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WeWork Is Cutting About 7% of Staff

bloomberg.com

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Re: WeWork Is Cutting About 7% of Staff

#21
post #3

Not a fan of the ad block detection. I'm probably not going to click on bloomberg links any more. I already stopped clicking fortune links. I'd appreciate if there was a weight against sites that used that personally.

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

Re: WeWork Is Cutting About 7% of Staff

#22
post #2

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.

Re: WeWork Is Cutting About 7% of Staff

#23
post #5
post #2

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?

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).

Re: WeWork Is Cutting About 7% of Staff

#24
post #2

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?

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.

Re: WeWork Is Cutting About 7% of Staff

#26
post #24
post #2

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?

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)…

What's your coworking spot of choice in tko?

Re: WeWork Is Cutting About 7% of Staff

#27
post #23
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Re: WeWork Is Cutting About 7% of Staff

#29
post #20

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 ar…

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?

Re: WeWork Is Cutting About 7% of Staff

#30
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)…

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.
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