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Comment by whalesalad | Hacker News Reader

We (2 of us, expected to grow to 4 quickly) toured WeWork, Spaces (Regus) and a few other one-off spots here in Orange County. Everyone was pretty pricey, like 2500/mo for 100 square feet. WeWork was definitely the worst and was the most overcrowded... but hey they have beer on tap! (sarcasm)

Ultimately we grabbed a lease on Pacific Coast Highway with a sweeping view of the ocean for less with about 3x the room in a freshly renovated building.

These coworking spaces are terrible.

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I recently became remote and when hunting for a coworking space initially figured I'd just go to one of the WeWork's here (Denver).

I was blown away at the cost of a "hot desk" membership [1]. The least expensive offering was $360/mo. For a desk that's not "yours" and you can't leave anything at.

I wound up going with Novel [2] for $99/mo. Sure printing costs me $0.10/page but other than that it's pretty much a desk.

For fun I checked out the pricing for WeWork SF [3]...

[1] https://www.wework.com/l/denver--CO

[2] https://novelcoworking.com/locations/colorado/denver/16th-st...

[3] https://www.wework.com/l/san-francisco--sf-bay-area--CA

I might end up at a desk near you! I'm currently looking for a co-working space in Denver.

Https://www.Proximity.space

Interesting startup. :)

Which WeWork in OC did you tour? Mine is definitely not overcrowded - lots of empty offices.

> These coworking spaces are terrible.

They're like Monkey Joe's for tech bro's.

It's not really tech bro's ... I don't encounter those people very often. I think that fraternity style vibe has kinda gone by the wayside. It's everyone else who aren't really technologists but want to get in on the gold rush. The social media marketing companies, the wordpress/magento factories, the crypto people, the uber-for-xyz... there is a lot of noise both literally and figuratively with these groups.

Don't forget the bootcamps. A company I departed about two years ago was in a Regus spot. We watched 4 bootcamps in 3 years pop up for 6-8 weeks at a time, graduate a "class", pack up and leave.

I'm currently "officing" in a WeWork dedicated desk. Out of all the desks immediately around me, I'm the only person working for a "tech" company. There's a building contractor, a couple designers, electrical engineers, and a Realtor, and a marketer for some distillery/alcohol co.

That sounds like a pretty cool snapshot of a diverse set of folks.

Just curious, what kind of company do the EEs work for if not tech?

Just guessing, but probably traditional electrical engineers. Like designing the power system for a restaurant buildout or whatever.

Exactly this. The fellow in the desk right next to me is doing the power/lighting work for a new restaurant going in in my apartment building - which is how I found out that’s what he does, when I ran into him outside my building entrance.

That amusingly describes we work as well - they are clearly marketers above all else - you can tell because they speak in pure buzzword instead of technical aspects at all - even by the standards of overhyped technologies.

Do you mostly rely on brokers to look for commercial lease space?

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