Maybe I'm in the minority, but I dont want a fun-filled work environment. I want to work then go home to my family where we have a fun-filled home environment.
Take a look at Office Space, that sort of sterile, glaring white environment was the norm for offices right up to the new millennium.
Yes, WeWork has some goofy themes (I had the misfortune of one that took Coney Island as an inspiration, so there were scattered silhouettes of Ferris wheels here and there), but at its core was warm, dark walls that were easy on the eyes, generally good interior design, and people who actually wanted to be at their jobs. I didn’t love it, but far from the worst place I ever had to work.
And once in a while I still drop by an authentic Manhattan office building, and it is like stepping back into the eighties. It’s no wonder jumping off buildings was so popular among stockbrokers…
I think tbh wework's vibe works quite well for temporary office/flex-space, low cost of entry.
The fact that everybody is somewhat of a transient at a wework creates its own cohesion too. e.g. I rented office space at a "real" office building once, and it was just weird for some rando telecommuter to share space with more established companies in more local industries. ymmv, but they did create something "new", or at least a niche office offering is now an established fixture in most metros.
There might have been outliers at places like Google and Facebook in the 2000s but it didn't start exploding till after 2010 when all the more traditional companies started thinking they needed to be like Google and Facebook.
Lots of boring offices got rehabbed into "culture" offices around 2010-2012, even if it was financially irresponsible. There was huge talk that it was required to have any chance of hiring millennials at the time.
Not that I think work should be where people find relationships, but rather that different age groups have different needs and desires.
At my old company, there were two main offices - one in an office park in the suburbs for the "grownups" and a smaller one in a hip part of downtown for the "kiddies".
I worked remotely the entire time and that company also had a large percentage of remote folks like me, this was years before Covid.
tl;dr for a lot of younger/single people, work can be a big part of one's social life.
Full-time employees spend nearly all of their active hours at work. If they do not find relationships / friendships there, where and when will they?
I maintain that having sex with coworkers is ill-advised, but not for the same reasons as employers and their HR departments.
Because of the plitical climate. Very few people would be inclined to pursure romantic relationships with coworkers. Meanwhile people at the same coworking space is a fair game. I am speaking from my own experience. The bad thing is it also becomes like high school. Because there's no HR policy to keep people in check.
Perhaps this is not ideal?
Work relationships used to be not only completely normal, but expected and accepted.
I met my wife of 20 years at work. There were whole universities that had reputations as places where people went to get enough education to land an office job so they could find a spouse.
It is only in the last ten years it so that work relationships have become taboo, as HR departments seem to completely eliminate the risk of inappropriate relationships caused by a minuscule minority of bad bosses and the accompanying legal and financial response from eager lawyers.
While I find the notion of "inappropriate relationships" amusing and only really serving the interests of employers, I still consider it all-advised to have sex with coworkers. This really only matters where people have power or have a career to think about. People with low-accountability roles need not worry about it.
Regardless, I encourage single people to look outside of the workplace.
My own experience is that there is more than "a minuscule minority of bad bosses" that lead to problems.
People are weird, man.
Maybe that's why I'm happy at home.
If such odds were more realistic, I would agree.
Eg in France the legal worktime is 35h, the debate is "32h proposed by the left, going back to 39h proposed by the right", but when I read the twitter people having to do 80h/week under Musk not only do I feel so horrible for them, but I understand then why a "fun filled environment" might be required to avoid people all falling into depression ...
And also there is no way those people are anywhere near productive for more than half of those 80 hours.
I am agreeing with you. Work can stay work. I don't need a contest for most scary cubicle. Still, some people go for that stuff. Let me them stay in office. For me, WFH all the way. I make my own fun there.
Maybe because it's 1/3 of a person's life and they want to make the most of it.