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I absolutely hate WeWork. Due to the nature of our work we have to meet with people there in various locations, the security on-site is laughable but at the same time they make you jump through all kinds of hoops such as photographing you face-first on entry, easily defeated by blocking the camera.

The facilities are noisy, distracting, totally unusable to discuss anything that is even remotely confidential and there is a reasonably high amount of theft by walk-ins that make off with people's laptops or phones.

The sooner they bugger off the better.

Strong agree. My current company was in one for a few months before we got our own space, and it was one of the most miserable office experiences I've ever encountered. Almost everything about it sucked-

* Their network was grossly misconfigured and directed traffic to the least used access point, regardless of the distance. It was a regular morning ritual for people in my office to toggle their wifi on and off repeatedly until they got a usable connection.

* Network security is also a joke- they have a simple WPA2 shared password that never changes, can easily be brute forced, and is the same at all locations. They do have a proper WPA2 Enterprise setup for their employees, which means the issue isn't their equipment and that they understand the difference between the two.

* They basically have no rules about noise. Their contract refers to the local "communities" rules, but when I asked for them I was told they didn't have any. So when there was bad behavior (which there was plenty of) there was no recourse.

* It was the noisiest office space I've ever worked in. The glass dividers between rooms and open ventilation systems meant there was no insulation from noise at all- and tenants didn't seem to care about letting their entire floor know their business.

* There were only two or three phone rooms per floor, and it was always a fight to get them. People would try and reserve them by leaving their stuff in them before a call, which just amounted to all sorts of drama. Since there weren't enough to go around people would just talk in their offices adding to the noise.

* Allowing dogs is great, but there need to be some rules. One of our neighbors just let his dog walk around the whole floor, so we had to be super careful about what we left in the trash in our unit. He would also leave his dog locked up in his unit while he was getting lunch, and the dog would bark the whole time. People would also have their dogs race from one side of the building to the other. Since none of this was against the rules there was nothing to do about it other than move out.

My experience matches.

The lazy jerks running 6th and Market let one of the two elevators sit broken for months. Free 20 minute break mid-day to get downstairs and again to get back upstairs! Who doesn't want takeout to take over an hour every day! The wework folks renting 6 floors just acted like there was nothing at all they could do to get the building to have sufficient working elevators.

And the noise. Hard wood floors. No carpets. Glass walls. One woman wearing heels goes clack-clack-clack up and down the hall.

Bathrooms with no vent fans.

Running a remodel of the floor above us while we were supposed to be working in the office. So much noise you could feel the vibrations.

Same fight for phone rooms.

It was utterly awful. But hey, free beer!

We moved out when employees threatened to quit.

I only know one WeWork in Paris but I agree that the acoustics are terrible. Basically there's not soundproofing at all. Sure, everything looks great, but I would trade that for meeting rooms with less reverberation.

Some American things are funny like free beers but don't you dare smoke a cigarette on the rooftop. Or the communal spaces that are designed in a way that kind of force you to have lunch at your desk.

Your WeWork experience is very much dictated by location. There are fantastic locations with great staff + high quality facilities, and there are poor quality locations with bad members, bad staff and bad facilities. Disruptive behaviour _is_ against the rules and staff _should_ take action and _do_ take action if you’re in a well managed location. All their locations should be well managed enough that you can trust the brand to be consistent but unfortunately that’s not true.
Only sharing because I see a lot of negative experiences and wanted to share a positive one.

I've worked out of a WeWork office through two different startups and would do so again.

For me it was the ideal way to save on costs with a small team before growing into our own place. It allowed us to forgo all of the generic office management crap and focus on our business.

WeWork offices all seem pretty different to me, so a lot probably depends on where you are.

Also in both cases I opted for the private office setup so noise wasn't an issue.

