19 ms·

Noisy Coworkers And Other Sounds Are A Distraction In Workplace

250 points by xweb 10y ago

alistproducer2 10y ago
The open office revolution needs to die. I don't like wearing headphones all day, but I also don't like hearing 30 people's conversations either. I had a (old) guy that used to sit in my area who would argue with his manager in person and argue (loudly) with everyone he was on the phone with (including his wife). He got moved a couple of months ago and there were no tears shed.
- keithpeter 10y ago
  Did he get moved to a smaller room? If so, you have your strategy.
  - alistproducer2 10y ago
    I just got it lol. I'm slow.
wwggggoi 10y ago
honestly, that's why I'm hardly ever in the office. there's someone there who's noise profile is utterly unfilterable. they fiddle with things, drop things, fidget, cough, snort phlegm up their nose, subvocalize, and generally emit an air of restlessness. nice person though.
- pavel_lishin 10y ago
  Has anyone ever told them that they're noisy? I suspect that I might be such a person, and explicitly tell anyone to go ahead and let me know if I'm ever annoying. I think I'm approachable enough that they take the offer at face value, and not as a passive-aggressive "don't you dare".
  - realeyes 10y ago
    This is a serious issue for me as well I've asked co workers I'm fairly close with and they say they don't notice me etc. I can't tell if they're just trying to be nice though, I think I'm a loud breather but I don't know how to prove it.
- ghurtado 10y ago
  > they fiddle with things, drop things, fidget, cough, snort phlegm up their nose, subvocalize, and generally emit an air of restlessness That list is entirely too familiar. Honestly, do you work in my office? Add to that: dictates constantly to their mobile phone using voice-to-text function (things like "Honey - period - I need you to pick up the kids tonight - period - Did you remember to take out the garbage - question mark - period") and has bouts of fist pounding on the desk when things don't go their way (such as when email takes more than 15 seconds to open) - and I will start looking for you here.
deleted 10y ago
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bcheung 10y ago
I'd say environmental factors such as being so freaking hot that you are sweating or so freaking cold you have to bring in a heater to counteract the AC are pretty distracting as well. And in terms of productivity, not having enough ventilation so that the air builds up CO2 makes people really tired and unproductive.
- r00fus 10y ago
  That last sentence struck a chord with me - I remember (during my traveling) being onsite for an "ERP implementation warehouse" for a major company with hundreds of workers and inadequate ventilation - place seemed like hell and I felt sleepy the entire time I was onsite. Glad when that week was over. Maybe I'm just sensitive, but when "life support" is off in an office (e.g. later in the day or early in the morning where HVAC is turned down), I take that as a cue to not be present. I can always work from home with VPN if needed.
- joesmo 10y ago
  Totally! I once quit a job because the average temperature in the office was 85F in winter (also really shitty spaghetti code)! Unfortunately, not before I got incredibly sick. When I complained, they said they could do nothing about it because other people were freezing. In the Bay Area, on the other hand, I had a job in a similar place that was always freezing, even when it was warm outside. That was actually not as bad, but still annoying to have to wear a heavy winter coat indoors all the time. The point is, big giant spaces / warehouses are not offices and using them as such without proper comforts will make your employees hate you. If it's an open office on top of that, they'll hate you twice as much because I've never met a single person who prefers open offices for themselves.
  - theandrewbailey 10y ago
    Sometime at a previous job, the A/C failed in the server closet. Since the rest of the office was so chilly, the door was propped open, and stayed that way at least until I left. For the first time, the temperature was sometimes bearable. I wonder if that episode killed some of those geriatric servers; this was 2012 and there were several Pentium 3 Xeons running Win 2K Server in there. A while after that, building management sent around a survey. It included a table that asked 'how is the temperature in...' and various parts of the building. I put 'too cold' for everything. I bet everyone else did too, because two weeks later, they installed a thermostat in the office, and things were comfortable enough without a jacket.
post_break 10y ago
Coworker who is extremely loud on the phone. I get 0 work done when she's on the phone. She's so loud I can't hear people when I'm on the phone. We have an "open door" policy at work so if I close my door to my own office it looks weird. If I tell her she's being too loud I look like an asshole. We're moving to a new building and I'm going to be on a different floor than her and I can't wait. So many years of listening to half of a conversation is enough to make you go insane.
- dman 10y ago
  Strongly empathize.
- Xcelerate 10y ago
  As a graduate student, I was lucky to have an advisor that let me work on research from anywhere as long as I was getting stuff done. I tried to work in the office a few times, and a couple loud people made it almost impossible for me to accomplish anything. Coffee shops, despite the presence of ambient conversations, were much more effective for me. I haven't quite figured out the difference between coffee shop noise and office noise — I just know that I can tune the former out, while the latter makes it difficult to concentrate.
  - Swizec 10y ago
    > I haven't quite figured out the difference between coffee shop noise and office noise — I just know that I can tune the former out, while the latter makes it difficult to concentrate. Coffee shop noise is irrelevant, office noise might be relevant. You automatically pay attention even if you don't want to. For me, noise cancelling headphones are a necessity. Impossible to get anything done otherwise.
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      Exactly this. What finally made me buy a good set of headphones for work was a cow-orker that would regularly come to my office to talk to a colleague about some project. Nothing to do with my work, but the words he used made me involuntarily tune in to the conversation every 10 seconds, just because it sounded relevant.
pimeys 10y ago
Bought a pair of good closed back headphones after using semi-open headphones for ages. Lots of money you can pour into these, but can't complain having great sound and not able to hear the noise of my colleagues.
- xenihn 10y ago
  Which pair?
  - pimeys 10y ago
    Beyerdynamic DT-1770. But I had a good DAC and my old head amp already, so it was an obvious choice. If you're missing these, I'd go with Shure SRH-1540 for lower impedance.
Matachines 10y ago
Another thread where most commenters will advocate for remote work and/or private offices. I agree. Dan Luu recently said this about Peopleware, which advocates for offices and is highly regarded: > This book seemed convincing when I read it in college. It even had all sorts of studies backing up what they said. No deadlines is better than having deadlines. Offices are better than cubicles. Basically all devs I talk to agree with this stuff. > But virtually every successful company is run the opposite way. Even Microsoft is remodeling buildings from individual offices to open plan layouts. Could it be that all of this stuff just doesn’t matter that much? If it really is that important, how come companies that are true believers, like Fog Creek, aren’t running roughshod over their competitors? > This book agrees with my biases and I’d love for this book to be right, but the meta evidence makes me want to re-read this with a critical eye and look up primary sources. -- What's HN opinions?
