What would a WeWork of the future look like?
james.js.org
james.js.org
- Poor transportation infrastructure and long travel distances outside of dense cities. Given the choice of driving 30+ minutes to a remote work center or staying home most people will probably choose to stay home and invest in a home office.
- Poor internet infrastructure outside of urban areas. US suburban/rural fiber and 5G deployment lags behind even poor countries such as Thailand and Vietnam.
- Cost. Remote work centers, aka co-working spaces, must make money. As WeWork demonstrated, without engaging in fraud and speculation making money with such facilities proves difficult. Most co-working spaces rely on memberships, similar to gyms, probably a hard sell unless people can easily walk or take mass transit in under 30 minutes. Coffee shops and cafes fill the gap since they have another source of revenue. Starbucks have turned into the def facto remote work centers in the USA.
- This is why I suggested starting just outside of city centers. For example in a suburb with a decent population of existing commuters. Then gradually expand outward if it makes sense.
- Same thing, don't go too far at first. But this could also turn into an advantage as bringing really good service to one centralized location is easier than reaching everyone's home.
- WeWork was basically arbitraging subletting for people that could afford to travel around and pay short term rental rates for their office space. This system would be adding real value with the dedicated comms stack. Starbucks is great for a lot of people, particularly freelancers and independents, but in my experience you don't find many traditional team-based 9-5ers there. A power office user is not going to achieve anywhere near the same productivity there day in and day out. This would be trying to emulate more of the Google campus experience that a lot of people value (think day care, gym, hyper-convenient high-quality food options), but is currently only available in very select locations.
Coworking is targeted at very small businesses and individuals, to whom the "free" office space of their home or café will go a long way before they want to pay. And they don't get the same network effects from a proper office anyway. This idea would be targeting [employees of] entities that already have to deal with managing office space.
If a company has enough people in an area to economically fill up a WeWork-type space every day, the company should open an office for their employees to work from.
I have worked remote for a long time and I know I would push back on my employer trying to get me to pay for their RTO or traditional team-based 9-5ers.
The supporting services and amenities would likely not be entirely free in this case, since it's not all sponsored by one employer, but they would still be useful.
This whole thing is designed to empower and facilitate remote work....but hey, if Starbucks and the guest room work for you, that's perfectly fine, your employer appreciates the savings.
The perks of big corporate campuses make some sense at scale, to get employees to leave home and work 12 hour days. As a former Silcon Valley worker at a nice campus I know how that works. Many companies have cut back on the perks now that they have a workforce afraid of AI and layoffs. Now they can just order return to office without the goodies.
Good luck with the idea. I suspect the WeWork of the future will look more like a bland overpriced Regus office than a Google campus, but who knows.
I can see why this all might sound dystopian, but it feels like a step in the right direction to me. At BigCo HQ you are surrounded by Kool-Aid. Many people have been plucked out of different places and whisked away to SV. Here it would be more diverse and less company-town-y. You could have lunch with your local friends that work for other companies. One could change jobs and stay working at the same desk. Instead of bringing everyone to the company, we bring the company to everyone.
I sense you may have balked when I said "commodify" but in this case it just meant making a luxury good attainable to more people. You have to have a strong central authority to create that kind of campus and have it not be a Regus or whatever. "Outsourcing" that to a multi-tenancy provider makes it accessible to more firms and individuals.
I’m not actually going to pursue this or anything, just thought it was interesting. Maybe instead things go the direction I gather you are espousing, moving away from offices entirely.
I’ve actually been out of the industry for a bit, maybe Covid did kill the office? Does Gen Z equate offices to corporate boomer death? To be honest I do the home/cafe laptop nomad thing as well, but I am independent, and there are challenges. I could see myself working at a facility like this if it were an option. Sometimes it’s valuable to just be in the energy of that environment.