Category: Startups

Remote Workers: Why I think WeWork are missing a trick

Some of you will be aware I’m a remote worker. My employer’s corporate HQ is in the US, our EMEA HQ is in London, while I’m nominally on a “work from home” contract, where home is in Manchester. I work with an International team, based all over the world.

The lease on our London office expired recently, and the company took the decision to move our EMEA HQ into a dedicated private office space in a WeWork building – I’m assuming folk reading this know what a WeWork is, if you don’t, it’s a serviced office, but just not beige throughout.

The upsides to being located in a WeWork are pretty good.

Modern offices with up-to-date decor, meeting rooms of various sizes, on-site WeWork staff to handle all the faff such as maintenance, cleaning, etc., for you, including a mail-room function so you never have to wait in for a parcel again, and all the fun things more usually associated with massive tech companies and start-ups, such as espresso machines, table football, free beer in the afternoons, etc.

The things you might expect at a Corporate HQ location, but now available to people working in the smaller satellite offices too.

So much so that we’ve done that with a number of our smaller regional offices of late. So we do put significant business (for us at least) in WeWork’s direction.

Because I had access to our old London office, that meant I became a member of the WeWork building we moved into in London. This means in WeWork’s eyes, our London EMEA HQ office is my “home” location. I have 24×7 access there. I need to come and go from there for face-to-face meetings and the like, so that makes sense. All well and good.

But you’ll remember, I live in Manchester.

As it happens, there are two (soon to be three) WeWork locations in Manchester.

I can spend 1 credit (a credit is how WeWork account for additional services, such as booking meeting rooms, and use of non-“home” workspaces) from the company WeWork account to book a “workspace” in one of the Manchester locations for the day, and sometimes I’ll do that, so I don’t go berserk working from home and staring at the same four walls all the time.

Yes, outside! People! Conversation! Change of scenery! Free coffee! Free beer! Air-conditioning on sweltering days!

Sounds great that I can use my company WeWork membership to get access to the more local facility and get out of the house, doesn’t it?

I’ve been trying this for a couple of months, I’ve found there are some downsides:

  • The “workspace” you get for your WeWork credit is basically a form of guest access to that building’s communal areas. These are areas with the kitchen, barista, coffee machines, foosball tables, ping-pong, background music, and beer.
  • So, unlike the amenity of your home location – proper desk, proper work chair – for your credit you get access to some sofas, high tops, and if you’re lucky (because it’s location dependent) some desks intended for short term use (i.e. tables and non-adjustable hard chairs). The good spots – with the more comfortable chairs and power outlets – are a) often more “cafe style” and b) coveted, tending to go really quickly.
  • Also, because you’re in the communal area, you’re basically using the same space that the building’s resident members use for coffee breaks, to eat their lunch, chat, and have informal meetings which means it can get loud.
  • Finally, because you’re not a regular user, you’re basically left feeling a bit like this rando that’s invading the other peoples’ space. You don’t really feel like you belong.

Bluntly, working as a visitor in a WeWork other than your company’s own location is actually not a great work environment if you need to concentrate, or intend on spending any length of time there.

It’s fine for short-term getting online, grabbing a coffee, checking emails, and maybe the odd informal meeting or chit-chat, or just a change of scenery – basically the things you might otherwise do in a coffee shop.

The other problem is that unlike one’s “home” location, your credit only buys you access while the WeWork location is staffed – 9-6pm. It’s also an “automatic lock-in” – very much like the cult Channel 4 gameshow The Crystal Maze, but far less entertaining when you nip out to the loo and your keycard is automatically deactivated. You’re on one side of the door, while all your stuff is on the other, and now you’re looking for someone to let you back in.

This becomes a challenge when you’re working across multiple timezones where conference calls running into the evening – especially in that 4-7pm sweet-spot where the time isn’t hugely anti-social in California, Boston, and the UK – aren’t unusual. Work days just don’t routinely finish at 5.30pm anymore!