- boomzilla 10y ago
  It's kind of a different software that are being developed these days. Software development used to be highly original, analytical and creative, but now it's like endlessly iterative on the same problems and tools. That explains the number of programmers/engineers around. My guess is that the highly selective group of engineers who are still working on the most original problems sit in their own office (preferably their home office, e.g. Linus). For the rest of us, it's more like a factory floor.
  - ArkyBeagle 10y ago
    In my last job, it started out with all offices to accommodate devices under test and test equipment. It went to large cubes still with enough space for test equipment. Then all the equipment had to go into the lab, with a network connection. Fine, I pressed little ARM boards into service doing what we had to do near the target. On their dime, without an approved project. They we lost that lab and had to reuse a chem. lab where you had to wear goggles for no good[1] reason. [1] they closed the building with the offices and good labs. It sat there literally mouldering. It will have to be torn down. That design of building cannot be "stored" with no HVAC. At some point it's not about cost - you're the bloody Ogallala Sioux and they're "pushing you off the land." Did I mention I don't work there any more? They are free to six-sigma the remaining nothing into the purest of management oblivion.
pklausler 10y ago
The problem with open office plans is that it takes just one noisy person to spoil it for everybody. If managed carefully and actively, they can work -- it just takes an manager willing to correct bad behavior or send sick people home. Where I work, I have a budding tupperware percussionist, three imminent victims of whooping cough, some parents managing high-maintenance offspring over cell phones, and one guy who conducts teleconferences with his desk phone. So I often sneak off to empty conference rooms with a laptop if I'm trying to concentrate.
- pasbesoin 10y ago
  It's often worse in that the noisy person hinders their coworkers, while no one hinders them -- particularly in a work culture that lauds "open" and discourages a limiting response on the part of others towards that person. Meanwhile, the quiet people are not keeping the noisy one from their work or working effectively if and when they choose to concentrate. Result? The noisy people "succeed". I consider it a cousin of bullying. And, it explains a lot about contemporary Western corporate culture -- to its detriment, in my opinion.
  - deleted 10y ago
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  - developer2 10y ago
    Right, blame the worker who has no choice but to work surrounded by another 100 people. Don't blame the business who cut corners on structural costs. Open offices don't exist because it's "better" for anyone; they exist because businesses save millions of dollars in building costs, and conveniently label it as a "cultural" thing.
    - jpindar 10y ago
      Just because we're both forced to work in the same room doesn't mean my coworkers have no choice but to force me to listen to their political rants etc. If I complained, I'd be labeled as "antisocial". That IS bullying.
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baconforce 10y ago
Caves and Commons. Have an area where people can go to work without interruption, and have a common area where people can work in an open space and collaborate. Don't anchor an individual to either space.
space99 10y ago
This thread is brought to you by Bose quiet comfort headphones. They are amazing!
- blisterpeanuts 10y ago
  I just got the QC 35 and it's truly awesome. I work from home so I don't need it as much as I did a few years ago, but it's still fantastic.
- silveira 10y ago
  Bose QC15 here. It makes miracles in noise workplaces, it works better with pitch voices (usually man's voice). It also upgrades the quality of any flight.
- ayuvar 10y ago
  Maybe Bose has bought out in-flight magazines about office design. This goes all the way to the top.
ritchiea 10y ago
I will never understand why this is such a point of contention on HN and why it isn't accepted that some people legitimately prefer open office plans while others prefer quiet. And even more practical and intelligent would be to offer different kinds of spaces so that people can choose where to work based on a particular mood. But instead we just get weekly complaints about open offices. I'm probably more productive in a quiet private office space but is the point of my work solely to be most productive in the role I have right now? I organically absorb more information about the company working in an open office. That information can have a valuable impact on my work. I end up organically sharing ideas with my co-workers more often in an open office. And in terms of long term happiness I don't want to spend every moment of every day alone coding. There's a balance to be struck.
- harveywi 10y ago
  Probably because people do not get to choose. The end result can have awful consequences for many people in various aspects of their life that should not be affected by their work environment, the most benign of which is demoralization.
  - greglindahl 10y ago
    There are plenty of people here who are the ones who make the choice for others. If you're a late hire into an established startup or company, there are many things that you don't get to choose.
  - mwfunk 10y ago
    Yep. Its also asymmetric- people who like open plans can be 100% productive in an office, but that doesn't apply the other way around. Also, IME the biggest proponents of open plans among engineers tend to be people who WANT to pester their coworkers all the time (either because they get bored and want to chat all the time, or because they have a hair trigger for asking other people for help rather than just looking stuff up in documentation).
- dasmoth 10y ago
  Has anyone tried "free choice"? My suspicion is that it won't irk brillantly because even the loudest open-plan advocates generally perceive private offices as higher-status. Also, once people are in separate offfices you do need to think about information exchange slightly more actively (a good thing IMO -- but potentially a bit of a shift for the folks who find open plan, listen-in-on-everything to work well)
neves 10y ago
One of the greatest inventions of the humanity: https://www.google.com.br/search?q=noise+reduction+ear+plugs&safe=active&biw=1087&bih=753&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&sqi=2&ved=0ahUKEwjj57_EmfnPAhUBciYKHcR2CrkQ_AUIBigB https://www.google.com.br/search?q=noise+reduction+ear+plugs... With them, you can easily turn off or on ambient noise.
- mmanfrin 10y ago
  But not distinct voices.
davidtgoldblatt 10y ago
An anecdote for those who hoped they'd find suggestions in the comments: I ended up buying some over-the-head earmuff headphones aimed at construction workers (I think with a 25dB noise reduction rating). I put in ear plugs, then the headphones, and play some light music; even relatively loud and nearby conversations drop away pretty quickly. (Ordinary "noise cancelling" headphones aren't intended to block the sound of talking, and don't work as well). The only issue is comfort; the headphones fit quite tightly. I got used to it after a few hours, and now don't mind it at all. My wife tried it, and couldn't ever adjust.
- jb55 10y ago
  With Bose Quiet Comfort + electronic music, I find it blocks out talking pretty well
- williamscales 10y ago
  Noisli — http://www.noisli.com/ http://www.noisli.com/ is a neat little site for playing ambient noise that I find works great to cut out the sound of talking when I'm using noise cancelling headphones.
- ethanbond 10y ago
