Having been in 4 squadrons, I've seen both sides of the coin. I know why people get upset about the open door thing. I also think it's the direction we're moving in as an Air Force in general. I think it's perfectly fine to have a conversation with your commander about pretty much anything if he wants you to. I've had leadership who felt the same way about the chain of command. I've been in units where I could go straight to the shirt with a problem instead of routing things. Hell, I shot an email directly to the commander asking for some help as an A1C at my first assignment and he helped me out big time. I'll never forget that and what he did for me. I've always done things that way and worked for people that believed in that line of thinking.

But... I have had shirts who would not respond to anything I said or would not interact with me. I have had leadership believe way too much in routing things. Going from a units where I could shoot the shirt a message and things would get done to a unit where the shirt would ignore and refused to respond to everything I said was really annoying. This was as a SSgt too. However, every CC I've had has been super cool about communication so I don't get it. Also tons of flight commanders, Chiefs, and Seniors I've worked for who are all for that direct communication. Some not so much. It's really weird to me how much it varies unit to unit.

So yeah, I think it's fine. I get why people think it's not but I think it hurts things. When I spend several years of my Air Force career thinking this is how things should be and knowing that people have my back on all levels it's weird when I see other units with filtered communication and stuff.

But here I am, I could talk to Chief Towberman or probably that guy who runs Chief Wright's account on Reddit and it's fine.