As someone who lived in situations like this when he was younger, go for it kids. Save like a mother fucker, don't buy useless crap and fancy furniture and live simple. Then, later, when like me you realize that you need a space to call your own to be able to function in society, you can get a condo or smaller house and have the resources in place to make that happen. I did communal living, and all it takes is two bad tenants to fuck the whole system up. If one guy in the house smokes weed, soon everyone will be smoking, and not just on weekends. One person in the house a "not quite dysfunctional alcoholic?" The whole floor will feel the pain. One person a slob who does not pick up the common room? Or a tenant with bad personal hygene/ body odor/shit taste in loud music? You just singed a one year lease, buddy. And if I understand this correctly, the house is also full of your coworkers. So you work with these people, live with these people and do all the same stuff that these people do because, hey you know these folks. This is also genius from a pure evil point as well: the social pressure to never stop working is going to be immense. There will be no downtime when Barry down the hall is working at 11PM and you are trying to go to sleep because you need 8-9 hours of sleep to function. This makes me sort of angry at my parents, in a sick way. If I had no morals, I'd liquidate everything I own and set these places up in cities with lots of hipsters and high housing prices. 600SQ feet per resident, common kitchen, bath in the center of the building to save on plumbing installation and maintenance, heat and cool the place like an office building rather than residences, get 10-12 "suites" per floor at $1000/month per? Damn, you can almost see the benefits as a landlord to these things. Rents less than 1/3 normal, your own micro space, sell on the "networking" and "socializing" components and people will forget they are living in an adult version of their college dorm. Get high speed fibre and build a big common room on say the second floor, build a gym, make retail on the first floor like coffee, Panera, etc, and put these things as close to transit as you can. Hell if you are truly connected and have the money to buy a city councilman, I bet you can get government housing grants from one of those TLA's that is trying to get STEM and TECH into the city. This can be a great way to live, but you really need to know who and what you are as a person to make it work, then get lucky with the floor mates. As for me, I live in a small house on 4 acres with enough trees between myself and my nearest neighbors that I cannot see their houses until I get to the end of the driveway.
I think that part of these collaborative work environments appeal is that you aren't surrounded by your co-workers per-say, but rather by fellow virtual employees. Meaning that there may be less pressure to make sure "Barry" doesn't work harder than you because Barry doesn't even work at the same company or industry as you. However, the potential to collaborate across industries, pick up best practices and network like a mo-fo is ample. I think it's an awesome idea. Its funny to me that communal living is making such a comeback, but with a "capitalistic" twist. My parents generation had communes but they revolved around farming and shared responsibilities to keep the home, farm, and families nurtured. This new iteration seems to be all about socializing and job-productivity. -Very different. Traded in the organic farm for a bank of Mac Books and the marijuana growing out back behind the compost for a craft-cocktail bar. -This isn't our parents commune.
Reading this, I went back and reread that part of the article. That changes this a bit, and makes it more palatable for me. If you get lucky and get into a floor with a bunch of people who are driven, smart, and working on complex problems I can see this being better than a year in college for learning work habits and skills.I think that part of these collaborative work environments appeal is that you aren't surrounded by your co-workers per-say, but rather by fellow virtual employees. Meaning that there may be less pressure to make sure "Barry" doesn't work harder than you because Barry doesn't even work at the same company or industry as you. However, the potential to collaborate across industries, pick up best practices and network like a mo-fo is ample. I think it's an awesome idea.