  At the risk of seeming spammy since I just replied to another person on here, you should check out the Here One by Doppler Labs. I had the first version and it's incredible – albeit mostly a novelty device. They're taking preorders for the new one right now and it seems to no longer be a novelty device at all... Also since you specifically mentioned comfort, these are just little wireless earbuds that feel comfy enough that you forget you're wearing them, and then you forget how loud the world is when you take them out. https://hereplus.me https://hereplus.me My other comment for details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12800201 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12800201
  - ghaff 10y ago
    Looks interesting. I have the Bose QC-20s and they're great for traveling. They're great on planes although, as others indicate, they're better at background noise than voices. I held off on noise canceling headphones for ages because I pack pretty light and refused to bring over-the-ear headphones traveling--and then hesitated at the price. But they were really worth it. I never realized before using them how much I was cranking up the volume to compensate for the background noise even with ear canal phones that isolated relatively well.
haddr 10y ago
Couldn't agree more on the article. Recently they put next to us a group of people who is 50% of their time on the phone. While some of them try to speak low, other just yell. It is probably the most frustrating work setup I experienced in my career. It is really distracting.
- mgkimsal 10y ago
  i post the same comments every time this topic comes up, but it really bugs me. the same people making these layout/seating decisions do not subject themselves to the same setup. have 2-3 sales guys on phone calls all day long in a room with the CFO trying to get his work done - he'd go insane, or ... have extremely low productivity. why do people think everyone else is different from them?
rdiddly 10y ago
Active noise-cancelling headphones plus a white noise generator, is where it's at. These are the best headphones I've used: https://amzn.com/B00X9KV0HU https://amzn.com/B00X9KV0HU They come in Apple- or Android-compatible versions. They won't cancel everything. In general they're great with anything constant (hums/motors/fans etc.) but the more impulsive (in the physics sense) a sound wave is, the more of it seeps through. Human speech I find it damps it pretty significantly but not all the way. That's where white noise comes in. From that dampened state, a very quiet level of white noise is enough to perceptually drown out any loudmouths who have no concept of an "indoor voice." Use something like simplynoise.com or an app. For Android I like Noise Machine - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.synopsia.noisemachine https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.synopsia.n... For iPhone I believe there's an app literally called White Noise. Not affiliated with any of these people. Don't use music... that's just as distracting as someone talking. YMMV
- _raoulcousins 10y ago
  The noise cancelling is incredible on these but I wish they had a replaceable cord like the over the ear version.
- darkstar999 10y ago
  "Apple-compatible version" oh god this is really happening. What a regression!
ryandrake 10y ago
Different strokes for different folks. I'm probably the only person on HN that prefers open office workspaces. I currently have an office to myself and it's so lonely and isolating. I think I'd go crazy working all day without human interaction, so I hardly ever use it. And, no, chat isn't an adequate substitute. I'll generally charge up my laptop and go out and work in a break room or some other common area with actual human beings around--much better. If it gets noisy and I want to block out distractions headphones work just fine.
- Swizec 10y ago
  Maybe you're an extrovert? Being around people gives you energy. For us introverts it's the opposite. Being around people drains us of energy. Even if we enjoy their company and enjoy social interaction. It's tiring. There's probably no silver bullet for office design. People are different, as you say.
  - Matachines 10y ago
    There's sort of a silver bullet: Individual offices around an open area. Want to work alone? Close door. Want to work alone but be aware of things going on? Leave the door open. Can't stand working alone? Go to the open area.
    - clifanatic 10y ago
      > Can't stand working alone? Go to the open area. But the low-grade sadists that rise to positions of authority in U.S. corporations will punish the people that don't go to the open area. It's not about what you produce, it's about how much torture you're willing to self-inflict.
      - Swizec 10y ago
        > It's not about what you produce, it's about how much torture you're willing to self-inflict. Could it be about social dynamics? It's like caching. When you're thinking about whom to give an opportunity to, are you going to think of the friendly person that you see every day, or to that guy you've heard of once who's always in his office and might be a myth?
Futurebot 10y ago
I've worked in a private office, small shared-office, cube farms, open plan, and remote. What I've always thought was a good mix was: - Developers (and sometimes others that need quietude, like art/graphics people) get either a private office each or a shared, developer-only office - Marketing and sales that need constant communication / thrive on motion and energy get open plans - A mix of full-on conference rooms and small, private phone/meeting rooms - Account managers, finance, managers get their own space, which can be cubes or shared offices. Putting people who need to concentrate in with people whose job is to constantly talk and/or socialize is a recipe for (asymmetrically) poor productivity. The fact that office designs are sometimes dictated by the vicissitudes of management fads and a misguided desire to save money by just building one-size-fits-all layouts, even though a good design will pay for itself many times over, is very unfortunate.
- mgkimsal 10y ago
  And yet, most places I've seen inside, it's the opposite on those top two points. Dev/creative folks are in bullpen/open areas Marketing/sales get private offices Justification I got a couple times was the sales people need to talk numbers, and that needs to be private. Cynically, I think they don't want anyone else (like devs) overhearing the (over)promising that's done, or hear/witness some of the desperation when things are going bad. Also, was told once that having your sales guy talk on a phone in an open office will make it sound like they're in a boiler-room situation, and lose credibility. Fine - give everyone private/closed spaces, and give shared workspaces available to those who need it when they need it. Still amazes me that people will pay $100k+ for 'jr-mid' level folks in some areas, but cram them in bullpens because "cost".
  - riskneural 10y ago
    I find it very hard to make sales calls when somebody non-sales is in the room. The rejection is enough for me without adding judgment :)
    - mgkimsal 10y ago
      thanks for that extra view point, and I totally understand that angle!
cafard 10y ago
NPR is a distraction in the house....
jjp 10y ago
For an summary of all the environmental/physiological factors that affect work performance in the office take a look at Creating the Productive Workplace [1]. Research material covered include affect of temperature (high/low and variation), humidity, indoor air quality, ventilation and it's control, lighting, crowding, daylight (too much/too little), artificial light (wrong type) and noise. One of the points that comes out quite strongly is that whilst each of the environmental factors does adversely/positively impact your performance your ability to control (or lack of control) can have a greater impact. For example you will tolerate colder and warmer environments if you know that you can have some influence on the temperature . [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279190533_Creating_the_Productive_Workplace https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279190533_Creating_...
