I'm surprised most of the comments here are on the merits of shared workspaces instead of the potential overstaffing of WeWork. They have opened a couple of campuses in Denver in the last couple of months, and i was surprised to see about a 2:1 company to WeWork staff ratio. I won't pretend to know the list of the staff's responsibilities, but i can say that often times they appear to be hanging out in the general area chatting.

As a tenant that lack of things to do is great for me. It means they can be attentive to our needs when they arise. For WeWork, i suspect it is indicative of overstaffing campuses.

Been a WW member for a while, through their recent growth period. From what I can tell this is part of 'the strategy'. Start a new office, make it incredibly shiny/nice/very fully staffed, fill it up, then start cutting back to something more sustainable.

Note that this isn't necessarily a bad thing (unless you work for WW). Starting by crazy delighting your customers to get an initial bump, then cutting back to something more sustainable isn't exactly a groundbreaking strategy. It's a bit reminiscent of what Uber does in new cities.

That is approximately the impression I have of the staff in the West Loop office as well. The place feels overstaffed.

I have visited We Work after hours for meet ups but never during the day. Could someone describe what the staff does or what they should do? Isn't it substantially a real estate company, so is it all leasing/sales plus some facilities work?

At West Loop, there are two front desks, each staffed by 1-2 people; one at reception, one on the second floor, which I assume is there for member services? Then there are 3-4 at-large workers in black WeWork t-shirts taking out trash, delivering mail? No, wait, no they don't deliver anything. I think they just take out the trash.

Then there's a night crew that comes in and cleans the building.

In the wework at Market and 6, there's a bunch of staff too. Though they have I think 8 or 10 floors of the building.

Of course, who knows what the staff do all day. The bathroom on our floor regularly runs out of paper towels or has overflowing garbage cans.

Also, fwiw, I can't disrecommend WeWork strongly enough.

* They let one of the two elevators in our building sit out of service for 6 weeks last year. I hope you like a 15+ minute wait to get in or out of the building. Instead of being aggressive with the building owners to get it fixed, the smarmy wework pricks did nothing.

* They also can't get the door locks on our door to work reliably. Now the door just sits open all day.

* The hvac doesn't work. More than half the staff on my floor used blankets last winter, and even I found it quite cold, and I grew up in the north. Now that it's summer, it's regularly low 80s in the office.

* The offices themselves are loud overpriced echo boxes.

We finally got a real office and put in our notice this month. I was ready to quit to get out of WeWork.

Wework flagship for two years. I realized when there the tenants were mostly pretty bad startups who were just blowing through VC and would never survive. Saw Weworks valuation to continue to skyrocket -- all they do is sublease! Ridiculous, and they'll lose more than half their tenants as soon as VC dries up.

The "offices" are pretty useless. You hear everyone around you all the time, and you have no privacy for conversations or phone calls. The modern decor just means lots of noise too - god forbid someone on your floor wear high heels, you'll hear them walking up and down the hardwood halls all day.

Same feeling in Austin location as well.

I like WeWork quite a bit and they have a few locations in Seattle, but they also seemed way overstaffed. Other than putting sliced cucumbers in the water and answering the rare phone call, it's not clear why they would ever need more than 2-3 people working there at a time, but I always saw 6+ people there.

I also noticed the staff spent a lot of time hanging out on couches, playing ping pong, and chatting with their friends. Everyone was always really friendly and professional when I needed something and it contributed to a laid-back vibe, but that's not a good staffing model for a business that's running at scale and not for fun.

I work out of a co-working space in India, the largest of its kind with 6 big offices across 5 cities.

It seems to have the same problem. Although my office is the "home" office of this company, it still has way too many employees of its own.

And I reckon they might be profitable, but I find that a lot of them aren't doing anything really.

I mean, do you really need 5 people just to handle your social media? Or do you need 4 people in one office just to handle billing?

That staff to company ratio is surprising. I did a month at NextSpace.us in Culver City, CA and they really only ever had 2 or 3 staff members on at one time for the whole location.

