What does your monitor setup say about you?

There are two types of power in this world: 

Power that sits behind two monitors, and power that has no monitor at all. 

The people who empty the office wastebaskets overnight may have never seen you work, but they still know the pecking order. 

Every open plan office is the same.

The first desk has a monitor, but it’s usually hidden or off to the side. That’s because the person who works at the front desk isn’t paid to look at a monitor at all. Their desk is arranged to focus on the humans coming through the door. 

Back in the bullpen, there are dozens of identical desks. The clutter tells you little, but the monitor tells you everything. 

Single monitor - Low level admin worker. Maybe an intern or a coordinator. 

Single monitor with a removable privacy screen - This person handles important information, but doesn’t make important decisions.

Matching double monitor - A career doesn’t really get started until you get a second monitor. But if your monitors match each other, and everyone else’s, you’re still the one taking orders rather than giving them. 

Bigger double monitors - These people work in design and follow their own rules. They’re artists, you philistine. It’s impossible to categorize them. 

And then, back in the corner, are the double monitors that are different from everyone else’s. The chair hidden behind them sits with its back to the wall so that no one can see what's on the screens.

This person is the feudal lord of the office. The one that everyone looks up to. The one who determines who’s earned their second monitor. The arbiter of who gets to have their back to the wall and who can get by with a privacy screen. 

Many people have ambitions of becoming the person behind the two big screens. They dream of someday being important enough to demand non-standard-issue high-quality monitors. They wish to someday work in the relative quiet of the desk with a wall on one side and a window on the other. 

But people rarely think about the true power of the person who has no monitor at all. The person whose work isn’t even in the computer, but out there in the world, sending orders to the double-screened dukes with their backs to the walls of dozens of different fiefdoms around the world. 

These people are so important that the only screen they need fits in their pocket. Because they, like the person who sits at the front desk, are paid to talk to people. 

So if you’re dreaming of the big screens, I dare you to dream bigger and shoot for the position with the smallest screen of all.

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👋 I'm Claire. I don't use a monitor because I don't like to be pinned down.

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