Now this is where I believe WeWork – as a huge global co-working organisation, with offices all over the place – ought to understand this better, and are missing a trick with remote workers such as myself: people who do need access to their organisation’s corporate office, but at the same time may have a WeWork closer to their home location that they might like to use once or twice a week, and somewhere they feel they have a connection with.

Indeed, WeWork consider their “Global Network” as one of their upselling points, but the way it’s organised at the moment, each individual location feels like a separate “franchise” of WeWork. My opinion is this is where the Global Network falls down.

What would I propose they offer people such as myself?

  • The ability to nominate a “secondary location” – this would be your choice of  WeWork closest to your home, space permitting – at which you have 24×7 walk-in privileges, other benefits as though it’s your home location, and access to the communal areas (effectively this is an “add-on” Hot Desk membership at the chosen secondary location).
  • The ability to book a “proper” desk in an open plan area or small (1/2 person) office at your nominated secondary location on a day-to-day basis using credits – effectively the same as you can book workspaces or meeting rooms now, except it’s at an actual desk, with an actual work chair.

Yes, I propose that WeWork deliberately hold back a handful of small offices and open plan desks in each location, and set them aside for upgraded hot-desking.

How many credits would a desk cost? The cost of a UK WeWork credit is £20 (I know it’s $25 in the US).

Most co-working spots I know of that offer an “occasional user” membership (i.e. aimed at 5 days a month, but not religiously policed, could be 8-10 half-days) will charge around £100-120+vat a month, but for that you do get a proper desk with a proper chair, and you’re not working out of a sofa or from a high-top in a corridor all day.

At WeWork, the closest thing that gets you a proper desk is a Dedicated Desk plan, and those currently run to £330/month in Manchester, they are more expensive in other locations. If you assume 22 days per average work month, it’s £15/day. (Or 261 work days in 2019, so 330×12/261 = 15.17)

So let’s say that 0.5 credit will get a “secondary member” a proper desk in the open plan office area for the day. Remember, your organisation is already paying WeWork a small fortune back at “home base”, so why shouldn’t they get a good deal in the other branches?

What about a private office? In Manchester these start from £460/month, depending on which building.

I’d suggest private offices are offered from 1 credit per seat for the day in cheaper buildings and maybe 2 credits for the busier and more expensive cities and buildings with higher demand.

I know I could technically book a small meeting room, but again these aren’t intended for you to get dug-in for a full day’s work. They are designed around being comfortable for relatively short periods of time, and encourage turnover so other WeWork members can use them. Plus, using them during peak hours chews through credits.

So that’s where I think WeWork are dropping the ball the most, at least for annoying people like me with non-conventional work locations and patterns.

I’ve not even gone into detail here about their online systems and app, through which you do have access to their “Global Network”. Despite the growth of WeWork, it’s still centred around the assumption that you’re really only interested in and attached to one building (and therefore one WeWork “community”) at a time – which enhances the feeling of being a bit of a rando if you’re in a WeWork other than your “home”, or if you change to follow your “secondary” location means you become disconnected from your Company’s main base.

As ever, please leave a comment, or tweet me with your thoughts: Are you a remote or nomadic worker that occasionally needs a good bolt-hole? Are you disappointed by the WeWork “global” offering? Are you aware of some “secret menu” of WeWork membership that does exist and will actually do what I’m looking for?

IX Scotland – Why might it work this time?

Yesterday the BBC ran this news item about the launch of a new Internet Exchange in Edinburgh – IX Scotland. This is the latest in an emerging trend of local IXPs developing in the UK, such as IX Leeds and IX Manchester.

There was some belief that this is the first Internet Exchange in Scotland, however those people have short memories. There have been two (or three) depending on how you look at it, attempts at getting a working IXP in Edinburgh in the past 15 years, all of which ultimately failed.

So, why should IX Scotland be any different to it’s predecessors? Continue reading “IX Scotland – Why might it work this time?”

Quids in for the Bristol Pound?

Interesting BBC News article on the Bristol Pound today.

The Bristol Pound is a localised currency intended to stop the net outflow of cash from Bristol – the idea being that if you paid for a product or service with a Bristol Pound as opposed to a normal Pound Sterling, the trader is required to spend that money as a Bristol Pound themselves – either to pay a local employee, or a local supplier, you get the general idea.

