I think Bloomburg started it. (Though real estate was the business that Adam used to screw everyone so, maybe that was his personal business lol)
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    The bet behind WeWork is that there's a ton of value currently being left on the table in outsourced office management; that everyone's doing it wrong, and doing it right is worth untold billions of dollars. I'm not sure I can get behind that bet, but it's not an inherently absurd idea. Imagine explaining to someone in the early 70s why Wal-Mart is going to grow from a Southern department store chain to the largest company in the US.
TomMarius 7y ago
I was skeptical, but it's excellent, and they have the nicest view on the city.
oroup 7y ago
Before we sold, we had WeWork offices in Denver and NY and used a similar competitor in Austin. They worked great and we were happy with them. But they were also a commodity and we chose based on price and lack of lock-in.
tnolet 7y ago
I don’t work in one but have visited three of them here in Berlin quite recently for meetings. The one in Friedrichshafen on the Spree is pretty nice. Great view. The other ones more in Mitte had way too much of a semi hipster hotel lobby feel. Everyone was just too fashionable and cool for my taste.
jekrb 7y ago
I used to work for a company that rented a WeWork space to meet with clients in NYC. I only opted to work out of it once or twice, for a change of scenery from my typical office. I think the location was the main perk, since I then got to spend a day in NYC. Working fully remote now and I enjoy that much more than being in any office setting.
rrdharan 7y ago
Turns out most of us enjoy any exchange in which we receive goods whose value far exceeds what we pay for them. Same reason I love cheap ride share trips[1] and NYC ferry rides[2]. I'd probably really enjoy winning the mega millions jackpot with a $5 ticket too (though perhaps not? [3]). [1] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/zmjew8/were-all-killing-uber-just-by-using-it https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/zmjew8/were-all-killing-u... [2] https://ny.curbed.com/2019/3/28/18285731/nyc-ferry-swimming-in-subsidies-mayor-de-blasio https://ny.curbed.com/2019/3/28/18285731/nyc-ferry-swimming-... [3] https://time.com/4176128/powerball-jackpot-lottery-winners/ https://time.com/4176128/powerball-jackpot-lottery-winners/
- DisruptiveDave 7y ago
  Side note, I miss the East River ferry. It made my commute 100x more enjoyable than the subway (except when the ferries would leave my dock early and then yell at me for it).
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    What do you mean "miss"? There's plenty of ferry routes across the East River. Quite possibly more now than ever before.
    - DisruptiveDave 7y ago
      Ha, I don't live there anymore! The actual "miss"!
- sasper 7y ago
  WeWork is the most expensive option in our city for managed offices, by a large margin. It's not cheap.
  - bpt3 7y ago
    Have you tried to negotiate? If they have any competitors, they'll beat those prices just by asking in my experience.
AgloeDreams 7y ago
Quite love the space but it suffers from the too-little-too-much paradox. It costs too much for casual use (compared to like a starbucks) but costs reasonable amounts for hardcore use (compared to say, getting a larger apartment) and the gains in QOL are massive over working from home. It's a pretty great place to work..that likely costs more to run than they charge.
tedmiston 7y ago
I have used WeWorks on occasion when traveling and was always happy with the offering. Currently I use the major local coworking space when I need one or a coffee shop. If there were a WeWork in my city, I would consider it again. There aren't tons of them, but I really prefer the Galvanize coworking spaces [1] -- the crowd is a more diverse mix of people, and they feel more laid back to me. [1]: https://www.galvanize.com/entrepreneur#campuses https://www.galvanize.com/entrepreneur#campuses
cpwright 7y ago
Our company has a 9 and 6 person office in NYC. The space is clean, there are conference rooms available when we need them, and mostly everything works well enough. We mostly don't care about any of the community stuff, just that it is an effective way to get space without a long term lease or the need to worry about an office build out.
eric_the_read 7y ago
I just visited my boss in a WeWork space in San Jose, and it is the closest thing I've found so far to my idea of hell. The offices there have a unique combination of feeling exposed (from all the glass everywhere) and claustrophobic (from the tiny offices everywhere).
- ganitarashid 7y ago
  That is hilarious. Best description yet that I’ve heard of the WeWork vibe
  - neuromantik8086 7y ago
    I prefer the following: "It felt like a yuppie aquarium." https://www.reddit.com/r/finance/comments/c93agd/wework_isnt_even_close_to_being_profitable_it/essod6h/ https://www.reddit.com/r/finance/comments/c93agd/wework_isnt...
pbreit 7y ago
We have a small office for up to 12 people in Atlanta and it's great. Super easy to work with, spaces are top notch, you get larger office amenities without a large office. I can easily see this growing massively in future for distributed teams.
fredley 7y ago
Fancy space, lots of perks, terrible place to get stuff done. Glass walls mean everywhere is loud, you can hear everyone's phone calls on the entire floor. Desks were wobbly, offices cramped. Once they hired a steel band to play in the reception area for most of Summer (as part of a branded event(?) called 'The Endless Summer of We'...). Bonkers.
yeahigotgoats 7y ago
I dont mind at all when foolish 'investors' give me free money
dustinmoris 7y ago
I'm currently typing this message from a WeWork. I've been at 3 different locations so far and this one is the nicest, overlooking Tower Bridge and Tower Hill in London. Absolutely stunning office, not as dull and dark as the other WeWorks I was before and nice community here and as always great free coffee, but apart from that, there's nothing unique about WeWork. It's just a nice office, and unless the space is in a stunning location like the one at Tower Hill in London, it's actually wearing off very very quickly.

