Item — HN Reader

That to me is the critical tell. By all accounts the Bloomberg office model is very well regarded but Bloomberg himself sits in a cubicle with his directs around him in their own cubicles. There are break-out conference rooms of course just around them.

The CEO and directs should have a similar work situation to all the other office managers and their directs.

2 comments

> The CEO and directs should have a similar work situation to all the other office managers and their directs.

I would call this kind of dogfooding a necessary but insufficient condition for accepting what they say about open-plan offices.

After all, just because an open-plan office is better for people whose job (often) literally consists of talking to people all day doesn't mean it is better for people whose job is to focus all day on code, spreadsheets, or other kinds of individual work.

While I sympathize with that notion, I guess overhearing everything the C level is talking about would make everyone an insider regarding (own) stocks trading. Also, any layered security approaches would be hard to realize.

I sat a few feet from Bob Metcalfe. I never heard any good stuff. He kept his voice down, or went to a conference room for that.

They're still separated by floor. His cubicle farm is just for the very senior people who are already in (and anyway something very sensitive would happen in a room).