ThePhysicist 10y ago
The company I'm currently working at bought everyone some top-of-the-line Bose noise-canceling headphones for the same reason, as we have an open plan office and coworkers can be chatty sometimes. And while the noise canceling is far from being perfect, it really makes it much easier to stay focused when working. I even wear them on my commute now as they are very good at filtering out constant amplitude white noise (such as engine hums), which helps me to focus on my reading. Unfortunately I sometimes miss my stops now :D
- ethanbond 10y ago
  Not sure if you've heard of this nifty-as-hell device, but a company called Doppler Labs made Here and is now taking preorders for Here One. Essentially little wireless earbuds that take this whole noise-cancelling thing to a whole new level. I have the first ones and they're pretty remarkable, already preordered the new ones which extend well beyond simple novelty. You can turn down engine hum, but keep voices/stop announcements at full volume. The new ones apparently also let you layer in music from your phone, which was the obvious feature ommission from the first version. Allegedly the new one they're also playing with directional filtering, live language translation (?!), ML-based baby/siren/annoying coworker cancelling, and tons of other stuff. I haven't been this excited about a technology for years, as you might be able to tell :) https://hereplus.me https://hereplus.me
- mmanfrin 10y ago
  I bought some QC25s when I moved to a big open office. For me, they don't help -- what they do is they kill all the background noise, but then the individual voices still come through and they come through as the only thing I hear. I could play music, but sometimes I like the roar of silence.
  - gvurrdon 10y ago
    I'd like to buy a nice pair of headphones but that's the thing that worries me. I'm not at all bothered by the background noise (e.g. aircraft engines) but human-made noises are very distracting. There seems to be nothing that can filter them out; my current passive headphones will muffle conversation a bit when I've got white noise playing through them but throat-clearing cuts right through.
necessity 10y ago
For sure. But then again I just got a headphone.
thefastlane 10y ago
i've noticed that if coworkers tend exhibit a high level of emotion in their voices during their conversations, that's very distracting -- e.g., some people seem to just have a pattern of vocalizing stress or confusion in their tone of speech, either to each other, or on the phone etc. it took me a long time to identify exactly what was bugging me (besides it obviously being noisy), but then it dawned on me, and now i pay close attention to it -- being able to cateogrize it, and then compartmentalize it away, helps a lot i think. moving to an off-site coffee shop on occasion has made all the difference, despite being an equal or greater amount of noise. still would prefer an office, obviously.
omgherpyderp 10y ago
I'm not really sure where the issue is? I work in a noisy office. The only reason why my productivity goes down is because I'm nosy as shit and have all these opinions I want to share.
- dasmoth 10y ago
  It's hard not to be "nosy as shit" when the conversation a couple of desks over contains just enough high-relevance keywords that your subconscious keeps pinging you to say this might be important.
- kps 10y ago
  Satire doesn't go over well on HN.
broahmed 10y ago
My solution is over the ear head phones + nature sounds. I personally like: http://texashighdef.net/ http://texashighdef.net/ http://whitenoisemp3s.com/ http://whitenoisemp3s.com/ (these are for purchase, but I've found them to be of very high quality and return to them repeatedly). Your mileage may vary; some people find this stuff puts them to sleep.
pjlegato 10y ago
Open office plans are a great example of cargo cult management, second only to Agile. Despite numerous well controlled studies debunking the myths that people are somehow happier, more creative, or communicate better in open plans, we get: "Company X was very successful, and they had an open office plan; therefore, the open office plan made them successful and we should have one, too." Company X was successful despite the open plan, not because of it.
jmcdiesel 10y ago
Or we can adapt to the real world where people around us necessarily have an effect on us - and learn to live in that world? We don't need to work in libraries, we need to just adapt.
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  Just like we need to adapt to poor eyesight instead of relying on these "glasses" everyone keeps raving about. /s I find it hard to take your statement seriously
  - jmcdiesel 10y ago
    Those two things are completely non relatable. If your eyesight is bad, there are things YOU can do for YOURSELF to fix that problem, without asking anyone to change what THEY are doing. The "quiet office" is something that only some people prefer. Many of us (I'm one of them) prefer noise - music playing, background noise, etc ... I find it hard to concentrate in silence, and I know more people like me. To ask others to be silent to ask them to change how they comfortably work to suit you. Let everyone work how they work best.
    - chris_7 10y ago
      > I find it hard to concentrate in silence Great! Put on some headphones, then?
      - jmcdiesel 10y ago
        You can! They have great noise canceling headphones these days, so go ahead and put those on and let everyone else do their thing?
        chris_7 10y ago
        I don't understand how that will create silence, not just "different noise".
ar15saveslives 10y ago
It's better to work in somewhat noisy environment, where everybody can stare at your monitor, than commit suicide after two years of sitting in dark gloomy gray-walled cubicle without any natural light. I honestly can't understand people that can work in those depressing conditions.
- mwfunk 10y ago
  Different people are different. Crazy huh?
  - ar15saveslives 10y ago
    People, who can choose where to sit, never pick a cubicle.
    - jpindar 10y ago
      I would take a pay cut to be allowed to work in a cubicle. (Especially if other people would cut back on the chatter a bit, as typically happens in cube farms as opposed to open offices.)
nisse72 10y ago
I am currently working in a very crowded open office. We have small desks where we sit almost elbow to elbow, the place is all hard surfaces (it's an old industrial building made into office space), and there is a fair amount of noise. But none of this would bother me except for the fact that one senior person has decided to have speakers installed in the ceiling, and we have to listen to non-stop spotify playing top 40 or whatever, all day every day. The constant music drives me insane, it just drones on and on. I wear noise cancelling headphones with rain sounds to drown it out but I don't like wearing headphones all day and it hinders collaborating with my neighbours. I can't tell if management is clueless or simply does not give a toss. Probably both.
- digler999 10y ago
  If you don't like them, and you have no hope of using direct methods, you might be able to turn them in to either spotify or ASCAP. I think they might need a special license to play music for more than one person. It's dirty and it's snitching, but it might make your problem go away.
  - nisse72 10y ago
    I would love to do that, but even though my opinion is shared by possibly 80% of the staff here I would also be the prime suspect since I've been quite outspoken about it. In fact there's a note on the back of the amplifier telling me specifically to keep my hands off the speaker cables! (They have been unplugged on a few occasions, but not by me). My manager is sympathetic but powerless. However we're expecting some major changes soon so I am cautiously hopeful, but I'm also keeping my eyes open for other opportunities in my area. This will sort itself one way or another.
