What It’s Like to Work at Bloomberg

“Whispering private thoughts and opinions is frowned upon. The company has no offices and prides itself on being “horizontal.” When the Mayor returned to his old headquarters, company chairman Peter Grauer wanted to have a private conversation with him in a conference room. Bloomberg resisted, Grauer insisted. Bloomberg reluctantly went in, Grauer closed the door. Early the next week, Grauer came to work to find that the doors to the conference rooms had been removed.

“Not surprisingly, then, few of the more than 30 current and former Bloomberg journalists and executives I spoke to for this article would go on the record. At headquarters in New York and in the newsroom in Washington, scores of cameras watch workers. Business cards don’t carry titles. Everyone is a citizen.

The Mayor and the Mogul

Welcome to the Modern Office

“Part of the problem is that modern workplaces make it so difficult to do any actual work. Employees spend an average of four hours per week in meetings, according to the Center for Economics and Business Research. Email provides a constant distraction: the average worker spends 28% of her time managing her inbox, according to a 2012 McKinsey Global Institute survey.”

—Brad Stone

How the New York Times’s Top Tech Blogger Multitasks

“Bilton multitasked constantly and was involved in many kinds of conversations. He was, at any one point, tweeting on his own Twitter stream, tweeting on the Times’s liveblog, IMing with people as far away as San Francisco or as close as the desk behind him, and talking to other staffers. He was also simultaneously tracking Twitter, checking the blogosphere for competing tech blogs, and thinking about new blog posts to write. With these blogs, he wasn’t just posting text but actively using Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Excel, and a number of other programs to enhance the visual aspects of his blogging. Bilton joked about being ADD — but he was exactly the multitasking information seeker and user of social news that he had written about in his book.”

—Nikki Usher

The Message You Send When You Play With Your Phone

When you finger your smartphone while someone’s talking, you’re conveying a clear message. That message, as Gawker’s Adrian Chen puts it (in an article about Google Glass): you’re “willing to trade other people’s discomfort for [your] own technological convenience.”

Asshole.

Does Your “About Us” Page Communicate Your Company’s Culture?

Put a little culture in your “about” page, and the world will be a better place.

In a recent post for Lifehacker, Sean Blanda notes five best practices about corporate culture. Of particular importance for brand managers, he argues that companies ought to use their “about us” webpage to capture and communicate their culture. He cites six sites worth emulating:

Airbnb

Automattic

Couchsurfing

Coursera

MailChimp

Modern Tribe

What does your “about” page communicate?

Addendum (2/4/2014): A few people pages worth their headshots:

CivicScience

MXM

The Sunlight Foundation

Viget

Addendum (3/26/2014): Honorable mention:

Huge

Addendum (4/27/2014): Another winner:

Giphy

Addendum (4/30/2014): Another one:

Cornett

Addendum (7/28/2014): This time, some text:

“Social media is becoming one of the best ways for employers to give the outside world an inside look at their company’s culture ... Candidates deciding whether ... to accept a position often learn much more about a company’s culture through friends or social media than from a conventional interview process.”

Addendum (5/25/2015):

Chartbeat