The photograph isn’t for security, it’s to send a notification to the person you’re visiting, they don’t have a problem with you choosing not to be photographed if you’re not comfortable with it. The notification includes your name and the picture because the wework member is expected to walk into the common area and find you, which is difficult if the wework member doesn’t know what you look like!
They're not 'wework members' they are representatives of your customers aka the tenants. Somehow this problem does not appear in all the other reception areas of all the other companies in the whole bloody world. So no, it is not for the person you're visiting. Besides that, there is no consent trail for the images to begin with nor is there any indication of where they get sent, stored and who has access to them. It's security theater at best and a security risk at worst.

Besides that the access/egress system is so bad you might as well walk straight through without reporting your presence. WeSuck.

Uh oh, another overpriced company funded by Softbank. Softbank, remember, is funded by Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund. They're also behind Uber. They seem to be the world's largest source of dumb money.

I wonder what the big customer lease deals with WeWork look like. They probably don't get the markup they do with little tenants.

Partially true. Softbank as a whole is not funded by Saudi Arabia. Softbank's "Vision Fund", which invests in many US tech companies is like 45% Saudi money ($45b of a total $100b fund). The Vision Fund is the fund that invested in WeWork, though.
As the recession deepens, WeWork will surely eventually implode. I can see it now: vast swathes of empty commercial real estate. If you thought ghost malls were bad, wait until you see ghost WeWorks.
> As the recession deepens

Deepens? We're not in a recession, and we haven't been for nearly a decade.

It's true that, by historical standards, we're arguably overdue for a recession, but the word "recession" is precisely defined, and the US unambiguously does not meet the criteria for being in one.

> If you thought ghost malls were bad, wait until you see ghost WeWorks.

Are there really that many locations? I've seen a lot of malls, I've literally never seen a WeWork in person.

Will be interesting to see what happens if the oil price stays down. Even dumb money can't spend what it doesn't have.
It will take a long long time to spend that money, even in a dumb way.
> WeWork forms a subsidiary to represent each lease deal, which means individual locations could fold without leaving the company itself with much risk. The parent company only guarantees the lease for about six to 12 months on a 15-year agreement, according to documents associated with WeWork’s inaugural bond offering.

So, they sign a 15-year lease but are only on the hook for the first year? How does that work? Sounds more like a year lease with an option to extend?

The subsidiary signs the 15-year lease, not WeWork.

So basically if the location turns out to be unprofitable, the subsidiary goes out of business or goes bankrupt and WeWork isn't stuck with the lease.

From the landlord's perspective, yes it is basically equivalent to a year lease with option to extend... not totally clear why the landlord would agree to that.

Must be nice to be an immortal corporation that can just spin off any debts you don't want to pay, while mere mortals with finite lifespans and education debt and medical debt and credit card debt cannot unless we die.
Because money. This is restaurant expansion 101.

In this specific case a large sophisticated organization may be exploiting an unsophisticated organization, but really this is standard operating procedure for any franchise.

I am not sure if that is evil or pure genius. But why is the subsidiary allowed to release it to WeWork?

I mean by that theory I could open up 100s of Restaurant and close each of them that is not performing?

Wework Brooklyn #22 LLC signs the lease with the landlord and thus is responsible for the lease obligations. Wework LLC (proper) guarantees these lease payments for only 6- 12 months of the lease. After this time the only party responsible for the lease is the LLC that was formed.

Landlords are likely agreeing to this only because Wework would never be able to sign a lease with any owner if they defaulted on a location.

Which sets them up for WeWork subsidiaries to default on any building that's more than X months old and unprofitable. That's a terrible deal for the landlord, if the landlord priced it as a 15 year deal instead of a one year. Absolutely great for WeWork. Terrible for anyone who wants offices, since WeWork will sit on a large chunk of the market.
They'd be smart to move towards a franchise model then I suppose?
"Brokerage CBRE Group Inc. in October launched a business called Hana that will help landlords create their own flexible offices. Owners want to be a part of the rising demand for that type of space, said Andrew Kupiec, Hana’s CEO."