I'm a member--through the company I work for--at the WeWork on Dupont Circle in Washington DC. I've been in a lot of coworking spaces over the years and this is certainly the largest so far. My 2nd day at work I got lost trying to remember how to get back to our 6-person office. And that's just one floor, there is a whole other floor.

There are a LOT of people working there. What's really surprising to see is how many of them are non-profits. The company I work for can swing it because we are a very profitable consulting company. But I don't get how the non-profs do it.

And there are always at least three people behind the reception desk. I don't ever see anyone actually using the reception desk, but there are three people manning it just in case. I did a loop around the halls and found no less than 4 custodians working at the same time. It's not like there is anything dirty going on. Everyone is working with computers.

I mean, there's free beer in the kitchen. How can this not be expensive? My CEO told me what he was paying for rent not too long ago. It was ludicrous. We could rent a warehouse in the city I actually live (Alexandria) and have 10 times as much room, and still have enough left over to renovate and make the warehouse into a "livable" office space.

Non-profits still bring in revenue. If they do well, they may actually turn a profit. They simply cannot distribute said profits to shareholders. Charitable giving was around $350B in 2015.

I'm also a member through my company. We're in the Chinatown location but I relate to your post 100%. I could really care less about the free beer. Boozing during the day feels strange and they just switched it over to cold brew coffee; perhaps because of that.

I find it odd that people at the front desk just kind of hang out. I never got onboarding but was able to figure out everything on my own. Not that difficult.

I wish there were more tech meetups there. Instead I'm going all over DC/Northern Va. to random offices for those. Because of that I kind of feel disassociated from other people at WeWork. I go in, do my work in my fishbowl office of 6, and go home. Little interaction with others there.

I once went to a meetup at MakeOffices at Tyson's Corner which is a competing colocation workspace. It is a lot less "hip" but has things like open tables with seats and whiteboards everywhere which really appeals to me. We have to provide our own in Chinatown or rent a conference room using credits. Which we hesitate to do because you never know when you'll need it.

These spaces are expensive. If it were up to me I'd be working in a less "hip" but more functional space.

A lot of it might be capital outlay and flexibility: Looking around at leasing, commercial real estate often wants 6 months up front, and a five-year commitment. Saving up that cash can be tough no matter what size you are, especially if you don't know what your staffing will be like in a year or two.

I guess I don't understand why any startup would pay 300-500/per desk. While I'm building I look to cut all expenses across the board and leave only the bare minimum required to function and create effectively.

Can someone give an anecdote on when a shared workspace like this was beneficial to their startup's growth?

We have a private office in the West Loop WeWork, because when we got it (just coming off the lease at our Oak Park office) I couldn't imagine working in a shared office.

Erin uses it, but I never do; I just stay in the coworking space downstairs. Generally people aren't very annoying (exception: enthusiastic dial-for-dollars recruiters taking loud phone calls), and the open space is a lot more comfortable.

It's like the good bits of working in a coffee shop with none of the bad bits.

As for the price: even with a private office, I felt like WeWork's pricing was competitive. I could have paid less for an office in Chicago, but it would be much less nice, and I'd have to lease it. Leases are especially painful in the early months of your company, because you have no visibility into how you're going to need space moving forward.

I'm not a WeWork booster. The place feels... let's say, "heavily subsidized by investors". I'm happy to take advantage.

I've used a coworking space in Tokyo for approximately 2 years, including my entire tenure at Starfighter. It costs approximately $350 per month. A++ would use a coworking space again. I have visited the WeWork office that Erin and Thomas work out of in Chicago, and it is better equipped than my office and has a variety of features which make it better for doing the kind of work that I'm routinely doing, including a) vastly more space per person, so that other people's conversations don't intrude into focused productivity time and b) closed offices with decent acoustics for calls.

Previously I did substantially all of my work from either my apartment or from cafes. Offices are better than apartments: you can bracket all time spent in them as "work" and then go home from work. Offices are better than cafes: it is expected that you will be working at an office, and you don't have to play a constant am-I-paying-enough-to-keep-my-table game with the cafe. Relevantly for Tokyo cafes, offices (even cramped offices) are substantially more spacious per seat than cafes are, have much better power/Internet situations, and often include printers and fax machines, for when you need a printer and/or fax machine.

