I’ve struggled with the shades of grey in Democratic candidates’ polices like on healthcare: Medicare for all? For all who want it? For all over 50? It’s…complicated. Thankfully Mike Bloomberg said something at the end of 2019 that made not voting for him a pretty easy decision: He wants to turn the White House into an open plan office.
Bloomberg’s been enamored of open office plans since at least the early 2000s. I visited a friend and former perl monger after he joined Bloomberg; it had some of the trappings of “dot com fancy-pants” offices like free food. They embedded stock tickers in floors and walls. And workers sat side-by-side in long rows of tables without partitions. Yuck. I remember thinking, “how does anybody get any real work done like this?”
I’ve been critical of open floor plan since. Research shows that it doesn’t increase knowledge worker productivity; businesses like it because it cuts facilities costs, plain and simple. I’d pass on a full-time, on-site gig in an open plan office at this point. And I’ll pass on a candidate that portrays this nonsense as business savvy.