Why It’s So Hard to Actually Work in Shared Offices

Maybe that's just WeWork, maybe it's a culture that develops in certain places. I've worked at CrossCampus in Pasadena for awhile and there are a bunch of programmers, writers, and other types who need to be able to concentrate who have made the shared-table space work for us. Together we've made it more of a "study hall" atmosphere. We asked management to turn the music down to an acceptable volume in our part of the floor, and we apply social pressure on people who talk too loud or are otherwise too distracting.

In my experience shared-table or open-plan offices didn't work when I was at a company, but they work pretty well in a coworking space. One aspect of this is the lack of a power dynamic: you're not sharing an open-plan office with your manager. You can also leave (or threaten to leave) a coworking space if it doesn't work for you. Members have more power over their environment if they can organize. WeWork is a huge chain now, so maybe this works better at smaller coworking spaces that have less corporate inertia.

YMMV, but my current workplace sits in a co-working space (although we are big enough to have our own exclusive office within it) and the noise levels on the common areas from what I have seen are ok most of the time. No music being pumped anywhere. The place described in the article sounds like a dystopian nightmare, but I doubt its the norm...

Also, if you are a freelancer or a tech founder that wants to work on his own thing, what is the alternative? Working on a coffee shop brings pretty much the same noise problems + no guarantee of power supply/fast Wifi. Working from home all the time can get lonely. Renting an office? Too expensive...so co-working spaces fill a nice niche.

I tried working from home five days a week for about a year and I hated it. I like being in the office and having spur of the moment conversations that lead to productive brainstorming (rather than the mostly dry Slack or Teams conversations that occur). That being said, I don’t think I’d an enjoy a WeWork setup where there is constant buzz and activity. I think balance is key and finding work that’s flexible where you can possibly even change work contexts whenever you want (which is something I realize I’m very, very fortunate to have).

I work in a shared office / coworking space.

We have 3 desks in a large open plan office with a kitchen area. It's about 10 feet from my desk. Most of the time it's just me from our company as the other devs work from home or work out the main office.

My experience of working in this shared space:

* It's noisy. I mean really noisy, noise cancelling headphones are a must. Like I said the kitchen area is near my desk, and people would routinely bang the cupboard doors. I sort of fixed this by putting felt and rubber on the doors to stop the loud banging, but I shouldn't have had to do this.

* People are noisy, people whistle, walk around talking loudly on their phones. Some people I'm sure talk loudly on purpose just to try and look like they are important in front of strangers. One guy makes random trumpet noises with his mouth...

* No one talks to anyone from other companies, to the point of awkwardness. I often see two people in the kitchen area from different companies and it can be a bit like a comedy sketch as they try to get their kitchening done without acknowledging the other person exists. Absurd, why don't people talk to each other. Especially people you see every day!

* When you are remotely working and the only person from your company you have no one to talk to and this is quite isolating and depressing. Especially worse if you end up in a room with 10 others and they are all from the same company. Then they start looking at you like you are in their space.

* The kitchen area, despite being an office staffed with supposed professionals, is always a mess. How does this happen?

Our office space is also open to a throughfare to conference rooms and such, so you randomly get random people walking through the office, again noisily.

But working here I at least don't have all the distractions of working from home.

Agreed. I don't drink, I don't mind if you drink, even in public. But please, not at work.