    - keithpeter 10y ago
      Suggestion: you and the rest of the 80% arrange to wear headphones all the time for one day. (No need to have any sound in the headphones) and conduct all exchanges via email/internal messaging. Sort of silent protest? Might get the message through...
m3kw9 10y ago
I find if there is a big contrast in noises, say if the office is usually quiet and a coworker starts making noises, they are more distractive than if in a constantly noisy environment and a loud coworker makes noise. I would say the contrast is a huge factor as the article seem to suggest
sampsonetics 10y ago
Let's be careful with the phrase "open office plan". Many articles lump cubicle farms together with partition-free spaces in the same category, but whenever they're treated as separate choices the research tends to show cubicle farms being worse than partition-free spaces on most dimensions, including noise distraction -- i.e. private offices > partition-free spaces > cubicle farms. Interestingly, this particular article mostly avoids this distinction but does address it in the final paragraph: "There are solutions, says Cornell's Hedge. The trend toward open offices and hard office furniture makes noise distraction worse, so adding carpet, drapes and upholstery can help. He recommends, perhaps counterintuitively, getting rid of cubicle walls, which provide the illusion of sound privacy, but actually make people less aware of the noises they create."
buckbova 10y ago
> Dooley says he found the carrot-munching funny. If you have an open office, no eating at your desk period. Show some respect for your co-workers. I worked next to an apple eater some time ago, slurping and chomping on his apple every day. Drove me insane. But every so often there was the bag of baby carrots. Which although less disturbing lasted much longer. Then there's the fish eaters and microwave popcorn eaters. Don't bring that into the office. Keep it in the lunch room, eat outside or don't bring it in!
- artificial 10y ago
  This is hilarious, I wholeheartedly agree. I cannot stand popcorn in the office, especially since the microwave is a high wattage variant and nobody watches the popcorn so it burns frequently (with the fire department making an appearance recently)
douche 10y ago
When it gets real bad, sometimes I put in my handy old industrial orange foam ear-plugs[1]. What's good for bringing the scream of a chainsaw down to a dull wail will just about block out all but the loudest conference calls completely. Although I suppose it might be a tad ruder than headphones... [1] http://www.howardleight.com/earplugs/max http://www.howardleight.com/earplugs/max
- zimpenfish 10y ago
  I use http://www.howardleight.com/earplugs/laser-lite http://www.howardleight.com/earplugs/laser-lite for sleeping and occasionally when walking through London. Good value in bulk from Amazon.
allsystemsgo 10y ago
As someone with ADD, are work places required to accommodate for my learning disability and allow me to WFH or work in a quiet place? I'm in the US.
sien 10y ago
Has anyone ever worked in an open plan office space with high, transparent partitions like these: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Fireproofing-transparent-office-partition-office-low_1938784208.html https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Fireproofing-transpar... http://stab-group.com/en/products/of%D1%96sn%D1%96-peregorodki/ http://stab-group.com/en/products/of%D1%96sn%D1%96-peregorod... It seems like you could have, say, 1.5m of solid partition and then higher transparent partitions and a few lightweight doors and sort of have a cube farm that allowed in light but blocked noise.
reality_czech 10y ago
In related news, water is wet. Unstructured space is terrible for working and terrible for collaboration.
deathanatos 10y ago
> "In general, if it's coming from another person, it's much more disturbing than when it's coming from a machine," he says Huh. My most pet peeve in the open office floorplan was always the coworkers whose phone — not on vibrate — would start ringing. They'd look at it, decide not to answer it, and proceed to just let it ring out loud until it hits voicemail. Just… why? And attempts to educate the owner on how to silence a ringer¹ just seem to go unheeded. One commenter I read once noted the concept of "cell phone time out" — a basket with a blanket for ringing phones with no owner to be found. My current office boasted "great amounts of natural light"; I have exactly zero paths to natural light from my desk. (The upshot of this is that we're in a corner that largely isolates us from the noise.) While I lean towards cubes (simply for the affordance of quiet and disease prevention), do they not mean that people in them get absolutely no natural light? (Not that I am right now myself, but it crosses my mind.) We recently lost a manweek to a cold that just ran absolutely rampant through the desks. Perhaps the sad thing is that I feel that was pretty good, and could have been much worse. (Perhaps because I seem to have dodged it myself.) Our new office came with less conference rooms and quiet areas. Less actual useable space per person. ¹And just in case you're wondering: squeezing nearly any cell phone's power/volume buttons will silence the ringer during an incoming call. It doesn't cancel the call or voicemail it: the other end is still listening to a ringtone. You can still pick up with call with the on-screen UI if you want. (At least until it truly goes to voicemail, which happens after the normal delay.) You can even do this with the phone in the pocket pretty easily, e.g., if it rings inconveniently during an important meeting.
- keithpeter 10y ago
  "One commenter I read once noted the concept of "cell phone time out" — a basket with a blanket for ringing phones with no owner to be found." Microwave oven? (Faraday cage approach)
b2600 10y ago
I understand people can be and are distractions but from my background I believe you should be able to perform your tasks regardless. While a legitimate issue, this sounds like searching for excuses. You perform in the environment you are in. Everyone else is suffering the same distractions.
rhizome 10y ago
It's funny how in the past 20 years the VC funding rounds have gotten much larger while the work environments have gotten much worse.
bigger_cheese 10y ago
I work in an open office and honestly it doesn't bother me. When I'm working on a problem intently I tend to get into a headspace where I don't notice the distractions around me. Sometimes if I'm deeply engrossed in a problem a coworker will have to repeat my name several times before I realize they are trying to get my attention. Other people in my team complain about the environment a lot. The ones that do tend to listen to music on headphones to tune out. I think a lot of it depends on your upbringing. I grew up as the oldest child in a house full of younger siblings my home environment was always very noisy so I suspect I have a higher tolerance for working/studying etc in a distraction rich environment. The benefit I see to an open office is being able to contribute to colleagues discussions several times a week I'll overhear a conversation or a colleague will be listening to mine and be able to interject. Several valuable conversations have started based around "I overheard you were working on... I had a similar problem I solved by doing... Then often a third colleague will jump in etc. If we were each in private offices this wouldn't have occurred. Edit: Related anecdote when I was at University I spent some time working as an apprentice the company wasn't expecting me to show up or there was some communication issue etc didn't have a proper desk for me when I arrived so for several weeks they shoved me into the room with all the photocopiers and this huge B0 drafting printer the Mechanical Engineers used to print technical drawings. This thing was based on old dot matrix technology used to make a hell of a lot of noise when it fired up it would scare the crap out of me every time. That obviously was distracting...
