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

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

#61

Post by Beached »

karmajunkie wrote: post #29
Beached wrote: post #27

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 wor…

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?

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.

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

#62

Post by Beached »

krisdol wrote: post #37
Beached wrote: post #27

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 wor…

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…

"Making my home the office is no different from making the office my home, as makes it feel like I never mentally stop working."

How quotable, I found it hard to separate work and home while working at home, took me a year to get it right, but after 1 year of doing so, I've found a few tricks and with a bit of discipline, I have been able to completely build a wall between work and home even though they are the same place. I will say it wouldn't have been possible if my boss didn't also work from home and encourage it. If my boss expected me to keep up with emails and phone calls after 5:30pm, I would probably hate the home office.

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

#63

Post by Beached »

ryandrake wrote: post #54
Beached wrote: post #27

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 wor…

I can't work productively from home: 1. Young children don't understand daddy having to separate work time from home time 2. Wife that doesn't get that just because I'm in the house, it doesn't mean I can babysit or help with household chores 3. Crazy dog barking every time a car passes outside the front door 4. Lack of a dedicated space (in an already small Bay Area living space) for doing work 5. Commuting is my wa…

1. I don't have kids, it sounds like I should enjoy WFH while I'm young!

2. Wife also is a full time WFH, ironically we exchange very little dialog other then around lunch time during the day. I'm lucky that she "Gets it" in my case.

3. no pets,

4. we have no dedicated office, in fact my desk is in the living room, and hers is in the bedroom. We relish our frugality though and every time we are about to complain, we look at how much a 2 or 3 bedroom apt costs!

5. I'm impressed this does the trick for you. Driving / commuting just gets me all riled up, I cant stand how they let other people on the road!

6. This was SOO hard during my first year. I was definitely thrown into a slump shortly after I made the switch. I now have a regularly occurring social event 4 days a week that gets me around other people which helps me stay social.

7. Since all my co-workers are also work from home, Email, Phone or gchat usually extracts a reply immediately, even if its "On phone, will get back to you in 1 hour"

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

#64

Post by DanBC »

Nadya wrote: post #47
DanBC wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While both of those are completely unacceptable neither of them are people imprisoned and children taken away.

>neither of them are people imprisoned and children taken away >Mother Jailed for Letting Her 9 y.o. Play at Park Unsupervised (And Daughter In State Custody) [x] Imprisoned [x] Child taken away and placed into State Custody You also may not hear about these stories all the time - because instead of being "Free Range" parents the media report label it Child Neglect . I only know of a single site dedicated to "free ra…

Jail is not prison! Was she convicted of any crime? Did she get a sentence?

The claim was that people go to prison and have their children taken away. You've shown some clearly unnaceptable cases but you haven't shown any cases where children have been removed from parents or where parents have been sent to prison.

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

#65

Post by petercooper »

kvcc01 wrote: post #60
petercooper wrote: post #44

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..

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.)

Well thanks for posting it anyway, I found it an enjoyable read :)

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

#66

Post by notahacker »

cmsmith wrote: post #39

>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 t…

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...

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

#67

Post by moron4hire »

omonra wrote: post #59
moron4hire wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not as vociferous as the person you're replying to, but I'm starting to think of the all-consuming social scene of modern startups as one of the reasons why diversity is still a major problem in the tech industry. I don't think socializing with coworkers all the time--either in the office or outside of it--is healthy. It reinforces monoculture. I think it's healthier to have everyone socializing outside of the ci…

Slightly off-topic - but how is diversity (or lack of thereof) a major problem in the tech industry? Is there any proof that it's a problem? Are there companies that have truly diverse workforce that are more successful than ones without?

I'm trying to consider how your comment is not an indication that you have actively hidden from the last several years of press and are stubbornly trying to deny there is a problem. This has been known for a long time and it is endemic across companies. http://www.techrepublic.com/article/diversity-stats-10-tech-...

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

#68

Post by omonra »

moron4hire wrote: post #67
omonra wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slightly off-topic - but how is diversity (or lack of thereof) a major problem in the tech industry? Is there any proof that it's a problem? Are there companies that have truly diverse workforce that are more successful than ones without?

I'm trying to consider how your comment is not an indication that you have actively hidden from the last several years of press and are stubbornly trying to deny there is a problem. This has been known for a long time and it is endemic across companies. http://www.techrepublic.com/article/diversity-stats-10-tech-...

Again - why is that a problem? There is certainly a statement of fact (there are relatively few blacks or hispanics in SV). How is this a problem? Is the goal of these businesses to make good products or provide employment to all society strata?

Should I be equally bothered by lack of whites in the NBA or the NFL?

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

#69

Post by moron4hire »

omonra wrote: post #68
moron4hire wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm trying to consider how your comment is not an indication that you have actively hidden from the last several years of press and are stubbornly trying to deny there is a problem. This has been known for a long time and it is endemic across companies. http://www.techrepublic.com/article/diversity-stats-10-tech-...

Again - why is that a problem? There is certainly a statement of fact (there are relatively few blacks or hispanics in SV). How is this a problem? Is the goal of these businesses to make good products or provide employment to all society strata? Should I be equally bothered by lack of whites in the NBA or the NFL?

You're absolutely right, it's not the goal of business to enact social reform. That's why it's the pervue of government to enact legislation to require it. Just as it's not the goal of business to avoid polluting our air or our water "as long as it doesn't affect the bottom line!" Just as it's not the goal of business to have its employees wash their hands after using the restroom before returning to cooking food. Negative externalities require regulation to correct when the market demonstrates a willingness to ignore the problem.

RE: the NBA and the NFL: Should the bad behavior of anyone be an excuse for others to behave poorly? Also, why has the MLB gotten more white, less diverse in recent years?

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

#70

Post by omonra »

moron4hire wrote: post #69
omonra wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again - why is that a problem? There is certainly a statement of fact (there are relatively few blacks or hispanics in SV). How is this a problem? Is the goal of these businesses to make good products or provide employment to all society strata? Should I be equally bothered by lack of whites in the NBA or the NFL?

You're absolutely right, it's not the goal of business to enact social reform. That's why it's the pervue of government to enact legislation to require it. Just as it's not the goal of business to avoid polluting our air or our water "as long as it doesn't affect the bottom line!" Just as it's not the goal of business to have its employees wash their hands after using the restroom before returning to cooking food. Ne…

Right, but you are still avoiding the issue of proving (or explaining) how diversity is something that should be sought after. You think it matters and I do not.

I can see how we ought to have government mandated equal access. Ie someone should not have worse chance of being hired in SV because they are black or Mexican. But if the numbers of qualified candidates vary by a factor of 100 (how many black vs white or asian CS PhDs are coming out of the pipeline) - why is the lack of diversity a problem of the industry?

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