6 ms·

Is This the Office of the Future or a $5B Waste of Space?

37 points by kvcc01 11y ago

sneak 11y ago
I can't be the only one who's tired of the USA's alcohol-drenched startup culture. In the first four paragraphs: keg, keg, beer, bar, tap, bar, pub, microbrews, tap, happy hour, tequila, margaritas, "90,000 glasses of beer".
- imgabe 11y ago
  This is hardly specific to the USA work culture. From what I understand European offices make the US look like a bunch of teetotalers. And the drunken Japanese businessman singing karaoke isn't a cliche for no reason.
  - startupfart 11y ago
    In the City (London) - Coffee and Alcohol really do make the whole thing go round. Get hepped up on Caffeine all day, retox on the booze post work. I can also remember the liquid lunches of the seventies and eighties (basically beer or wine for lunch, maybe some food). Oh and nicotine. Huge numbers of smokers!
  - yitchelle 11y ago
    BMW has beer vending machines with no time restrictions. https://suegoestogermany.wordpress.com/2012/06/21/thursday-62112-bmw-factory/ https://suegoestogermany.wordpress.com/2012/06/21/thursday-6...
- moron4hire 11y ago
  Frankly, as an America who also likes to drink, I find it tiring, too. Because it's not about the drinking. It's about about dedicating your whole life to the corporate ideal. Screw that. That's not why I got out of working for The Man. Why are we starting all these startups that don't respect our work life balance? How are we going to expect any employer to respect us if we don't respect ourselves? And WeWork in particular is flipping expensive. Most of what they offer can be had by buying $5 lattes every hour at your local coffee shop. I'm a member at a more bare-bones competitor to WeWork[0] that, if you price it out, is cheaper than going to coffee shops. And it's also quiet, there's a printer, and the wifi works all the time. And you're still getting coffee out of the deal. For WeWork's prices, I want to start having some private locker space or something, so I can maybe leave a laptop, lock up my papers, etc., not have to hump it around on the metro all day. If you want that level at WeWork, you have to pay such an exorbitant fee that you might as well just get three of your closest friends together to rent your own office. At least then I wouldn't have to deal with a bunch of overgrown children having nerf battles. [0] http://www.cove.is http://www.cove.is, though I'm pretty sure they're only available in the DC Metro area. EDIT: I just checked, and they've recently dropped their prices. WeWork's entry level used to be in the $100/mo range. Cove is still cheaper, and the private storage levels are still very expensive.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 11y ago
  I worked for a startup that grew past startup phase and no one drank.
- nonamemanemo 11y ago
  Don't worry, you aren't the only one. I long to be transported to a time or place where humans weren't so accepting... no, seeking such blatant disrespect to their personal dignity and craft. It seems to be one facet of a theme of infantilization and youth glorification in work culture and society at large. I am not sure whether it has any relationship with the rise of the "social" plague in industry, and the widespread infiltration of VC onto college campuses (and now elementary school playgrounds), where the youth are increasingly primed for dependency through the advertising and systematic denial of experiences. Offices for adults these days are becoming more like playgrounds, and playgrounds for kids are becoming more like jails. I can't understand all the psychodynamics at play, but something is clearly broken with the way we treat our youth and our narrowly defined notions of "fun". Work culture is not about the worker or the work anymore, it is about creating an interdependent unit of labor. But if neither the quality of work nor the quality of life for the worker is emphasized, I am not sure what the purpose is besides to maintain social order.
  - joslin01 11y ago
    I work in this youth glorified startup world. It's awfully critical to imply that those of us who enjoy the atmosphere are "seeking blatant disregard to their personal dignity and craft." There's not as much drinking done as you would think and really it's either an after work hours thing or someone is coming in checking the place out and has a beer. It's really not a big deal. It's actually just more convenient because alcohol can loosen you up and means you don't have to go across the street to an expensive bar. I believe you're taking an overly hard-lined approach to this. I work very hard, and so do many others. There's some who just dick around, but that's going to be in any office. I would ask you though, what's more conducive to meeting new people around the office? A light-hearted 5:00 / 6:00 drink at the bar right outside the work area where there's already other people drinking OR organizing everyone to go to a bar across the street and hope people show up OR just going to the bar? WeWork is a great place because of the community it builds and you might very well argue it does that on the back of its kegs with taps labeled WeWork. Is this really so bad? Think about your typical startup who's struggling to get along. Isn't it better that they have others to talk to especially others who are going through the exact thing they are? I genuinely think you can't understand all the psychodynamics at play because you're stubbornly holding onto your perception of a workplace should be. Hey to each their own, but I see a lot of positives in WeWork's approach.
- gdulli 11y ago
  My eyes rolled so fast at that I got dizzy.
- CalRobert 11y ago
  I like beer, but it's exhausting because the assumption is your socializing now takes place at work. I imagine it's pure hell for anyone who struggles with alcohol addiction. As a compulsive eater, I HATE it when offices have free snacks. It's mentally taxing to know there's free snacks only meters away all day long. When I switched from a place with free chips and candy to a place with free apples and pears, I lost a decent amount of weight.
