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Comment by deepspace | Hacker News Reader

Whenever I look at a coworking space, I feel like they are missing the point.

Companies are globally distributed and people spend a LOT of time on conference calls, but most coworking spaces have an open layout that is at best not conducive to conference calls, and often they are not allowed.

I have been working effectively remotely for the past 15 years. Until COVID hit, still commuted to the office, but had very little interaction with local co-workers for actual work. I did appreciate the social aspect, though—water cooler conversations, lunches, company events.

Now that I am fully remote, I would appreciate the opportunity to get out of the house one or two days a week, but I am unable to find a single coworking space that offers private cubicles. They all want you to rent an entire meeting room for conference calls at an exorbitant price.

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This very much matches my experience with co-working. When the time spent on calls went over 2 or 3 hours a day for me, my days became a constant hunt for comfortable and private places to make calls. I ended up making a room in my condo into an office.

I did find co-working to be quite enriching though. I made a few friends, and it was nice to see some of the same faces each day. It was very key that none of the people that I socialized with at the co-working space were people that I was working with.

Bingo. I spent about six months working out of a reserved office at a WeWork, and because it was just a satellite office for my company, there were tons of conference calls I needed to be on. I couldn't join those calls in the open plan office, so I spent a ridiculous amount of time walking the halls of the WeWork trying to find an unoccupied booth. Half the time I couldn't find one, and when I did they were dark and cramped.

A lot of self storage lockers would be better places to work from than WeWork.

Precisely. I do utilize coworking spaces quite a bit, however I tend to go in on days where I don't have many calls scheduled. Also, my home office setup (ultra wide external monitor + 4K external camera and mic etc) wins when I actually need to be productive.

Yes, most coworking spots have phone booths, but they can tend to be claustrophobic and limited in availability.

I think people often go to them in the afternoons, maybe when they have fewer calls. Or just grab a booth when they need to do a call that others shouldn't listen in on. Or just do the calls from the open area.

I go to coworking space to get a bit of human interaction in my day after feeling isolated at home or on zoom.

Every WeWork location I've ever used in New York (about a half dozen, I think) has multiple private single-person cubicles available for use. Actually, I've never seen a co-working space that doesn't have this.

I do wish each location had way more of these booths, though.

But open layouts are so conducive to serendipitous collaboration! And collaboration is key to generating creative solutions in today’s information economy! All the CEOs say so!

What I want in a co-WORKING-space: min 2 screens, a proper desk and chair. I'll bring my own keyboard.

If I to sit on a couch drinking coffee, I'll go somewhere else.

when you charge by the desk, packing 'em like sardines into a open plan office looks very attractive.

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