joshstrange 10y ago
I'm a little late to this discussion but I wear headphones/earbuds the entire time I'm in my office and if people are being loud I just turn up my music. I am no fan of open floor plans but at the same time they don't bother me as long as I can wear my headphones and people aren't constantly trying to get my attention vis non-chat methods (chat me and say you need to talk, saying my name or waving at me it not going to grab my attention).
shmerl 10y ago
This isn't news. That's why open offices are often so annoying. Good circumaural headphones are indispensable there.
ofcapl_ 10y ago
How many people in one room makes open space? I work with 8-10 people in one room and found a moderate distraction till I've turn my desk to the wall and I have everyone behind me.
belvoran 10y ago
I was working in an open space for a couple of years. The phones were ringing happily, including the official corporate ones, which were standing on each desk. People were talking all the time. Talking, walking, looking at my screen, of course with lots of comments to my code. 70 people in the floor. We had all the funny things for the group integration all the time. All the things except for thinking. Yes, I was sitting all the time with my headphones, shouting maximally to my ears. Until one of those people making noise told me that it is not team friendly to have so loud phones, as he hears the music, and cannot concentrate. Of course the management had their separate offices, with walls, and doors. They didn't see any problem. For the last 6 years I've been working remotely from home. Well, what a change. In 4 hours I could do more than for a week in the open space.
- icehawk219 10y ago
  Same story here. At my previous job when they rolled out the open office a bunch of us complained and the boss explained how he'd be giving up his office to work out on the floor with us. Not even joking, less than an hour after he moved his stuff out he moved it back into his office saying "it's too distracting, I can't get anything done out here". Now working from home I make more progress per day then I did on a weekly basis there.
  - Tenhundfeld 10y ago
    I agree with all of this. I worked in open offices and Agile "team rooms" for many years, and I've been working from home for the last few. There's definitely a huge increase in the amount of quality code I'm able to crank out working from home. However, I do think some intangibles are lost. They're hard, maybe impossible, to quantify. Instead, I'll just link to a post from PG that's a transcription of a speech by Richard Hamming. http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html And to save you a click, this is the paragraph that stuck with me: "Another trait, it took me a while to notice. I noticed the following facts about people who work with the door open or the door closed. I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don't know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do is sort of tangential in importance. He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important." Obviously there are ways to mitigate that, e.g., involvement in the developer community or establishing habits to replace "water cooler" chatter, but they take deliberate effort.
sauronlord 10y ago
I just quit my software development Job at 120k /year (Waterloo) I couldn't fucking stand the noise and distractions. Now I work remote, at home, on my own gigs. Never work in an "open office again"
alexellisuk 10y ago
I can relate to a lot in the article having worked in open plan for 10 years. I always get a lot more done working from home - ambient distraction level is really low. The worst thing is sick people contaminating and rowdy loud people especially when we are expected to take regular video conferences at our desks. It would be interesting given a poll who would opt for: - open plan, no separators - hot-desking - individual offices - individual offices + open areas
0x54MUR41 10y ago
Cal Newport recently is discussing about the open office. I am sure it is related to his new book, Deep Work. These following posts are explained it: - Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers? [1] - The Opposite of the Open Office [2] The previous discussion of one of that post also appears on HN. You may check it out here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12677866 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12677866. [1]: http://calnewport.com/blog/2016/10/09/is-facebooks-massive-open-office-scaring-away-developers/ http://calnewport.com/blog/2016/10/09/is-facebooks-massive-o... [2]: http://calnewport.com/blog/2016/10/19/the-opposite-of-the-open-office/ http://calnewport.com/blog/2016/10/19/the-opposite-of-the-op...
gvurrdon 10y ago
Office noise has become a bit of an issue for me recently, this being the reason: http://www.tinnitus.org.uk/hyperacusis http://www.tinnitus.org.uk/hyperacusis Although the amount of talking in the office is low and not very disturbing, and there's certainly nothing like the horror of Spotify which one commenter here mentioned, there are people at work who make noise which sounds particularly intrusive and distracting to me (e.g. sniffing, throat clearing and similar). Of course, to many others these would not seem to be much of a problem, being more like background noise, and so most don't fully appreciate how much of a nuisance it can be. A lot of it can be covered up with earphones playing white noise, nature sounds, or similar, but too much of that during the day does seem to have a deleterious effect on hearing, such as by making tinnitus louder. Wearing them also interferes with those occasions where it is useful to talk to colleagues.
agounaris 10y ago
But why? Its so much fun to place 10 sales people in an open space office and watch it burn!!
skc 10y ago
It's very strange that HN seems to sway so heavily against open offices. I genuinely think the reality is that opinions are split squarely down the middle, otherwise hacking/working in coffee shops wouldn't be a thing for example (people seek out that specific experience) It also implies that the likes of Google/Facebook aren't being as productive as they can be, which is hogwash in my opinion.
- dasboth 10y ago
  For me the difference between an open plan office and a coffee shop is direct interruptions. I can drown out the ambient noise of a coffee shop and get into flow when coding. In an office, people walk up to you/phone you/whatever which is a direct distraction "aimed" at you specifically, which is much more jarring and difficult to ignore.
- clarry 10y ago
  Are 50% of developers hacking in coffee shops? More likely the people who choose to hack in coffee shops are people who are good at shutting out distractions. Or maybe the alternative is worse, e.g. working at home with wife and kids who can't seem to fully comprehend what it means to be working. Maybe they are working on some "light" tasks that don't require deep concentration?
- knorker 10y ago
  If you've ever been to a Google/facebook office you'll know that it's mostly deserted. It works to some extent mostly because people aren't actually at their desks.
rdlecler1 10y ago
For those who might be distracted by music, I bring earplugs to work. That you also have to take them out to talk means that you're also distracting less people. They should be giving them away at the front desk. Bright orange so people know not to disturb you unless necessary.
aries1980 10y ago
What about the distractions in peripheral vision? It is easier to suppress sound than moving people and hailing or “shaking” wooden floor.