  - bweitzman 11y ago
    But at the same time, you can't expect places to not have free snacks out just because you can't deal with them. And for the record, I actually hate having snacks around too but that's something that I feel like I need to deal with myself. It must be really difficult to be an alcoholic in a workplace environment where people drink regularly. But being an alcoholic in general must be really difficult because of the emphasis that our society puts on social drinking.
    - CalRobert 11y ago
      Very true - I just find it to be a great challenge. I certainly wouldn't tell my coworkers they shouldn't have access to snacks because of my own issues, the same way I enjoyed the free beer (good beer too!) at my previous job. The difference is I don't have any trouble putting beer out of my mind until Friday afternoon, whereas food is ever in my thoughts when it is presented.
- lmm 11y ago
  I'm pleased. It seems like a better culture than the alternatives.
- rifung 11y ago
  Definitely not alone. I don't drink so when the company gets together for beer I just feel really awkward or don't go.
  - bweitzman 11y ago
    Purely out of curiosity, do your coworkers know that you don't drink or are you trying to keep it a secret (which is totally understandable)?
    - Nadya 11y ago
      Not him but I also choose not to drink, so I'm in the same boat. I'm vocal with my coworkers that I don't drink and that's why I do not attend many of the social outings. We have a lot of outings that don't center around or involve alcohol (ie. Gokarting) and I attend those. I make it a point that I'd rather they go have fun at a bar and I'll "sit this one out" rather than turning all events into "sober-friendly" events. E: Since it might be brought up... I politely decline offers to attend the bar gatherings and "just don't drink". I dislike being around drunk people - I find them annoying and having to repeat myself 20 times in conversation to be frustrating. Instead of ruining their fun experience with my irritated and increasingly unfriendly attitude - I stay at home and let them enjoy their time.
    - rifung 11y ago
      They know. I'm not the only one who doesn't drink. I think one other person doesn't in our company of 10 people.
- tikhonj 11y ago
  That's interesting, because I have the opposite reaction: I'm really tired of USA's general puritanical anti-alcohol culture. It's tiresome and moralistic. I'd love to have a glass of beer with lunch and not have an arbitrary taboo about alcohol at work. I'd love not to worry about drinking in public. It's treated like an ugly bodily function! I'd love not to be hassled for ID everywhere I can drink. I'd love (or, more accurately, would have loved) a more reasonable drinking age. But no, US culture makes casually drinking alcohol—something that should be entirely reasonable—awkward and difficult. In practice, all it means is that I can't responsibly enjoy a nice glass of wine at the park and college students still end up binging on cheap beer and liquor.
  - sneak 11y ago
    That's not anti-alcohol culture, that's simply authoritarian legislation. Alcohol licensing authorities, operating on 200+ year old laws enacted by uptight religionists, have taken it upon themselves to cause as many possible hurdles to business owners as possible, simply because they can. It's not an "anti-alcohol culture". It's simply power-hungry officials. The US drinks like there's no tomorrow.
sneak 11y ago
However, I do think the small studio + co-located coworking space is a winning concept. Bundle in things like laundry service and perhaps catering (everyone needs food, not everyone needs alcohol) or even just Soylent/Jakeshake, and it's starting to be a pretty useful value-add, editing out all of the generic day to day tasks that suck up one's only nonrenewable resource.
mc32 11y ago
I think there is space for everything and they will be one of the kinds of office solutions, but not the solution. Neither everyone nor every job is optimized for close proximity with others. Nor does everyone want to extend the dormitory study room culture indefinitely into adulthood. I think this kind of space works for some job types and industries, but definitely I do not see it as the one future for all office spaces. But congratulations on trying to make this popular and succeeding so far. The more choice the better.
mattchamb 11y ago
The thing that struck me about the first picture was how uncomfortable the chairs looked. Why would they spend so much on decorative lighting and neglect the parts that are essential for prolonged productivity?
- deleted 11y ago
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  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- Cthulhu_ 11y ago
  I'm assuming it's because whoever's sitting there only does so for relatively short amounts of time - an hour, tops. Then again, maybe the younger generation evolved to be able to sit uncomfortably for a long work day, ;p
kvcc01 11y ago
I think this was a fine article with a terrible title. I worked out of WeWork’s SoHo office in NYC for a while and was pleased with the details they got right to make themselves attractive to startups (no pesky sales team, short notice to cancel, no nickel and diming on Wi-Fi, printers, etc.). Before WeWork, I also worked in a Regus office (their competitor mentioned in the article) and they managed to get all the same things wrong. Perhaps they have adapted since. I’m unaffiliated with either company but wish WeWork well. It was a fun vibe they cultivated and everyone seemed to enjoy working there.
joslin01 11y ago
I work in WeWork and love it. It's a great atmosphere and can be inspiring to look around and feel the young, vibrant energy. That's a bad title though; it certainly isn't a waste of space and the article never even seemed to allude to it being a waste of space.
mempko 11y ago
| Neumann says, while jettisoning the socialist part. “On the one hand, community. On the other hand, you eat what you kill.” Neumann doesn't understand what socialism is.
Beached 11y ago
