Hacker News Reader

Comment by gonzo41 | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised Airbnb has't cracked another rental market for the corporate world by renting out spare desks in existing offices for rando workers.

View on HN

This would a nightmare for most organizations who have yet to adopt zero trust network policies and controls

What about just "come an work in my home office"? Seems like a similar thing.

I'd totally do that now and again if it were available in my area.

That’s an interesting combination of WeWork and Airbnb. It makes sense; people go to WeWork to not be alone, and remote work forces people to use their spare rooms to create home offices. So now they can’t rent out the spare room in Airbnb but they could rent a shared desk for work.

You could rent 9-6 office and 8-8 sleeping room to different people. Worker and sightseer for example

I've been wondering quite a lot about that while nomading, but I think essentially the numbers don't add up while massively increasing operational overhead.

It's too big of a risk at the moment, which is why these quotes from him keep coming - I think he's trying to create the demand side because it's not big enough yet, but if it becomes "the norm" they can capitalize on it.

I do think they missed an opportunity during covid to move it towards "the norm" by testing a subsidized "airbnb for work" but who knows.

I wish someone would do this. A single permanent desk in a WeWork is surprisingly expensive.

Why do you think it would be cheaper for any organization to do this on the side, vs. a dedicated specialist like WeWork? The unit economics with fully loaded costs are not very good, and for a company with a little extra capacity it's a huge distraction. They couldn't run it like the residential side where hosts shift huge costs onto thir surrounding ecosystem, or just take big risks with no mitigation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com