Good luck trying to create a nice product with a federation of people with zero product experience. You'll be training them / fighting the same battles over and over. And just wait until they bring in their family members who have great ideas.

What’s WeWork’s “product” again? Exposed brick and free beer? Seems like the only roadblock to successful emulation here is money and property — both of which CBRE has. You can hire someone for the interior design. They already split off a new brand with a fun, easy name.
It’s my understanding that the Hana offering is run entirely by CBRE, much in the way CBRE will manage buildings as a service. I would assume it’s an offering for the owner/landlord where they (landlord/owner) would be hands off and there would be a split with CBRE.

https://www.cbre.com/real-estate-services/directory/flexible...

Disclosure: I work for CBRE, but in a different line of business with no knowledge of Hana outside of what is explained by the above link.

It is straightforward to provide consistency with a franchise model, as many large well known brands demonstrate every day (Subway, Dunkin', Anytime Fitness [which is basically WeWork as a gym], any number of hotel brands, etc). If you don't meet the brand standards, you get the boot and lose your investment.
The existing commercial office space system seems very inefficient for small to medium-sized companies. You lease space, spend a ton renovating it to look "on-brand," then move a couple of years later. The next tenant renovates the space again to match their brand.

Each remodel comes out of a "tenant improvement budget" given by the landlord, but that has to be recouped in rent over the duration of the lease, so it's not really free money to the tenant.

Having offices that have already been remodeled to be nice enough, and just being able to lease a flexible number of desks could deliver huge savings - in time and cost to growing companies.

> spend a ton renovating it to look "on-brand,"

Wait, why? If you're a small-medium sized company that isn't in retail (or some other business where you, as a matter of course, service customers on premises) why would you divert a significant amount of money to renovations that match your brand?

If you need to meet with investors or potential employees and are that concerned about appearances then just do it offsite.

I was talking to a friend the other day who told me about multiple recent grads from their PhD program joining tech companies that were willing to pay for a shared work space office for remote employees. One said it was significantly cheaper to expand their team with remote employees and offer to pay for WeWork spaces than to expand the physical office space they already had (new hires got to choose what they wanted to do).
It’s definitely a business model that fills a niche. And it clearly offers value. The problem is that when the economy tanks these sort of arrangements will be the first to go as the tech companies trim expenses and either relocate the employees, fire them, or force them to work from home. It seems at this point that WW has a great offering when everyone has money, but the second the economy turns they are going to be the ones holding the proverbial bag.
Their business model reminds me of MoviePass in the sense that it appears unsustainable, and that their main plan is to grow fast until they have market power to throw around. At least the math for WeWork isn't so obviously flawed as Moviepass was. I'm just disappointed at how many companies use this playbook in the startup world. Everyone just does stupid crap in hopes of becoming the "dominant platform", at which point they can charge whatever they want and people will have to play along.
Or, think about it in a more positive way - companies like WeWork take money from investors, and pass it on to consumers, via subsidised pricing. I'm very happy to have cheaper office space, if only for a few years, until VC money dries up (although I have no idea if that is actually the case with WeWork).
I was using space at a WeWork like company. This company was leasing office space from a building managed by CBRE. If you have any familiarity with CBRE, then you know that a shared office environment is totally against everything CBRE does. I do not know how long this particular shared office was there, but it recently closed back in October because of friction with CBRE.

I don't think the shared office space concept is a bad one, but landlords/building management companies will fight it for a long time. I'd imagine it to be an easier time for the shared office space companies to buy a building rather than trying to release a leased space.

If you have any familiarity with CBRE, then you know that a shared office environment is totally against everything CBRE does

CBRE Launches New Coworking Brand, Hana: https://allwork.space/2018/11/cbre-launches-new-coworking-br...