I work from home... Its much nicer then that place, I dont have noisy people running around and talking on the phones all day, unlimited food and drinks all day, and i get to keep my stuff laying out on the desk without fear of it getting stolen or messed with! I never understood why people who can choose to work from anywhere, choose to pay a monthly commitment to go to a co working space, instead of choosing to work in a low cost area where there money can go SO much farther. As a mobile startup, you can opt to live outside of a major city being able to leech talent from the talent hub, and make your money go SO much farther.
- karmajunkie 11y ago
  I'm with you on working in a cheaper locale. You lost me at working from home all the time. I'm guessing you don't have kids?
  - Domenic_S 11y ago
    I've got a 2-year-old and my successful founder friend has two under 4, we both WFH full time. Although I think he has a co-working space within biking distance in case he really needs to get out. Teach your kids boundaries young!
  - Beached 11y ago
    I dont have kids, I can see kids being at home during working hours may through a wrench into my rant. Especially at a young age when they dont understand what I'm doing.
- krisdol 11y ago
  I get depressed cabin-fevery if I spend many days working from home. Going to a cafe, outdoors, or any change of scenery generally helps. I think part of it is that I've officially married my relaxing escape from the office with all the bad features of the office, and that takes a mental toll after a while. I know others that do, but salaried or not, I'm a 9-5er and I don't degrade my hourly rate by putting in extra hours unless they're absolutely necessary for an infrequent crunch. For me, seeing colleagues that put in 15 hour days at soulless BigCo detracts significantly from the bigger salaries they may be getting. Making my home the office is no different from making the office my home, as makes it feel like I never mentally stop working. Plus they have better chairs and internet than I'd care to buy
varelse 11y ago
I want my 8x8 cube back... The current 5x5 feet of open office space I have has led me to mostly work from home.
cmsmith 11y ago
>Many traditional real estate investors are perplexed by WeWork’s $5 billion valuation. With that kind of money, you could build the world’s most expensive skyscraper—One World Trade Center, which at 3 million square feet has roughly the same cumulative amount of office space as WeWork—and still have $1 billion left over. I'm as dismissive of ridiculous startup valuations as anyone, but this seemed like a weird way to evaluate whether their value was justified. For reference, here are a couple of other similar statistics: * There are about 250M Apple devices in use (100M/yr * 2.5 yr lifespan). At 750B market cap, they're worth $3000 per i____ out there, or enough to buy every one of their users an iPhone and still have $500B left over. * There are about 200,000 active Uber drivers, and they're valued at $50B. That's $300,000 per driver, or enough to buy every one of their drivers a Tesla and still have $40B left over.
- notahacker 11y ago
  Isn't the point that unlike high-end manufacturing or online marketplace technology, real estate is a commodity business with competition based on location and fit rather than brand, and owning the assets is where the safest profit is? ($5bn worth of real estate certainly holds its value better than $50bn worth of latest generation Teslas.) I'd think comparing WeWork - a mid-sized player in a highly competitive workspace space - with the dominance of Apple and Uber is a little fanciful too. As the article points out, Regus (and the Workspace Group, and others) have been doing the same thing successfully on a larger scale for much longer, actually own many of their assets and yet still have smaller market caps. I'm not sure that beer on tap is that much of a defensible business model differentiator for WeWork...
tikhonj 11y ago
At first, WeWork really did sound like little more than a large, consolidated chain of coworking spaces. The way the article is laid out, you first read that description and then read the founder's breathless claims of how they're not just another real estate firm. But with a crazy valuation! So you take all that with a grain of salt. Founders are always talking about how they're doing something completely novel and groundbreaking, even if they're not. And then you hit some little details: "…valuable benefits like access to a group health insurance plan…". In the US that is a big thing. If they're offering group health insurance, they really aren't just another real estate company! In fact, I'm pretty enthusiastic about the idea now. I've always thought that many of the benefits offered by large corporations did not have to be tied to a single monolithic entity. Nothing about well-managed office space, group health insurance and shared infrastructure is inexorably tied to having a top down autocratic organization, but historically it has been. Wouldn't it be cool if somebody supplied the same infrastructure not to business teams in a rigid hierarchy but to a loosely federated network of startups and freelancers? Looks like exactly what WeWork is offering.
petercooper 11y ago
Despite being (at the time of writing) 2 hours old with 26 points, this story has crashed from the front page to position 103? An intriguingly fast fall..
- kvcc01 11y ago
  I was curious about that myself (for the obvious reason :) I presume some of the deeply nested comments tripped a flamewar detector, and the ranking cratered thereafter. (I remember reading somewhere about the nesting level being used as a post quality indicator.)
  - petercooper 11y ago
    Well thanks for posting it anyway, I found it an enjoyable read :)
stephengillie 11y ago
Did anyone else find the article illegible? I struggled to read the white-on-black text for several minutes. After closing the article I struggled to be able to read HN.
cyphunk 11y ago
WeWank™ CoWanking™ spaces inbetween the mostly empty airbnb housing projects that you shuffle between with uber, all coming to a city near you.

