Dear Reader,
This week I will write about our class trip to the Bloomberg office in London. First of all I would like to thank our teacher, Linda Lewis for giving us the opportunity to visit Bloomberg and get a good idea of what the company not only does but what it looks like. The trip to Bloomberg was extremely interesting especially because it was a lot different from what I had expected and imagined.
When walking into the Bloomberg building in Finsbury Square the first thing one realizes is how secure and nice the building is. The first thing we received upon our arrival was our name tag and pass for the 2 hours that we were going to spend in the building, we were then walked up to the very modern and environmentally friendly "cafeteria" were we had our first look around. Bloomberg seems to be an extremely ecological company, there are different bins for different trash and they seem to divide and recycle everything they find. This became even more obvious during our tour, when we were shown the furniture made out of recycled PC's and screens. I thought this was slightly unnecessary because first of all, it is quite uncomfortable to sit on steel and second of all it probably cost them more money to transform those screens into furniture then to buy some normal furniture.
We were taken around by a man and a woman, both seemed quite young and somewhat arrogant at times, the information they gave us seemed to be more superficial then necessary. The young man seemed to be more interested in talking about how many species of fish were in the acquarium then the actual company, it made it feel like we were visiting an aquarium rather then a global company. They then proceeded to taking us to a room and talking about the Bloomberg website and how it was used, one of the examples they used was "finsing good restaurants in London", which seemed sort of unprofessional and ridiculous. The last part of our tour was with a lady who worked for HR who explained to us the process of applying to Bloomberg and the internships offered at the company. She also explained that there is no hierarchy at Bloomberg and that everyone sits at the same desk and there is really no division. Every "new" person at Bloomberg also gets their picture put on a screen that will be shown in all Bloomberg offices. Now, this all seems very nice and "we are all equal" but a the same time I believe it was a little overdone. I do not believe that a company can have a "no hierarchy", there will alsways be a hierarchy in peoples heads, and we could not see what went on behind closed doors.
While going through Bloomberg and receiving explanations from the guides, I felt as though it was all a bit fake. The aquarium were the female guide said she sat infront of to "relax" and the different colours on every floor which helped stimulate "creativity" or "relax" were simply a bit too much. I was also quite surprised to see that the people who worked at Bloomberg and were sitting at the desks were not dressed very well, some were wearing t-shirts and jeans and maybe being a bit naive about this, I expected people to be wearing suits.
All in all I believe this was a great experience and eventhough it might seem like I only criticized the company, there was obviously very good sides to it too and since Bloomberg is doing very well I guess the way they work and approach the work evnvironment has been working for them. I am glad I could take part in this experience, and we also got to see a live presenter speaking for Bloomberg TV.
The Financialista