Why would a building owner disagree so staunchly with a leasee subletting to smaller offices? Can you fill me in on their motivation?
Unicorn playbook:

1. Jump on hot tech trend threatening to disrupt industry

2. pay way too much for customers

3. get lots of VC money and use VC money to pay way too much for more customers

4. grow gargantuan

5. transform into basically every other non-tech big player in the industry because zero marginal cost only works in few industries

You forgot the part about disregarding laws/regulations and trying to grow fast enough so that by the time the regulators start to apply pressure you have enough money and clout to fight back, all while preventing the smaller guys from doing the same thing you did.

Not saying that WeWork is doing that, but it's definitely a time-honored Silicon Valley approach. Just look at the recent faux pas from Robinhood with their "checking & savings" accounts that got them bitch slapped nearly instantaneously by regulators, forcing Robinhood to withdraw the announcement and update it to a "cash management" account with details to follow.

Same for companies like Amazon. Grow super fast and ignore tax laws regarding nexus so you don't pay sales tax. And run a massive loss for years on end until you can figure out how to subsidize your losses through another profitable venture which you hope to achieve. They did with their AWS/cloud business and that makes the company as a whole barely profitable. But subsidizing your massive retail business losses with your high cloud margins is supposedly illegal. Number of regulators anywhere to be found? Zero. And don't forget to have an advantage against all the third party sellers because you can undercut them since you also sell millions of products and don't face the platform/marketplace fees, equating to illegal competition. Must be nice to be a big player.

Simpler WeWork version:

1. Borrow short.

2. Lend long.

It works until it doesn't.

Normally, though, the people who do this are banks, so we regulate with capital requirements and protect smallholders with deposit insurance.

When the people doing it are a massively leveraged real estate investment pool, masquerading as a disruptive tech startup, it's a lot less clear what happens when the music stops...

(For those not intimate with the finance side: WeWork is making super-long-term commitments of big dollars, and then microchunking them into super-short-term commitments. This is like a bank making long-term big loans by aggregating short-term demand deposits. In both cases, as long as there's a ton of short-term players to work with, you're safe. When there's a "run on the bank" the short-timers all leave quickly, but the institution's long-term obligations can't be unwound, leading to insolvency.)

At the end of the day WeWork is essentially a middle man. If the model catches on landlords can make WeWork irrelevant by just adapting and offering “WeWork” style coworking space thus it’s not clear what the end game of all this is. If it fails it fails. If it succeeds it’s super easy to copy and cut them out of the equation.

WeWork as a company is also becoming increasingly unfocused. They’re getting into everything from schools, daycare and all sorts of other stuff. That’s never a good sign. Do one thing and do it really well profitably. Anyone can do a lot of cool stuff while burning investor cash like crazy.

I don't agree that landlords can easily replicate WeWork. First of all WeWork has an incredible brand, and great processes/assets that let them run co-working spaces more profitably.

Amazon seems like a counter point to your focus point too.

WeWork and Uber seem to be two examples of companies that "look" successful purely on the basis of enormous amounts of VC subsidization. They lose hundreds of millions each quarter because they're under pricing their service to gain market share.

In order to get more funding rounds and ever-higher valuations, they're promising pie-in-the-sky visions of WeWork daycare and schools, or Uber-powered autonomous truck fleets. And when the water goes out of that tide, they quietly announce very 20th century-sounding initiatives like property brokering and sharing zip scooters and offering food delivery.

Learning: don't try to go completely vertical because it increases the number of people who are threatened by you.
WeWork is on their way to collapsing. The company is cult like with founders who have a god complex. Softbank and Saudi funding have saved them from collapse.
When I was running a coworking space in Berlin back in the day WeWork were just getting started. I went to NYC on a holiday and decided to contact all the coworking spaces for networking purposes. Miguel McKelvey one of 2 cofounders of WeWork was the only person to get back to me. I found him exceptionally humble and approachable. Not sure where you got your impressions on the founders from?
"Sharing economy" with local temporary monopolies and the intermediaries giving everyone the short stick while aggresively reinvesting the transaction money they keep hostage. Can we get over it already? I WANT TO OWN.