37 points by kvcc01 11y ago

sneak 11y ago

I can't be the only one who's tired of the USA's alcohol-drenched startup culture. In the first four paragraphs: keg, keg, beer, bar, tap, bar, pub, microbrews, tap, happy hour, tequila, margaritas, "90,000 glasses of beer".

imgabe 11y ago
This is hardly specific to the USA work culture. From what I understand European offices make the US look like a bunch of teetotalers. And the drunken Japanese businessman singing karaoke isn't a cliche for no reason.
- startupfart 11y ago
  In the City (London) - Coffee and Alcohol really do make the whole thing go round. Get hepped up on Caffeine all day, retox on the booze post work. I can also remember the liquid lunches of the seventies and eighties (basically beer or wine for lunch, maybe some food). Oh and nicotine. Huge numbers of smokers!
- yitchelle 11y ago
  BMW has beer vending machines with no time restrictions. https://suegoestogermany.wordpress.com/2012/06/21/thursday-62112-bmw-factory/ https://suegoestogermany.wordpress.com/2012/06/21/thursday-6...
moron4hire 11y ago
Frankly, as an America who also likes to drink, I find it tiring, too. Because it's not about the drinking. It's about about dedicating your whole life to the corporate ideal. Screw that. That's not why I got out of working for The Man. Why are we starting all these startups that don't respect our work life balance? How are we going to expect any employer to respect us if we don't respect ourselves? And WeWork in particular is flipping expensive. Most of what they offer can be had by buying $5 lattes every hour at your local coffee shop. I'm a member at a more bare-bones competitor to WeWork[0] that, if you price it out, is cheaper than going to coffee shops. And it's also quiet, there's a printer, and the wifi works all the time. And you're still getting coffee out of the deal. For WeWork's prices, I want to start having some private locker space or something, so I can maybe leave a laptop, lock up my papers, etc., not have to hump it around on the metro all day. If you want that level at WeWork, you have to pay such an exorbitant fee that you might as well just get three of your closest friends together to rent your own office. At least then I wouldn't have to deal with a bunch of overgrown children having nerf battles. [0] http://www.cove.is http://www.cove.is, though I'm pretty sure they're only available in the DC Metro area. EDIT: I just checked, and they've recently dropped their prices. WeWork's entry level used to be in the $100/mo range. Cove is still cheaper, and the private storage levels are still very expensive.
0xdeadbeefbabe 11y ago
I worked for a startup that grew past startup phase and no one drank.
nonamemanemo 11y ago
Don't worry, you aren't the only one. I long to be transported to a time or place where humans weren't so accepting... no, seeking such blatant disrespect to their personal dignity and craft. It seems to be one facet of a theme of infantilization and youth glorification in work culture and society at large. I am not sure whether it has any relationship with the rise of the "social" plague in industry, and the widespread infiltration of VC onto college campuses (and now elementary school playgrounds), where the youth are increasingly primed for dependency through the advertising and systematic denial of experiences. Offices for adults these days are becoming more like playgrounds, and playgrounds for kids are becoming more like jails. I can't understand all the psychodynamics at play, but something is clearly broken with the way we treat our youth and our narrowly defined notions of "fun". Work culture is not about the worker or the work anymore, it is about creating an interdependent unit of labor. But if neither the quality of work nor the quality of life for the worker is emphasized, I am not sure what the purpose is besides to maintain social order.
- joslin01 11y ago
  I work in this youth glorified startup world. It's awfully critical to imply that those of us who enjoy the atmosphere are "seeking blatant disregard to their personal dignity and craft." There's not as much drinking done as you would think and really it's either an after work hours thing or someone is coming in checking the place out and has a beer. It's really not a big deal. It's actually just more convenient because alcohol can loosen you up and means you don't have to go across the street to an expensive bar. I believe you're taking an overly hard-lined approach to this. I work very hard, and so do many others. There's some who just dick around, but that's going to be in any office. I would ask you though, what's more conducive to meeting new people around the office? A light-hearted 5:00 / 6:00 