Thanks for encouraging me to give it another look. I think the tone of the article threw me off; the author is ambivalent, but not in a "I'm not buying this" sort of way but in a "I'm not sure if I should say nice things or mean things so I'll kind of split the difference" sort of way.

Your work-is-life, life-in-work concern is valid. What's interesting here though is that "shitty life/work balance" is WeWork's implicit product... and I hadn't seen it put so starkly before. Because really, they're taking the shitty "have a kombucha now get back to the galley and row, slave" aspect of working in tech and offering it up for rent. They're offering it up to you, as an individual "entrepreneur", and they're offering it up to your company, as a way of literally outsourcing their culture. Most everyone else has been pointing out that WeWork is basically a rental middleman, adding a layer of techy bullshit to existing leases and skimming off the top. This is an argument that really, they're a security blanket for people who need to feel like they have a job even when they don't.

My wife had an office in eOffices. They've been around for 20 years. They own a building and they charge you month-to-month for everything WeWork will sell you... minus the "craft on draft" and "fresh fruitwater" and "micro-roasted coffee." But they lease offices. Month-to-month. And that's probably why they're three buildings on the west side of Los Angeles rather than some $47b fuckercorn. 'cuz hey. They can't get people to pay them $50 a day for a desk.

Because you're right: they're pushing the idea that you just can't work for yourself without some fuckhead encouraging you to wear Hawaiian shirts every other thursday or some shit. And they're charging through the nose. And 20 years from now, when we're all mocking the shit out of the terrible ideas of the teens, I sincerely hope we've come to our senses about what a terrible idea all this is.