The WeWork story is so bizarre we can’t even get outraged about it
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
Until now, co-working spaces have been open-plan, with large amounts of glass and no sound-deadening. All of these features are things that we all assumed were a revolution. WeWork had all these things, WeWork was hugely successful, so we had our revealed preference. No matter what you might say, it turns out you want to work in a noisy office with no privacy and free craft beer.
I've heard no end of people who personally dislike that, yet it's the standard that every 'successful' coworking space has. I'd like to consider the idea that all of these things are actually (contrary to popular opinion) terrible and the reason people were putting up with them was because WeWork was selling office space for 50 cents on the dollar.
The result we've seen in the market, is obviously you and I can't go out and sell office space for 50 cents on the dollar. So instead we follow the signalling- we all start companies renting out glass offices with no sound-deadening and craft beer. We're optimising for the wrong thing. We're looking at WeWork thinking they revolutionized the experience, but actually they didn't.
So what does this all mean? Well what if the companies that are trying to compete with WeWork catch on to the truth behind this. Start breaking up the spaces for more privacy, more quiet space, less craft beer and more productivity. If people take the right lesson from this we could end up with spaces that are actually optimized to what office workers want, rather than forcing everyone to work in the equivalent of a busy starbucks simply because that's what we learned from WeWork.
"Pple think they prefer restaurants 1) quiet so they can tawk, 2) roomy, 3) no line.
Yet they flock to 1) loud, 2) cramped restaurants 3) w/50 min wait.
Never ask pple what they want, watch what they do."
Yet they put up with less than good
Never ask people what they think is good, because they will put up with less than good.
Sound advice, Nassim’s abstraction is as tight as a drum.
/s
I think perhaps it's not feasible for a restaurant business to always have some people but not be crowded. If there are some customers most of the time, then it's going to be very crowded when it's busiest.
The unspoken zeroth priority is food that they enjoy.
If you have 20 team members with 5 remote and you work on extremely sensitive/confidential stuff. Maybe you have 8 devs that need to work in a quite space out of which half prefer free beer and an open relaxing area to take a break. Maybe you need a very secure meeting room that are friendly to having all your remote workers and on site staff easily book a time and collaborate. Maybe you have creative people and managers that want easy access to them and you want it to resemble an open space. If a company can rent empty floors on office buildings and deploy desired configurations for multiple tenants... I think that's the real "WeWork" demand. Imagine if a remote worker wants to come into the office for a few weeks and wants a privacy friendly quiet office, "WeWork" would deploy that space on the same floor othet your other staff (or as close as possible) for those few weeks,after that the space would be reclaimed for use by any other tenant. You can even upsell different room configurations and designs. Heck,if it was me I would even offer converted shipping containers ,doesn't matter so long as I can make the office space config look and feel identical.
But we're still tied to keyboards. "Screenless" laptop use relaxes some ergonomic constraints, so perhaps comfy chair and floor work might see an up tick. And head tracking means you're looking in more directions, which expands potential distractions. Perhaps "I have nicely blank walls and quiet visual field" becomes desired. "Are sofas and eye googles the next cost-optimized office plan?"
But HUD and ambient information seems to have a different feel than the current laptop, phone, and wall screen combo. Sure you could point your phone at someone and get information, but simply seeing people with a halo of information is pragmatically very different. And we haven't even started to talk about how that might change organizational opportunities and constraints. Or the office infrastructure to support them. We're entering poorly scouted territory.
The desired environment depends on the technology in use. A large change in technology, might significantly alter the desired environment. This increases both the value of customization, but also the current uncertainty about what might be needed.
In the past, having office phones on desks, and calls that couldn't easily follow you, increased the importance of having secretaries, and of remaining within chaseable distance of them. Current desks bare but for power and network, depend on laptops existing. If work in VR meant everyone having a 3 meter mat and waving their arms (it actually doesn't) that would impact office layouts. Having conference room scheduling, means not having to wander around trying to find one not in use.
If AR becomes a viable screen substitute/supplement in the next year or few, and displays start disappearing from desks, that makes it easier to hot swap desks. But that also raises new challenges for open office plans. Instead of being visually focused on a little opaque wall in front of you (the display), you're now looking around much more, seeing more of your physical surroundings. So open-office visual distraction may become an issue similar to their current auditory distraction.
And while there's been a long-term trend of human office interactions, once handled by colocating physically, increasingly being handled virtually, it's been a slow trend. But it may not remain slow. Some imaginary level of virtual presence would be a fully functional substitute for office presence. Whether actual technology will approach that substitution gradually, or with punctuated equilibria where some large set of constraints and opportunities on office design suddenly change, seems unclear. Things-remain-largely-unchanged is always a good bet, except when you lose it.
If changing technology increases the distance between desired environments and installed base, that increases the opportunity for the customization you describe. But also a raises a long-term risk, that the ecology of office use changes out from under you. Though I was just in an office originally built, as an office, in the early 1900's... so maybe not?
The 50 cent on a dollar coild fit with the "want it cheap" crowd which is the same fundamental reason as the open office in many cases. It ignores the other costs to productivity.
Those who just want an office to themselves can usually get it at home - minus the separated work space aspect of course.
Sure the places looked hipper and more modern than previous iterations of coworking, but it was just generally an unpleasant place to work. It was very difficult to get any actual work done.
What's interesting about this case is that both labor and capital were screwed by the willingness of an investor to accept the existence super-voting share with an extreme ratio.
As they say, if you can't be a good example, you'll just have to be a terrible warning.