drink at the bar right outside the work area where there's already other people drinking OR organizing everyone to go to a bar across the street and hope people show up OR just going to the bar? WeWork is a great place because of the community it builds and you might very well argue it does that on the back of its kegs with taps labeled WeWork. Is this really so bad? Think about your typical startup who's struggling to get along. Isn't it better that they have others to talk to especially others who are going through the exact thing they are? I genuinely think you can't understand all the psychodynamics at play because you're stubbornly holding onto your perception of a workplace should be. Hey to each their own, but I see a lot of positives in WeWork's approach.
gdulli 11y ago
My eyes rolled so fast at that I got dizzy.
CalRobert 11y ago
I like beer, but it's exhausting because the assumption is your socializing now takes place at work. I imagine it's pure hell for anyone who struggles with alcohol addiction. As a compulsive eater, I HATE it when offices have free snacks. It's mentally taxing to know there's free snacks only meters away all day long. When I switched from a place with free chips and candy to a place with free apples and pears, I lost a decent amount of weight.
- bweitzman 11y ago
  But at the same time, you can't expect places to not have free snacks out just because you can't deal with them. And for the record, I actually hate having snacks around too but that's something that I feel like I need to deal with myself. It must be really difficult to be an alcoholic in a workplace environment where people drink regularly. But being an alcoholic in general must be really difficult because of the emphasis that our society puts on social drinking.
  - CalRobert 11y ago
    Very true - I just find it to be a great challenge. I certainly wouldn't tell my coworkers they shouldn't have access to snacks because of my own issues, the same way I enjoyed the free beer (good beer too!) at my previous job. The difference is I don't have any trouble putting beer out of my mind until Friday afternoon, whereas food is ever in my thoughts when it is presented.
lmm 11y ago
I'm pleased. It seems like a better culture than the alternatives.
rifung 11y ago
Definitely not alone. I don't drink so when the company gets together for beer I just feel really awkward or don't go.
- bweitzman 11y ago
  Purely out of curiosity, do your coworkers know that you don't drink or are you trying to keep it a secret (which is totally understandable)?
  - Nadya 11y ago
    Not him but I also choose not to drink, so I'm in the same boat. I'm vocal with my coworkers that I don't drink and that's why I do not attend many of the social outings. We have a lot of outings that don't center around or involve alcohol (ie. Gokarting) and I attend those. I make it a point that I'd rather they go have fun at a bar and I'll "sit this one out" rather than turning all events into "sober-friendly" events. E: Since it might be brought up... I politely decline offers to attend the bar gatherings and "just don't drink". I dislike being around drunk people - I find them annoying and having to repeat myself 20 times in conversation to be frustrating. Instead of ruining their fun experience with my irritated and increasingly unfriendly attitude - I stay at home and let them enjoy their time.
  - rifung 11y ago
    They know. I'm not the only one who doesn't drink. I think one other person doesn't in our company of 10 people.
tikhonj 11y ago
That's interesting, because I have the opposite reaction: I'm really tired of USA's general puritanical anti-alcohol culture. It's tiresome and moralistic. I'd love to have a glass of beer with lunch and not have an arbitrary taboo about alcohol at work. I'd love not to worry about drinking in public. It's treated like an ugly bodily function! I'd love not to be hassled for ID everywhere I can drink. I'd love (or, more accurately, would have loved) a more reasonable drinking age. But no, US culture makes casually drinking alcohol—something that should be entirely reasonable—awkward and difficult. In practice, all it means is that I can't responsibly enjoy a nice glass of wine at the park and college students still end up binging on cheap beer and liquor.
- sneak 11y ago
  That's not anti-alcohol culture, that's simply authoritarian legislation. Alcohol licensing authorities, operating on 200+ year old laws enacted by uptight religionists, have taken it upon themselves to cause as many possible hurdles to business owners as possible, simply because they can. It's not an "anti-alcohol culture". It's simply power-hungry officials. The US drinks like there's no tomorrow.