Working from home definitely has its own hardships. For me, its really messed with my sleep. When I worked from an office my most productive time was around 8am - 12pm. From home my post productive times are from 11pm - 3am. You can imagine some of the adverse effects this can have..

My first experience working in shared offices was at co-working spaces in Tokyo, Yokohama, Sendai, and Sapporo. I really liked working at coworking spaces in Japan. Once I came back to US, I tried several coworking spaces including WeWork. None came close to my experience in Japan. I rather work at home in US and at coworking spaces in Japan. Japan coworking spaces are very cost effective, flexible, facilities are top notch (specially internet speed), quiet, and you can be as social as you want or not. There are no gimmicks like beer on tap but some spaces held weekend/after-hour drinking and gaming (poker). I found US coworking spaces to be noisy and interrupting. Most have tenant agreements that run long (UW startup hall took the cake with 24+ pages) and basically ask you to sign your life away to them but they don't take any responsibility for anything.

What's your coworking spot of choice in tko?

This is, owing to some of the social peculiarities of work here, a "feel free to ask me privately" question. My email is trivially discoverable.

To add to the other comment. There is a lot of flexibility in being able to go month to month. Not only desk count but location. Leasing a unit even a small office is a lot of hassle in silicon valley. Takes a chunk of capital and a lot of time to find a location.

Additional these places can be attractive for remote workers and freelancers. Its offers a community of individuals in same/similar industries. Clean bathrooms, usually basic amenities.

Edit: Just to add, I worked at a co-working place in downtown San Francisco. I think we spent maybe ~1 year there. Started with a couple desks, ended with maybe 8 desks and then we moved out. It gets expensive but it offers a level of flexibility that we found valuable at the time.

interesting, i couldn't see this scaling past 3-4 people. i figure the dedicated desk might be worth it, or at least space to get out of the house and network, but for 2500 5 people can probably do better even with flexible arrangements

Startups hate leases. If you have 10 people, it's often hard to say if you'll need 100 desks or 0 desks in two years.

Some people will swear that being around other people building things has value that is hard to quantify. Someone will reply with their anecdote about how, while working in a shared workspace environment, they met someone who became instrumental to their company's success. That's what I hear every time this conversation is had.

To me it sounds a bit like playing the networking lottery at a very high cost.

WeWork does a lot of pretending about this, but it mostly takes the form of a social network web application. In the space itself, there definitely is not a norm of networking with the other randos at desks. The place has more of a library vibe than a makerspace vibe.

(I can only speak for the West Loop office, though).

I've been to both WeWork spaces in Austin (where I live) and the one downtown hosts a lot of events that I believe WeWork customers have priority at them (discount tickets and other things).

For me personally, I don't think it's hard to quantify at all. I'm absolutely terrible at being productive on my own, just having somebody to talk to that's working near me increases my productivity twofold.

Still, the price is really high. I certainly wouldn't be able to afford it if I was trying to bootstrap a new business.

I've been a remote worker for the past ten years. When I started my company 4 years ago, we took a remote-first stance. As time marched on though and as we wanted to become more tightly connected to the entrepreneurial community in Portland, Oregon, it was a no-brainer to move into the WeWork / Customs House building. It has been good for our team and it has enabled us to be closer to our customers and prospective customers. If we just wanted cheaper square footage, I'm sure we could find it -- but in a less desirable location and not with the benefit of month-to-month terms and the quality of facility.

PS: If anybody else is Portland based, come by and have coffee with us ;-)

I pay $450 (converted) in one of their Tel Aviv locations for a single private office.

- Gets me out of the house, away from wife and kid, huge deal.

- The networking I don't use often but it IS a good option.

- The facilities are great, well staffed, clean, no complaints.

- I don't have to deal with anything for office upkeep.

- I can use other WeWorks all over the world, which are a lot these days.

