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Comment by nkoren | Hacker News Reader

It's not "Silicon Valley", it's Silicon Valley. As in the show.

My wife just started a contract at a new WeWork office in London. The lobby features a giant but non-functional as skateboard ramp, and two DJ booths, both manned (at 9am on a Monday). The bathrooms feature the very latest in digital toilets, but they aren't flushing, and nobody can figure out how to reboot them.

At an aesthetic level, this couldn't be more Silicon Valley if Mike Judge were in charge of the service design.

In this context, the media pile-on may be annoying -- but it's inevitable, and basically deserved.

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My WeWork in Gurgaon, India has a biweekly bhangra dance class at 4pm on a weekday

After the third such class, I decided to get the hell out of my lease.

It's like their entire corporate culture is built around finding creative ways to not work. It's awful environment to build a startup in.

Snort!

I am imagining a bunch of microdosing firangi sitting in their gravity pods, asking each other what Indians do to be, like, all cool and stuff. "Build a successful business" is, like, way too square an answer, daddy-o. Anybody can be a dull old business man. Our customers want to be cooool. So what's cool and Indian?

Yoga?

Sure, man, but everyone does yoga. They probably do Yoga in Kansas these days, so how's that gonna build our brand? Yoga goes without saying. We need something way cooler than that. What is it?

(Long awkward silence.)

Ah, I've got it! Bollywood dancing! Yeah, they eat that shit up over there. Let's do that.

This might be 90% accurate.

Panchakarma would also have been an acceptable answer. ;-)

The spaces where you're actually supposed to work are so hostile to productive work anyway - loud, public, and if you're not by a window or at least only one tier in from one, dark.

I take it this was just one example of something that didn't agree with you about the location. I've had a good experience at mine with better productivity vs working from home.

Keep in mind, this is an office that aims to keep individual workers paying it, not the other way around, so the environment is going to be different than a lot of employer-owned offices.

Personally, I don't like the chirpiness and faux motivation plastered everywhere. I don't need to be told by posters that my work matters or that "Thank God it's Friday!". I never wanted to be a part of that corporate culture which is why I pursued my own freelance career.

I guess some people don't mind that, but to me, it got too nauseating too quickly.

At my location, it also seems that outside of the dedicated desk area (which is where I sit), a lot of people are there just to get laid. Nothing wrong with that, but that's something I've only found at WeWork of all the coworking places I've been to.

You nailed it, it's absolute parody.

The graffiti in the Broad St. NYC location is cringe inducing.

On more than one occasion I've witnessed people omit that their office is based out of a we work location. Just too embarrassing to be associated with them.

Never been there but always thought the copy for the Harlem location was special.

https://www.wework.com/buildings/8-w-126th-st--new-york-city...

>If you’re looking for workspace that revels in uptown funk but gets business done with downtown panache, choose WeWork Harlem.

>Our open and airy shared office at WeWork Harlem embodies the future of workspace while embracing Harlem’s rich cultural history. Inspired by the Harlem Renaissance and how Harlem culture continues to express itself today, we looked to jazz legends like Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, and Duke Ellington, and teams like the Harlem Globetrotters for design inspiration. “The Stoop,” for example, a wooden elevated seating area with attached nooks, feels as much like a stage or basketball court as it does a common space—it’s an arena for connection. That’s not to mention the generous natural light, warm wood finishes, and vintage art and furniture. Book a tour today to see what WeWork Harlem can do to help your business sing while staying true to its roots.

I work at this location and I can tell you that although I've never read the description that you posted above (sounds very.. cringey) people are putting the common areas to good use, and this applies extra to the stoop. You've always got people sitting around it, getting comfortable and working on their laptops, I think it's something that WeWork has done done well at this location.

Wow. This seems like a very, very lazy interpretation of the jazz age by a particularly unmotivated high school student. Like they took the idea that required absolutely no thinking whatsoever and went with it.

Seems like a perfect place for people who like to pretend to work.

WeWork's new motto: "No, really, we do work!"

Lifestyle branding for the IT crowd

I work at a WeWork in London, which one is your wife going to, that sounds insane...

Ours just has bathrooms & coffee machines that are offline for weeks at a time.

I think that one is London Bridge area...

The new one near Waterloo. The DJs are possibly a new-location promotional feature, but they've been around for the past few weeks at least. To be fair, the ones I've been to around town (mostly Moorgate) are generally much more reasonable.

This sounds a lot more Nathan Barley than Silicon Valley.

I remember watching Nathan Barley and cringing, one of the Easter eggs referring to people on the scene back than worked at the same company I did.

We work does sound like the place The registers Steve Bong! would be hanging out

You just gave me a whole new thing to look at here. Thank you for this.

I can't believe I've never seen it.

The TV show is good, but not as good as the original TVGoHome listings:

http://www.tvgohome.com/0206-2000.html

its more like entertainment 720 or whatever it was called in parks and recreation

They're fluUush with caAash #TheWoOorst

Do they oversell hot desks? Can you usually and easily find a spot to work? A price of $430/mo for a hot desk is a lot more than I was expecting.

What kind of music do djs play in a shared office at 9AM on a Monday morning? My imagination is failing me. You’d think it’d have to be brilliant to avoid an angry crowd.

I think I've heard about that skateboard ramp - they put desks in the middle of it or something?

Desks would be too work-y. They've got half-sofa, half-bed thingies, which nobody can figure out how to use in a dignified fashion in public.

Company with an identity crisis by any chance?

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