sneak 11y ago

However, I do think the small studio + co-located coworking space is a winning concept. Bundle in things like laundry service and perhaps catering (everyone needs food, not everyone needs alcohol) or even just Soylent/Jakeshake, and it's starting to be a pretty useful value-add, editing out all of the generic day to day tasks that suck up one's only nonrenewable resource.

mc32 11y ago

I think there is space for everything and they will be one of the kinds of office solutions, but not the solution. Neither everyone nor every job is optimized for close proximity with others. Nor does everyone want to extend the dormitory study room culture indefinitely into adulthood. I think this kind of space works for some job types and industries, but definitely I do not see it as the one future for all office spaces. But congratulations on trying to make this popular and succeeding so far. The more choice the better.

mattchamb 11y ago

The thing that struck me about the first picture was how uncomfortable the chairs looked. Why would they spend so much on decorative lighting and neglect the parts that are essential for prolonged productivity?

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
Cthulhu_ 11y ago
I'm assuming it's because whoever's sitting there only does so for relatively short amounts of time - an hour, tops. Then again, maybe the younger generation evolved to be able to sit uncomfortably for a long work day, ;p

kvcc01 11y ago

I think this was a fine article with a terrible title. I worked out of WeWork’s SoHo office in NYC for a while and was pleased with the details they got right to make themselves attractive to startups (no pesky sales team, short notice to cancel, no nickel and diming on Wi-Fi, printers, etc.). Before WeWork, I also worked in a Regus office (their competitor mentioned in the article) and they managed to get all the same things wrong. Perhaps they have adapted since. I’m unaffiliated with either company but wish WeWork well. It was a fun vibe they cultivated and everyone seemed to enjoy working there.

joslin01 11y ago

I work in WeWork and love it. It's a great atmosphere and can be inspiring to look around and feel the young, vibrant energy. That's a bad title though; it certainly isn't a waste of space and the article never even seemed to allude to it being a waste of space.

mempko 11y ago

| Neumann says, while jettisoning the socialist part. “On the one hand, community. On the other hand, you eat what you kill.” Neumann doesn't understand what socialism is.

Beached 11y ago

I work from home... Its much nicer then that place, I dont have noisy people running around and talking on the phones all day, unlimited food and drinks all day, and i get to keep my stuff laying out on the desk without fear of it getting stolen or messed with! I never understood why people who can choose to work from anywhere, choose to pay a monthly commitment to go to a co working space, instead of choosing to work in a low cost area where there money can go SO much farther. As a mobile startup, you can opt to live outside of a major city being able to leech talent from the talent hub, and make your money go SO much farther.

