THE 100 BEST COMPANIES TO WORK FOR WeWork
THE FUTURE OF WORK OFFICE SPACE 2.0 Commercial real estate startup WeWork brings the sharing economy into your workspace. By Jen Wieczner SING AN OFFICE at WeWork feels a lot like checking in at a swank hotel. Indie music plays softly in the reception area. Young professionals with laptops sprawl across couches, beanbag chairs, and even pillowcovered stacks of wooden pallets, sipping artisanal coffee or lemon water. Depending on the day, help yourself
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SECRETS FROM A RECRUITER
“Hyatt knows that one size does not fit all. We look for candidates who are willing to show their personal brand or be at their best. This includes thinking differently and bringing an innovative spirit to the workplace.” —KRISTY SEIDEL, DIRECTOR OF TALENT ACQUISITION, HYATT HOTELS [NO. 78]
BREAK TIME Many of WeWork’s offices offer creative distractions.
to a waffle brunch or sign up for a massage in a conference room. Despite the relaxing vibe, WeWork’s chain of co-working spaces— where employees from different firms rent desks and small offices but share Wi-Fi, copy machines, water coolers, and the like—are all about doing business. Founded by two guys who never had traditional office jobs of their own, WeWork was imagined as a sort of entrepreneurial, antiestablishment utopia: delivering Googleplex-type perks (from videogames to health insurance discounts) to small startups that couldn’t otherwise afford them. “The line that we see between work and play is really blurring, and we try to make this the best work environment possible,” says WeWork co-founder and CEO Adam Neumann. The WeWork model has proved incredibly attractive to today’s increasingly independent workforce. Started in 2010, WeWork has grown into a $5 billion business with 27 locations across the U.S. and abroad. It plans to double that number by the end of this year. And lately Fortune 500 companies have also come knocking: Merck, American Express, and Microsoft now lease desks at WeWork. Yet
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WeWork turns many big firms away; it limits them to just 20% of overall membership. “If we had opened our doors, this place would become corporate America,” Neumann says. “We’re able to give them a corporate culture and feeling that are a little more relevant.” Merck employees , for example, alternate between company headquarters and four WeWork outposts in New York City to gain exposure to the “innovation ecosystem.” WeWork is the first U.S. company to scale the coworking concept and to galvanize its own brand of workspace, which is as much about the social scene as it is about the space itself. There are onsite happy hours and events several times a week, publicized by WeWork’s members-only mobile app, and floors are laid out so that workers are likely to bump into one another on their way to the fridge or a meeting. While companies of all sizes are shifting to openoffice layouts to cut costs, WeWork’s memberships, averaging $400 to $650 a person per month, can be more expensive than leasing a comparable amount of commercial space elsewhere. WeWork says it makes up for that by covering expenses like furniture and cleaning— not to mention the beer kegs on every floor—as well as by fostering business relationships and partnerships between members. “For us, it’s not about reducing footprint,” says Mark Gallagher, senior market manager for Silicon Valley Bank, which recently took up residence in WeWork’s Boston and San Francisco locations to better mingle with its entrepreneur clients. “It’s about a different work style.”
