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The Rise of the WeWorking Class

nytimes.com

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Re: The Rise of the WeWorking Class

#21

Post by slig »

buboard wrote: post #12
dsr_ wrote: post #10

I wonder if WeWork has already started an espionage (excuse me, business intelligence) program or whether that's a future development. Consider: an ordinary landlord knows how many desks you have, how many people show up on an average day, and how much garbage/recycling you put out. WeWork has operatives who can measure what percentage of your employees' days are spent at their desks, what they like to do for fun, wh…

well why wouldn't they? as long as people treat it as a workplace (i.e. they dont print their love letters there) its a good opportunity for some neat travel advertising etc.

I don't understand your point. Are you suggesting that people that pay a co-working space to work there should accept that whatever they're printing (most likely they're also paying for the pages they're printing) can be read by the co-working space?

Re: The Rise of the WeWorking Class

#22

Post by peteretep »

BucketSort wrote: post #19
rekshaw wrote: post #9

A recent executive mandate declared the company a “meat-free” organization. When I interviewed McKelvey not long after the Summit, he had a very fuzzy time trying to explain the meaning of the “eight pillars” of its CultureOS and the relationships among them. But when he noticed that the P.R. representative happened to be carrying a single-use plastic water bottle, he admonished her to be mindful of her own consumpti…

When did it become acceptable to straight up disrespect someone to their face for their personal choices? Although I'm 29, I still remember a time where there was at least the pretense of civility. Civility was the oil that kept this machine running smoothly, now it's sputtering left and right. We don't even use formal names like Mr./Ms. as much as we once did, if at all. I felt that was an important part of creating…

> When did it become acceptable to straight up disrespect someone to their face for their personal choices?

When people started having personal choices that affected the people around them. So: since always.

Re: The Rise of the WeWorking Class

#23

Post by infinitezest »

anonymfus wrote: post #16
everdrive wrote: post #7

Toggle Reader View (Ctrl+Alt+R)

Please don't assume people's browsers. For example in Firefox reading view is toggled by F9, and in Microsoft Edge it's toggled by Ctrl+Shift+R.

I am on mobile and these keyboard-centric comments are exclusionary.

Re: The Rise of the WeWorking Class

#24

Post by yxc »

dsr_ wrote: post #10

I wonder if WeWork has already started an espionage (excuse me, business intelligence) program or whether that's a future development. Consider: an ordinary landlord knows how many desks you have, how many people show up on an average day, and how much garbage/recycling you put out. WeWork has operatives who can measure what percentage of your employees' days are spent at their desks, what they like to do for fun, wh…

Yeah, a decade ago the company you worked for had your highly personal data.

Now Slack, GSuite and others practically have the salary and work history of millions of programmers. Everyone seems to be totally okay with that.

Re: The Rise of the WeWorking Class

#25

Post by peterwwillis »

BucketSort wrote: post #19
rekshaw wrote: post #9

A recent executive mandate declared the company a “meat-free” organization. When I interviewed McKelvey not long after the Summit, he had a very fuzzy time trying to explain the meaning of the “eight pillars” of its CultureOS and the relationships among them. But when he noticed that the P.R. representative happened to be carrying a single-use plastic water bottle, he admonished her to be mindful of her own consumpti…

When did it become acceptable to straight up disrespect someone to their face for their personal choices? Although I'm 29, I still remember a time where there was at least the pretense of civility. Civility was the oil that kept this machine running smoothly, now it's sputtering left and right. We don't even use formal names like Mr./Ms. as much as we once did, if at all. I felt that was an important part of creating…

Back in the 1960s, if you were black and seated at a lunch counter, a white person would spit in your face. Which was considered perfectly civil for a lot of white people.

In some cultures, at various times (including today), the civil thing to do is to berate and even beat a woman if she appears in public without covering her hair or face.

To the guy in the story, telling someone to not use the plastic water bottle was the civil thing to do.

Civility has always been subjective.

Re: The Rise of the WeWorking Class

#26

Post by dragonwriter »

BucketSort wrote: post #19
rekshaw wrote: post #9

A recent executive mandate declared the company a “meat-free” organization. When I interviewed McKelvey not long after the Summit, he had a very fuzzy time trying to explain the meaning of the “eight pillars” of its CultureOS and the relationships among them. But when he noticed that the P.R. representative happened to be carrying a single-use plastic water bottle, he admonished her to be mindful of her own consumpti…

When did it become acceptable to straight up disrespect someone to their face for their personal choices? Although I'm 29, I still remember a time where there was at least the pretense of civility. Civility was the oil that kept this machine running smoothly, now it's sputtering left and right. We don't even use formal names like Mr./Ms. as much as we once did, if at all. I felt that was an important part of creating…

> When did it become acceptable to straight up disrespect someone to their face for their personal choices?

That time is lost in the mists of history, though which choices this is acceptable for have been different in different times and places.

Re: The Rise of the WeWorking Class

#27

Post by blfr »

dsr_ wrote: post #10

I wonder if WeWork has already started an espionage (excuse me, business intelligence) program or whether that's a future development. Consider: an ordinary landlord knows how many desks you have, how many people show up on an average day, and how much garbage/recycling you put out. WeWork has operatives who can measure what percentage of your employees' days are spent at their desks, what they like to do for fun, wh…

I bet this data is worth (much) less than the cost to collect and analyse it.

It would be worth something for larger companies but for these WeWork will have only limited insight since they're unlikely to rent all or even a significant share of their total space from one provider. Lead generation is probably the ceiling.

Maybe they could do some targeted advertising/deals for various additional services. But probably not even that. Let's say they wanted to provide accounting services. Can they beat Mabel Luna? Will they have someone to answer a quick question about cash flow or depreciation?

Re: The Rise of the WeWorking Class

#28

Post by code4tee »

The dot-com bubble tells us that when company leadership appears more concerned with meat consumption on premises or water bottle choices of employees vs say addressing actual business issues like losing money hand over fist despite being in business for many years then the future may be a wee bit bumpy for said company...

Re: The Rise of the WeWorking Class

#29

Post by dsr_ »

BucketSort wrote: post #19
rekshaw wrote: post #9

A recent executive mandate declared the company a “meat-free” organization. When I interviewed McKelvey not long after the Summit, he had a very fuzzy time trying to explain the meaning of the “eight pillars” of its CultureOS and the relationships among them. But when he noticed that the P.R. representative happened to be carrying a single-use plastic water bottle, he admonished her to be mindful of her own consumpti…

When did it become acceptable to straight up disrespect someone to their face for their personal choices? Although I'm 29, I still remember a time where there was at least the pretense of civility. Civility was the oil that kept this machine running smoothly, now it's sputtering left and right. We don't even use formal names like Mr./Ms. as much as we once did, if at all. I felt that was an important part of creating…

People used to be polite to each other as long as they were the right people, but being polite to the wrong people became a sin called "political correctness".

Re: The Rise of the WeWorking Class

#30

Post by crispyambulance »

Every time I see articles of these places there are pics of people with laptops, in rows, on narrow tables, almost elbow to elbow, sometimes sitting on high chairs or stools.

Is that what these places are all like? It looks uncomfortable. It's like doing all your work in a high-end cafeteria.

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