The thinking is that in a recession and in the face of rising globalisation, when a normal Pound is spent in Bristol, a large percentage of it (or even worse, all of it) is exported from Bristol, going into the pockets of people outside of the region. By keeping the money local, it’s an attempt to create a virtuous effect of doing business in the local area, benefitting local businesses and people.

I make no secret I’m a big fan of local reinvestment – I’ve touched on this when writing about localised fast broadband projects such as co-operative ones like B4RN (which might actually achieve this) and large gold-plated schemes like DigitalRegion (which isn’t doing too well at the moment, as a locally-based South Yorkshire DR reseller – Ripwire – has gone bump over the weekend).

Early days for the Bristol Pound yet – they are still inviting suggestions for who should be on their money – obviously the legendary engineer Brunel, who had such an influence on the city, should feature, but what about one of Bristol’s famous fictional sons, like Casualty’s Charlie Fairhead? Or is the irony of the BBC moving the Casualty production from Bristol to Cardiff a bit too much?

Regional Broadband – The Hidden Danger of Uber-projects

It was revealed this week that Digital Region, the centrally funded (to the tune of £90m – mostly public money) superfast broadband initiative in South Yorkshire is facing tough times, in particular a £9.2m loss on a revenue of only £167k (which only just pays the last CEO’s £100k salary – they are currently seeking a new CEO, one assumes to manage a turnaround).

The Yorkshire Post article goes on to explain another £4m of public funds have been ringfenced as a “security”, and that the four participating councils, already under budget pressure from Central Government austerity, may need to as much as £500k per year to secure the operations of Digital Region if the loan can’t be repaid. Is that throwing good money after bad, or is the situation redeemable?

This highlights my belief that these large centrally funded uber-projects contain a more significant risk of failure, and not of delivering the right product. The larger organisations that are able to bid and win such projects can come with higher overheads compared to the smaller community projects such as those serving areas with poor existing broadband service, who have a relatively captive and supportive market, and benefit from a tighter focus – for instance Rutland Telecom’s pioneering FTTC with unbundled sub-loop in Lyddington, which is using the same basic FTTC tech as DR is using, but on a smaller scale and in relative isolation.

The larger scale of the Digital Region deployment obviously needed a much bigger income to support the aggressive build and provisioning costs, along with what looks like a complex structure, and now that revenue hasn’t been realised. As can be seen on the DR website, and highlighted on the ThinkBroadband article, very few ISPs use the DR infrastructure to deliver service and is maybe one of the reasons they aren’t making their targets.

You have to ask yourself why this is? Continue reading “Regional Broadband – The Hidden Danger of Uber-projects”

Couldn’t go with the Openflow? Archive is online.

Last week, I missed an event I really wanted to make it to – the OpenFlow Symposium, hosted by PacketPushers and Tech Field Day. Just too much on (like the LONAP AGM), already done a fair bit of travel recently (NANOG, DECIX Customer Forum, RIPE 63), and couldn’t be away from home yet again. I managed to catch less than 30 minutes of the webcast.

From being something which initially seemed to be aimed at academia doing protocol development, lots of people are now talking about OpenFlow as it has attracted some funding, and more interest from folks with practical uses.

I think it’s potentially interesting for either centralised control plane management (almost a bit like a route reflector or a route server for BGP), or for implementing support for new protocols which are really unlikely to make it into silicon any time soon, as well as the originally intended purpose of protocol development and testing against production traffic and hardware.

Good news for folks such as myself is that some of the stream content is now being archived online, so I’m looking forward to catching up with proceedings.

Whither (UK) Regional Peering – Pt.1

Just last month, in mid-September, Andy Davidson brought up the switch at IXLeeds, the latest UK regional IXP.

You’ll note I say “the latest”, but how many non-London UK IXPs can you name off the top of your head? Not many, I’ll wager. Fewer that are still operating, too. No, the LINX PoP in Slough doesn’t count in my picture of non-London!