250 points by xweb 10y ago

The open office revolution needs to die. I don't like wearing headphones all day, but I also don't like hearing 30 people's conversations either. I had a (old) guy that used to sit in my area who would argue with his manager in person and argue (loudly) with everyone he was on the phone with (including his wife). He got moved a couple of months ago and there were no tears shed.

keithpeter 10y ago
Did he get moved to a smaller room? If so, you have your strategy.
- alistproducer2 10y ago
  I just got it lol. I'm slow.

wwggggoi 10y ago

honestly, that's why I'm hardly ever in the office. there's someone there who's noise profile is utterly unfilterable. they fiddle with things, drop things, fidget, cough, snort phlegm up their nose, subvocalize, and generally emit an air of restlessness. nice person though.

pavel_lishin 10y ago
Has anyone ever told them that they're noisy? I suspect that I might be such a person, and explicitly tell anyone to go ahead and let me know if I'm ever annoying. I think I'm approachable enough that they take the offer at face value, and not as a passive-aggressive "don't you dare".
- realeyes 10y ago
  This is a serious issue for me as well I've asked co workers I'm fairly close with and they say they don't notice me etc. I can't tell if they're just trying to be nice though, I think I'm a loud breather but I don't know how to prove it.
ghurtado 10y ago
> they fiddle with things, drop things, fidget, cough, snort phlegm up their nose, subvocalize, and generally emit an air of restlessness That list is entirely too familiar. Honestly, do you work in my office? Add to that: dictates constantly to their mobile phone using voice-to-text function (things like "Honey - period - I need you to pick up the kids tonight - period - Did you remember to take out the garbage - question mark - period") and has bouts of fist pounding on the desk when things don't go their way (such as when email takes more than 15 seconds to open) - and I will start looking for you here.

deleted 10y ago

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bcheung 10y ago

I'd say environmental factors such as being so freaking hot that you are sweating or so freaking cold you have to bring in a heater to counteract the AC are pretty distracting as well. And in terms of productivity, not having enough ventilation so that the air builds up CO2 makes people really tired and unproductive.

r00fus 10y ago
That last sentence struck a chord with me - I remember (during my traveling) being onsite for an "ERP implementation warehouse" for a major company with hundreds of workers and inadequate ventilation - place seemed like hell and I felt sleepy the entire time I was onsite. Glad when that week was over. Maybe I'm just sensitive, but when "life support" is off in an office (e.g. later in the day or early in the morning where HVAC is turned down), I take that as a cue to not be present. I can always work from home with VPN if needed.
joesmo 10y ago
Totally! I once quit a job because the average temperature in the office was 85F in winter (also really shitty spaghetti code)! Unfortunately, not before I got incredibly sick. When I complained, they said they could do nothing about it because other people were freezing. In the Bay Area, on the other hand, I had a job in a similar place that was always freezing, even when it was warm outside. That was actually not as bad, but still annoying to have to wear a heavy winter coat indoors all the time. The point is, big giant spaces / warehouses are not offices and using them as such without proper comforts will make your employees hate you. If it's an open office on top of that, they'll hate you twice as much because I've never met a single person who prefers open offices for themselves.
- theandrewbailey 10y ago
  Sometime at a previous job, the A/C failed in the server closet. Since the rest of the office was so chilly, the door was propped open, and stayed that way at least until I left. For the first time, the temperature was sometimes bearable. I wonder if that episode killed some of those geriatric servers; this was 2012 and there were several Pentium 3 Xeons running Win 2K Server in there. A while after that, building management sent around a survey. It included a table that asked 'how is the temperature in...' and various parts of the building. I put 'too cold' for everything. I bet everyone else did too, because two weeks later, they installed a thermostat in the office, and things were comfortable enough without a jacket.

post_break 10y ago

Coworker who is extremely loud on the phone. I get 0 work done when she's on the phone. She's so loud I can't hear people when I'm on the phone. We have an "open door" policy at work so if I close my door to my own office it looks weird. If I tell her she's being too loud I look like an asshole. We're moving to a new building and I'm going to be on a different floor than her and I can't wait. So many years of listening to half of a conversation is enough to make you go insane.

dman 10y ago
Strongly empathize.
Xcelerate 10y ago
As a graduate student, I was lucky to have an advisor that let me work on research from anywhere as long as I was getting stuff done. I tried to work in the office a few times, and a couple loud people made it almost impossible for me to accomplish anything. Coffee shops, despite the presence of ambient conversations, were much more effective for me. I haven't quite figured out the difference between coffee shop noise and office noise — I just know that I can tune the former out, while the latter makes it difficult to concentrate.
- Swizec 10y ago
  > I haven't quite figured out the difference between coffee shop noise and office noise — I just know that I can tune the former out, while the latter makes it difficult to concentrate. Coffee shop noise is irrelevant, office noise might be relevant. You automatically pay attention even if you don't want to. For me, noise cancelling headphones are a necessity. Impossible to get anything done otherwise.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    Exactly this. What finally made me buy a good set of headphones for work was a cow-orker that would regularly come to my office to talk to a colleague about some project. Nothing to do with my work, but the words he used made me involuntarily tune in to the conversation every 10 seconds, just because it sounded relevant.

pimeys 10y ago

Bought a pair of good closed back headphones after using semi-open headphones for ages. Lots of money you can pour into these, but can't complain having great sound and not able to hear the noise of my colleagues.

xenihn 10y ago
Which pair?
- pimeys 10y ago
  Beyerdynamic DT-1770. But I had a good DAC and my old head amp already, so it was an obvious choice. If you're missing these, I'd go with Shure SRH-1540 for lower impedance.