vr46 7y ago

Typing this from my desk in a WW. The location is great, building is good, the facilities are good, there's quite a nice dynamic about the place. No complaints, it's very smooth and well-organized. Lots of staff to run the place too.

question_away 7y ago

I just started working out of a space in Boston last month and it's been sublime. There's always a WeWork in whatever city I'm traveling to and at 25$ per day (beyond my usual credits), it's really affordable to have an office while traveling to both work and host clients.

sasper 7y ago

It's been fantastic for our fast-growing SaaS startup. We've been able to spin up offices in 4 international cities in the last 18 months with very few issues, and our teams are productive and happy with the spaces. I manage one of the new offices and have LOVED the responsiveness of the local WeWork team, the facilities, the infrastructure, and it's lightyears better than the previous office we were occupying. I don't have to worry about office-related issues any longer. That is, if WeWork stays solvent and doesn't go bankrupt. It's really too bad because their core business (renting office space) is done really well. Maybe a bankruptcy and restructuring would be good for their business, or maybe it will cause them to explode.

remarkEon 7y ago
It seems like the value that they are offering is just outsourced-office-management then. Am I wrong in thinking that? It's hard for me to parse what WeWork was "trying" to become. A real estate company that manages offices? An office management company that also does real estate?
- hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
  That's kind of exactly the point. IMO there are a lot of unicorns out there that have pretty decent business models (Uber/Lyft, WeWork, delivery services, etc.) The problem is they are probably worth much less than their investors paid for them, because everyone is discovering that once the VC subsidies go away after the "growth at all cost" mentality, these are actually pretty low margin businesses that don't warrant their "tech" valuations.
  - htfu 7y ago
    Yup. Other issue for many of them (which WeWork actually should be less exposed to) is that, most of it hardly being rocket science, "blow money until monopoly" seems to forget that customer subsidies A. aren't r&d/infrastructure, B. will have to be earned back, and not just 1:1 either... So even if whatever competition is knocked out, anyone entering the space after that, and not saddled with legacy funnycost, won't need your efficiencies and economies of scale to manage an edge in pricing. And market dominance can't negate lack of friction for eg drivers and riders to run a second, third, fourth app all at once. But the sun appears to be settling on bizarro cargo culting Amazon being seen as a viable business model. As a consumer I'll miss it!
- AgloeDreams 7y ago
  Management, location, and community. Hospitality. Basically, Wework is a hotel for awake business-focused people, with all the tweaks needed to make that work. It's kinda why Arlo SoHo NYC (hotel) reminded me of one. The real estate line never made much sense to anyone who ever was in one, I think Bloomburg started it. (Though real estate was the business that Adam used to screw everyone so, maybe that was his personal business lol)
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  The bet behind WeWork is that there's a ton of value currently being left on the table in outsourced office management; that everyone's doing it wrong, and doing it right is worth untold billions of dollars. I'm not sure I can get behind that bet, but it's not an inherently absurd idea. Imagine explaining to someone in the early 70s why Wal-Mart is going to grow from a Southern department store chain to the largest company in the US.