karmajunkie 11y ago
I'm with you on working in a cheaper locale. You lost me at working from home all the time. I'm guessing you don't have kids?
- Domenic_S 11y ago
  I've got a 2-year-old and my successful founder friend has two under 4, we both WFH full time. Although I think he has a co-working space within biking distance in case he really needs to get out. Teach your kids boundaries young!
- Beached 11y ago
  I dont have kids, I can see kids being at home during working hours may through a wrench into my rant. Especially at a young age when they dont understand what I'm doing.
krisdol 11y ago
I get depressed cabin-fevery if I spend many days working from home. Going to a cafe, outdoors, or any change of scenery generally helps. I think part of it is that I've officially married my relaxing escape from the office with all the bad features of the office, and that takes a mental toll after a while. I know others that do, but salaried or not, I'm a 9-5er and I don't degrade my hourly rate by putting in extra hours unless they're absolutely necessary for an infrequent crunch. For me, seeing colleagues that put in 15 hour days at soulless BigCo detracts significantly from the bigger salaries they may be getting. Making my home the office is no different from making the office my home, as makes it feel like I never mentally stop working. Plus they have better chairs and internet than I'd care to buy

varelse 11y ago

I want my 8x8 cube back... The current 5x5 feet of open office space I have has led me to mostly work from home.

cmsmith 11y ago

>Many traditional real estate investors are perplexed by WeWork’s $5 billion valuation. With that kind of money, you could build the world’s most expensive skyscraper—One World Trade Center, which at 3 million square feet has roughly the same cumulative amount of office space as WeWork—and still have $1 billion left over. I'm as dismissive of ridiculous startup valuations as anyone, but this seemed like a weird way to evaluate whether their value was justified. For reference, here are a couple of other similar statistics: * There are about 250M Apple devices in use (100M/yr * 2.5 yr lifespan). At 750B market cap, they're worth $3000 per i____ out there, or enough to buy every one of their users an iPhone and still have $500B left over. * There are about 200,000 active Uber drivers, and they're valued at $50B. That's $300,000 per driver, or enough to buy every one of their drivers a Tesla and still have $40B left over.

notahacker 11y ago
Isn't the point that unlike high-end manufacturing or online marketplace technology, real estate is a commodity business with competition based on location and fit rather than brand, and owning the assets is where the safest profit is? ($5bn worth of real estate certainly holds its value better than $50bn worth of latest generation Teslas.) I'd think comparing WeWork - a mid-sized player in a highly competitive workspace space - with the dominance of Apple and Uber is a little fanciful too. As the article points out, Regus (and the Workspace Group, and others) have been doing the same thing successfully on a larger scale for much longer, actually own many of their assets and yet still have smaller market caps. I'm not sure that beer on tap is that much of a defensible business model differentiator for WeWork...

tikhonj 11y ago

At first, WeWork really did sound like little more than a large, consolidated chain of coworking spaces. The way the article is laid out, you first read that description and then read the founder's breathless claims of how they're not just another real estate firm. But with a crazy valuation! So you take all that with a grain of salt. Founders are always talking about how they're doing something completely novel and groundbreaking, even if they're not. And then you hit some little details: "…valuable benefits like access to a group health insurance plan…". In the US that is a big thing. If they're offering group health insurance, they really aren't just another real estate company! In fact, I'm pretty enthusiastic about the idea now. I've always thought that many of the benefits offered by large corporations did not have to be tied to a single monolithic entity. Nothing about well-managed office space, group health insurance and shared infrastructure is inexorably tied to having a top down autocratic organization, but historically it has been. Wouldn't it be cool if somebody supplied the same infrastructure not to business teams in a rigid hierarchy but to a loosely federated network of startups and freelancers? Looks like exactly what WeWork is offering.

petercooper 11y ago

Despite being (at the time of writing) 2 hours old with 26 points, this story has crashed from the front page to position 103? An intriguingly fast fall..

kvcc01 11y ago
I was curious about that myself (for the obvious reason :) I presume some of the deeply nested comments tripped a flamewar detector, and the ranking cratered thereafter. (I remember reading somewhere about the nesting level being used as a post quality indicator.)
- petercooper 11y ago
  Well thanks for posting it anyway, I found it an enjoyable read :)

stephengillie 11y ago

Did anyone else find the article illegible? I struggled to read the white-on-black text for several minutes. After closing the article I struggled to be able to read HN.

cyphunk 11y ago

WeWank™ CoWanking™ spaces inbetween the mostly empty airbnb housing projects that you shuffle between with uber, all coming to a city near you.