My firm's been an individual ("Hot Desk") member at WeWork Cambridge for a bit over 3 years now, so…read moreit's about time I wrote a review, no, to share my experience?
I'll start by saying that for my LSAT training company (TestWell / LSAT 180: +13 pt avg increase, nrly double the industry avg; pls visit testwell.com if you have an LSAT in your future) it is no exaggeration to say that WeWork's been the physical foundation underpinning our professional and financial success*.
I now pay less (currently $350/month) for a full month of class meetings (6 weeknight or weekend classroom sessions each week, plus assorted tutorial times) than I used to pay for just ONE DAY'S meeting-space on-campus at Harvard. Harvard's facilities are very nice, and, of course, perfectly located for serving their students, but they are not 25+ times as nice.
The WeWork meeting spaces, which I repurpose nightly as classroom/tutorial space, are perfect for us w/their, plentiful whiteboards & comfortable furniture & lighting/HVAC. New students or prospectives routinely say they find the space gorgeous on first entering the facilities.
The support services here are consistently amazing.
Example 1: one time, when an event out in the common areas was loud enough to be a distraction inside our classroom, management turned down the speakers in the common area right outside our room - and have since consistently done so, without ever being asked again.
Example 2: at a time when my printer-access had failed, staffers used their own printing accounts to make the materials I'd need for that night's lesson for me, and never even charged my account the usual printing fee.
Example 3: for a while there, I was having intermittent problems (the toughest kind to troubleshoot) connecting my little laptop to the WW printer system. Their on-site tech-geek spent nearly two hours diagnosing and fixing the failure (which was most likely a malfunction in MY OS, as nobody else here had ever had similar difficulties). The glitch was permanently fixed - and I was not charged anything for this well-beyond-the-call-of-duty work.
The WiFi is super-reliable and fast enough to support consistently glitch-free videoconferencing via Zoom - a necessity for our distance-learning classes.
The location could not be more convenient; we're in a safe keycard building literally a dozen steps from both the Red Line's Central Square T-stop and the Prospect St stop on the #1 bus line, hard by an excellent collection of restaurants and bars, and almost directly across from the Amazon pickup facility. We're two blocks from the Central Sq post office, two blocks from a WholeFüds, in the same building as a Walgreen's, and directly across from a CVS.
The kitchen facilities and the "Wellness" room are nice bonuses; there's plenty of fridge 'n' freezer space for members to access and there's even an espresso machine for members to use and beer on tap. Finally, they provide us - again, free - little cubbies (such as we had in kindergarten?) to leave small amounts of personal possessions, so I don't have to drag my laptop to'n'fro every day. (WorkBar used to charge me $40/month for a locker that was no larger than the cubbie they comp us here.)
W/r/t any concerns anyone might have about the various headlines mentioning WW's investors' apparent issues - they are theirs, not ours down here at the member level. As of July, 2022, I've seen literally zero impact of any ostensible challenges in the operations or management of our facility here.
If any of this changes at any point in the future, I'll try to remember to update this review to so specify.
*(One of my franchisees, now defunct, rly should've done the same. If they had, instead of trying to support their own stand-alone office, they'd probably still be w/ us today.)