TomMarius 7y ago

I was skeptical, but it's excellent, and they have the nicest view on the city.

oroup 7y ago

Before we sold, we had WeWork offices in Denver and NY and used a similar competitor in Austin. They worked great and we were happy with them. But they were also a commodity and we chose based on price and lack of lock-in.

tnolet 7y ago

I don’t work in one but have visited three of them here in Berlin quite recently for meetings. The one in Friedrichshafen on the Spree is pretty nice. Great view. The other ones more in Mitte had way too much of a semi hipster hotel lobby feel. Everyone was just too fashionable and cool for my taste.

jekrb 7y ago

I used to work for a company that rented a WeWork space to meet with clients in NYC. I only opted to work out of it once or twice, for a change of scenery from my typical office. I think the location was the main perk, since I then got to spend a day in NYC. Working fully remote now and I enjoy that much more than being in any office setting.

rrdharan 7y ago

Turns out most of us enjoy any exchange in which we receive goods whose value far exceeds what we pay for them. Same reason I love cheap ride share trips[1] and NYC ferry rides[2]. I'd probably really enjoy winning the mega millions jackpot with a $5 ticket too (though perhaps not? [3]). [1] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/zmjew8/were-all-killing-uber-just-by-using-it https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/zmjew8/were-all-killing-u... [2] https://ny.curbed.com/2019/3/28/18285731/nyc-ferry-swimming-in-subsidies-mayor-de-blasio https://ny.curbed.com/2019/3/28/18285731/nyc-ferry-swimming-... [3] https://time.com/4176128/powerball-jackpot-lottery-winners/ https://time.com/4176128/powerball-jackpot-lottery-winners/

DisruptiveDave 7y ago
Side note, I miss the East River ferry. It made my commute 100x more enjoyable than the subway (except when the ferries would leave my dock early and then yell at me for it).
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  What do you mean "miss"? There's plenty of ferry routes across the East River. Quite possibly more now than ever before.
  - DisruptiveDave 7y ago
    Ha, I don't live there anymore! The actual "miss"!
sasper 7y ago
WeWork is the most expensive option in our city for managed offices, by a large margin. It's not cheap.
- bpt3 7y ago
  Have you tried to negotiate? If they have any competitors, they'll beat those prices just by asking in my experience.

AgloeDreams 7y ago

Quite love the space but it suffers from the too-little-too-much paradox. It costs too much for casual use (compared to like a starbucks) but costs reasonable amounts for hardcore use (compared to say, getting a larger apartment) and the gains in QOL are massive over working from home. It's a pretty great place to work..that likely costs more to run than they charge.

tedmiston 7y ago

I have used WeWorks on occasion when traveling and was always happy with the offering. Currently I use the major local coworking space when I need one or a coffee shop. If there were a WeWork in my city, I would consider it again. There aren't tons of them, but I really prefer the Galvanize coworking spaces [1] -- the crowd is a more diverse mix of people, and they feel more laid back to me. [1]: https://www.galvanize.com/entrepreneur#campuses https://www.galvanize.com/entrepreneur#campuses

cpwright 7y ago

Our company has a 9 and 6 person office in NYC. The space is clean, there are conference rooms available when we need them, and mostly everything works well enough. We mostly don't care about any of the community stuff, just that it is an effective way to get space without a long term lease or the need to worry about an office build out.

eric_the_read 7y ago

I just visited my boss in a WeWork space in San Jose, and it is the closest thing I've found so far to my idea of hell. The offices there have a unique combination of feeling exposed (from all the glass everywhere) and claustrophobic (from the tiny offices everywhere).

ganitarashid 7y ago
That is hilarious. Best description yet that I’ve heard of the WeWork vibe
- neuromantik8086 7y ago
  I prefer the following: "It felt like a yuppie aquarium." https://www.reddit.com/r/finance/comments/c93agd/wework_isnt_even_close_to_being_profitable_it/essod6h/ https://www.reddit.com/r/finance/comments/c93agd/wework_isnt...

pbreit 7y ago

We have a small office for up to 12 people in Atlanta and it's great. Super easy to work with, spaces are top notch, you get larger office amenities without a large office. I can easily see this growing massively in future for distributed teams.

fredley 7y ago

Fancy space, lots of perks, terrible place to get stuff done. Glass walls mean everywhere is loud, you can hear everyone's phone calls on the entire floor. Desks were wobbly, offices cramped. Once they hired a steel band to play in the reception area for most of Summer (as part of a branded event(?) called 'The Endless Summer of We'...). Bonkers.

yeahigotgoats 7y ago

I dont mind at all when foolish 'investors' give me free money

dustinmoris 7y ago

I'm currently typing this message from a WeWork. I've been at 3 different locations so far and this one is the nicest, overlooking Tower Bridge and Tower Hill in London. Absolutely stunning office, not as dull and dark as the other WeWorks I was before and nice community here and as always great free coffee, but apart from that, there's nothing unique about WeWork. It's just a nice office, and unless the space is in a stunning location like the one at Tower Hill in London, it's actually wearing off very very quickly.