As another poster said, who knows if I'll have 1 or 20 employees next year? Leases are impossible at this stage.

I would probably grow within WeWork around 8-10 employees before looking at other options. Yes, it's expensive per square meter but well worth it for flexibility.

There are plenty of benefits others have listed but here's a big one that could have a large financial payoff: networking. If you're working from home or a private office you're missing out on the huge networking potential a coworking space has. That network could result in sales, employees, funding, etc.

My London team is based in WeWork, Old Street (London). We have 10 memberships, of which 8 have dedicated desks. At £400 per desk it's not cheap, but definitely comparable to equivalents.

Beyond the physical space in a desirable location, the value for us comes from:

* Perks like free beer, free food (sometimes) social and professional events * Networking via their social network * A big, fun, creative space

The staff always seem busy to me and the place is really well kept. Happy customer.

Ditto...in London that explains the success of http://ministryofstartups.uk/

I worked at General Assembly when it first came on the scene and did coworking. There were two major benefits. 1) people corrupting there would regularly help each other out and often do business with each other. 2) When investors came by to visit one company they would often visit others just because they were there.

Because you want to be downtown for hiring/marketing purposes but not pay $60/sqft with a 5-10yr lease as opposed to $300-500 when you bring someone on. Eventually you may out grow it and need to get a lease somewhere, but it's extremely flexible while you're small and slowly ramping up staff.

It also helps with hiring in city. Not everyone wants to commute out of a city, and not every company wants to pay city rates for nice offices. WeWork is a compromise. You can hire people who want to stay in the city for a much lower cost.

Posh startups with other people's money. Money doesn't have meaning to them.

In our case, IP issues dictated for us to get off of university grounds. As anything you build can be claimed to belong to the school if developed on its property.

WeWork provided a good / cheap alternative for a small group of ppl.

We were a bootstrapped startup for 4 years and profitable. Towards the end of our 4th year our land lord wanted to increase our rent by 20% or have us sign a 2 year lease. We were also in the process of discussing a possible acquisition with several companies and so a month to month lease in a brand new building in SF was the easiest solution. It also didn't hurt when the companies came to visit us to see us in such a nice space (they kept the office).

Is it over priced? Yes. Is it worth the flexibility for most startups, without question. +20 people i'd look elsewhere.

This company's valuation makes no sense to me. The brand is strong in NYC, sure. But really.

If they could deliver this at a larger scale and be able to reduce their prices it might make a little more sense. You can get an entire office for the price of a desk.

WeWork Walnut St. Desk[0] - $450

Allegheny Ave Office[1] - $450

[0]https://www.wework.com/locations/philadelphia

[1]https://philadelphia.craigslist.org/off/5595848731.html

I don't know the costs for an office -- but WeWork provides the staff, internet, electricity, coffee, etc.

Certainly they provide a service. I guess they are the 'Hotel' of office space rentals and I'm thinking there might a huge market for the 'Motel' version at a lower price point. I bought a house to have an office because having that office rent cost makes a lot of projects I want to do not viable.

Maybe. Risk I see is that they are essentially financing long term leases with rental income that can dissapear in a month.

Do you live in or are you at least familiar with Philly? This comparison is cherry-picking a WeWork the nicest area in the city and juxtaposing it with an office space in/near one of the worst neighborhoods. Of course the prices are going to be like this.

I live 45 minutes from center city. Allegheny ave is not that bad and only about 15 minutes from the wework office. Its mostly art students from Moore and Temple in that particular block. Plus Id be proud to call that my office, its a cool space. Wework provides a service, I just personally only see value at that price in the extreme short term, something a larger economy of scale may rectify.

The WeWork spaces are nice, but when I've visited companies there it seemed WeWork was struggling to fill the spaces. This news would seem to go along with that observation.

Cutting 7% staff out of 1000 ...

But then it goes on and says

"WeWork said it hired 175 people in May and expects to add about 500 employees by the end of the year. The company said it expects to lift the pause on hiring as soon as next week."