This is the problem: It’s often said that there isn’t the level of regional IP peering going on in the UK that there probably should be for redundancy reasons. The majority of IP peering in the UK happens in London, and when it isn’t happening in London, it’s probably happening in Amsterdam instead.

Let’s face it, on an island that’s ~15ms round-trip top-to-bottom, we’re less likely to peer to reduce latency, especially when the architecture of the incumbent wholesale DSL platform doesn’t encourage networks to do little beside haul all broadband customer traffic to a central point before dispersing it.

Previous attempts at establishing regional IXPs in the UK have had varying levels of success. The most successful to date, in terms of number of participants and achieving critical mass is probably MANAP – which was founded in Manchester in 1997.

Unlike LINX which did survive (well, successfully resisted) a demutualisation attempt, MANAP only sort-of did. It allowed it’s infrastructure to be taken over by a company funded by the local Regional Development Association, and the exchange became a service provided over the infrastructure which was no longer dedicated to IXP operations, but also carried other traffic and provided other services.

The MANAP that exists today is not the same exchange, it has been subsumed into the NWIX platform and operates as Edge-IX, a distributed exchange which is present in both Manchester, elsewhere in the Northwest, and in many other locations, including those in London’s Docklands that it was initially intended to provide redundancy for. It’s has a different flavour, and has lost some elements of it’s “regionality”.

What distinguishes it from a carrier, other than the Edge-IX services being non-profit, while the NWIX ones are?

I’m not suggesting that this is a better or worse model, just different, and probably not regional anymore. If this, i.e. reinventing yourself as an inter-regional IX, is the only way a regional IXP in the UK can survive, then we’ll find it very challenging to reach position of sustainable regional peering in the UK. Could things have been different in Manchester?

You may be questioning what issue I have with a “wide-area” exchange point, distributed over a large geographic area? The main concern is shared fate. A disruption that would otherwise be localised, spreading easily. I can probably write a whole article on that. Maybe I will another day…

So, why would a quick hop over the Pennines to Leeds be any different?

Manchester itself is also at risk of being unattractive as a location for regional IXs – with the recent purchase of IFL by Telecity Group there is very little organisational diversity or competition in the Manchester co-lo market – there’s existing facilities such as Vialtus Serverbank, and recent new entrant Ice Colo. Folks in the Manchester area were very quick on the social networks to state their fears about anticipated price rises and few options as a result of the lack of choice.

The Leeds scene is rather different, with lots of smaller, entrepreneurial companies active in the metro area. This is a double-edged sword, as while it results in competition in the co-lo market which folks like, it also meant that IXLeeds couldn’t be present everywhere the potential IX participants wanted to connect, certainly from day one. There’s a future aspiration to expand within the metro.

One of the early strengths in IXLeeds is that has a good community feel behind it, including the involvement of folks who have experienced peering in Manchester, while the Yorkshire RDA have been involved from the outset in getting folks together, but (so far) haven’t felt the temptation to get in the driving seat, instead choosing to play the role of facilitator.

There’s a will to succeed, so hopefully they will reach the critical mass that is required to sustain the exchange.

A concern I have is the lack of international capacity into the Leeds area, Manchester is in a better position here due to the independant (from London) Transatlantic connectivity arriving in the area.

That said, while international bandwidth a something of a pre-requisite for a national exchange point, is that actually necessary for a successful regional IX?

Then again – what are the success criteria for an IX, especially a regional one? A graph that forever goes up and to the right? They probably are and should be different from a national IX. Is the regional IX not being satisfied with it’s lot, and wanting to be like it’s larger neighbour, what actually destroys it? Maybe that’s another article in itself?

I’d say it depends on how non-London-centric the early IXLeeds ISPs are, how much of their traffic is delivered locally, and how much traffic they have between each other that they might normally route through London.

If my previous experience is anything to go by – such as opening a new PoP for an already successful IX – these things usually “slow start” – so that means patience is required.

I’m going to come back to this topic in the coming weeks, I’ll try and write about some of the side issues I’ve threatened to cover above, and maybe touch on a missed opportunity.

Still think they should have called it the Rhubarb Internet Exchange. Even if it was just to confuse people. 🙂