What kind of information should I synthesize from this ? Is it bad is it good or is it both at the same time ?

In fact, why did I just waste x minutes of my life reading this piece of malreported doublethink-provoking article ?

My prayers go to the ad blockers ..

I mean, if WeWork is both expanding into new offices and realizing their current offices are grossly overstaffed, it's completely reasonable to be both hiring a lot and firing a lot. The pause could just be a breather to see if the new staffing model makes sense. Office staff isn't generally fungible between cities or even locations within a city sometimes.

tldr

The company said it expects to lift the pause on hiring as soon as next week.

“WeWork's growth and expansion continues to accelerate and we expect to add hundreds of employees between now and the end of the year,” a company spokeswoman wrote in an e-mail. “Recent employee actions were part of the company's talent review process to ensure that we have the right teams in place that align with the company’s priorities.”

Why would I pay hundreds of dollars to work in a noisy public environment when I could do that for free at a coffee shop? Presumably you're paying for the social aspect of like minds or something. As a freelance IT consultant in NYC the value proposition felt very weak. If someone had a $400/mo private micro office with a desk and a window I'd be on that like white on rice.

The typical Regus office has only 3 to 6 employees. So WeWork's biggest established incumbent rival is far more efficient.

I got a WeWork tour a while back, and it seemed quite interesting, being not only what it says on the tin, a coworking space, but also a nice location to meet interesting people.

I suppose this is as good of a place to ask as any, are there any good coworking spaces in South Bay, preferably close to Cupertino?

Is beer decent?

no almost always kicked

Oh well :( will need to look for alternative options

You'll be fine. Just learn your trade. Lots of companies can't hire enough good programmers. And by good programmer, I just mean someone who can do at least one thing well and is a good worker.

thanks for the real talk. what should I enroll in?

In case it wasn't clear, the comment you're replying to is trolling and you should ignore it.

You'll be fine. There's still a good bit of demand for junior programmers, and there are no signs of that going away anytime soon. If you're in a top-tier bootcamp and you do well in it, you will come out ready to take junior positions, roughly comparable to a new CS grad minus their internships (which do give them an advantage). Just don't expect a $105K base salary at your first job - some bootcamps set unrealistic expectations to sell you on the program.

Keep working on the bootcamp, write some open-source code on the side, focus as hard as you can at getting better. It'll work out.

The title of the article ironically reminds me

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/80/Labour_Isnt_W...

"The work force is disgusted downs tools and walks

Innocence is injured experience just talks

Everyone seeks damages and everyone agrees

That these are 'classic symptoms of a monetary squeeze'

On ITV and BBC they talk about the curse

Philosophy is useless theology is worse

History boils over there's an economics freeze

Sociologists invent words that mean 'Industrial Disease'"

- Dire Straits, "Industrial Disease".

I just really don't like the name of the company.

WeWork sounds so much like WeComply, or WeReEnslaved, or perhaps WeHaveNoSpine.

I'd much rather dwell 8 hours a day in a place run by a company called CompulsoryDungeon or ItinerantWarden or WeSquat or WeDetain or WeSlum. At least to dispose of the facade that people are always thinking happy thoughts about their employment situation.

Sounds like you need to enable anti-anti-adblock filters in your adblocker.

I don't even use an ad blocker and got the popup on load.

I don't think a single 8 second-ish pause per day is that obtrusive. You're getting decent content without paying for it in any way, after all.

You can use umatrix to block certain elements of a web page, so you can filter out the popup and the semi transparent layer.

How should the author of this article be compensated for writing it- if not through ads?

Did the article need to be written? Did the article need to be written by a human?

Advertising puts an upper limit on the value of content it's possible for you (or anyone) to see. With advertising, you are never shown content that is more valuable than the ads you're being sold to.

Other payment models allow you to buy more expensive content than your time is worth to advertisers.

Hence why very expensive content (like popular feature-length movies) are rarely paid entirely by advertising. Even with hundreds of product placements and an expensive ticket, movie theatres still have to overcharge for concessions to pay for the movie.

By people paying to read the article.