Matachines 10y ago

Another thread where most commenters will advocate for remote work and/or private offices. I agree. Dan Luu recently said this about Peopleware, which advocates for offices and is highly regarded: > This book seemed convincing when I read it in college. It even had all sorts of studies backing up what they said. No deadlines is better than having deadlines. Offices are better than cubicles. Basically all devs I talk to agree with this stuff. > But virtually every successful company is run the opposite way. Even Microsoft is remodeling buildings from individual offices to open plan layouts. Could it be that all of this stuff just doesn’t matter that much? If it really is that important, how come companies that are true believers, like Fog Creek, aren’t running roughshod over their competitors? > This book agrees with my biases and I’d love for this book to be right, but the meta evidence makes me want to re-read this with a critical eye and look up primary sources. -- What's HN opinions?

boomzilla 10y ago
It's kind of a different software that are being developed these days. Software development used to be highly original, analytical and creative, but now it's like endlessly iterative on the same problems and tools. That explains the number of programmers/engineers around. My guess is that the highly selective group of engineers who are still working on the most original problems sit in their own office (preferably their home office, e.g. Linus). For the rest of us, it's more like a factory floor.
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  In my last job, it started out with all offices to accommodate devices under test and test equipment. It went to large cubes still with enough space for test equipment. Then all the equipment had to go into the lab, with a network connection. Fine, I pressed little ARM boards into service doing what we had to do near the target. On their dime, without an approved project. They we lost that lab and had to reuse a chem. lab where you had to wear goggles for no good[1] reason. [1] they closed the building with the offices and good labs. It sat there literally mouldering. It will have to be torn down. That design of building cannot be "stored" with no HVAC. At some point it's not about cost - you're the bloody Ogallala Sioux and they're "pushing you off the land." Did I mention I don't work there any more? They are free to six-sigma the remaining nothing into the purest of management oblivion.

pklausler 10y ago

The problem with open office plans is that it takes just one noisy person to spoil it for everybody. If managed carefully and actively, they can work -- it just takes an manager willing to correct bad behavior or send sick people home. Where I work, I have a budding tupperware percussionist, three imminent victims of whooping cough, some parents managing high-maintenance offspring over cell phones, and one guy who conducts teleconferences with his desk phone. So I often sneak off to empty conference rooms with a laptop if I'm trying to concentrate.

pasbesoin 10y ago
It's often worse in that the noisy person hinders their coworkers, while no one hinders them -- particularly in a work culture that lauds "open" and discourages a limiting response on the part of others towards that person. Meanwhile, the quiet people are not keeping the noisy one from their work or working effectively if and when they choose to concentrate. Result? The noisy people "succeed". I consider it a cousin of bullying. And, it explains a lot about contemporary Western corporate culture -- to its detriment, in my opinion.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- developer2 10y ago
  Right, blame the worker who has no choice but to work surrounded by another 100 people. Don't blame the business who cut corners on structural costs. Open offices don't exist because it's "better" for anyone; they exist because businesses save millions of dollars in building costs, and conveniently label it as a "cultural" thing.
  - jpindar 10y ago
    Just because we're both forced to work in the same room doesn't mean my coworkers have no choice but to force me to listen to their political rants etc. If I complained, I'd be labeled as "antisocial". That IS bullying.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

baconforce 10y ago

Caves and Commons. Have an area where people can go to work without interruption, and have a common area where people can work in an open space and collaborate. Don't anchor an individual to either space.

space99 10y ago

This thread is brought to you by Bose quiet comfort headphones. They are amazing!

blisterpeanuts 10y ago
I just got the QC 35 and it's truly awesome. I work from home so I don't need it as much as I did a few years ago, but it's still fantastic.
silveira 10y ago
Bose QC15 here. It makes miracles in noise workplaces, it works better with pitch voices (usually man's voice). It also upgrades the quality of any flight.
ayuvar 10y ago
Maybe Bose has bought out in-flight magazines about office design. This goes all the way to the top.

ritchiea 10y ago

I will never understand why this is such a point of contention on HN and why it isn't accepted that some people legitimately prefer open office plans while others prefer quiet. And even more practical and intelligent would be to offer different kinds of spaces so that people can choose where to work based on a particular mood. But instead we just get weekly complaints about open offices. I'm probably more productive in a quiet private office space but is the point of my work solely to be most productive in the role I have right now? I organically absorb more information about the company working in an open office. That information can have a valuable impact on my work. I end up organically sharing ideas with my co-workers more often in an open office. And in terms of long term happiness I don't want to spend every moment of every day alone coding. There's a balance to be struck.

harveywi 10y ago
Probably because people do not get to choose. The end result can have awful consequences for many people in various aspects of their life that should not be affected by their work environment, the most benign of which is demoralization.
- greglindahl 10y ago
  There are plenty of people here who are the ones who make the choice for others. If you're a late hire into an established startup or company, there are many things that you don't get to choose.
- mwfunk 10y ago
  Yep. Its also asymmetric- people who like open plans can be 100% productive in an office, but that doesn't apply the other way around. Also, IME the biggest proponents of open plans among engineers tend to be people who WANT to pester their coworkers all the time (either because they get bored and want to chat all the time, or because they have a hair trigger for asking other people for help rather than just looking stuff up in documentation).
dasmoth 10y ago
Has anyone tried "free choice"? My suspicion is that it won't irk brillantly because even the loudest open-plan advocates generally perceive private offices as higher-status. Also, once people are in separate offfices you do need to think about information exchange slightly more actively (a good thing IMO -- but potentially a bit of a shift for the folks who find open plan, listen-in-on-everything to work well)

neves 10y ago

One of the greatest inventions of the humanity: https://www.google.com.br/search?q=noise+reduction+ear+plugs&safe=active&biw=1087&bih=753&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&sqi=2&ved=0ahUKEwjj57_EmfnPAhUBciYKHcR2CrkQ_AUIBigB https://www.google.com.br/search?q=noise+reduction+ear+plugs... With them, you can easily turn off or on ambient noise.

mmanfrin 10y ago
But not distinct voices.

davidtgoldblatt 10y ago

An anecdote for those who hoped they'd find suggestions in the comments: I ended up buying some over-the-head earmuff headphones aimed at construction workers (I think with a 25dB noise reduction rating). I put in ear plugs, then the headphones, and play some light music; even relatively loud and nearby conversations drop away pretty quickly. (Ordinary "noise cancelling" headphones aren't intended to block the sound of talking, and don't work as well). The only issue is comfort; the headphones fit quite tightly. I got used to it after a few hours, and now don't mind it at all. My wife tried it, and couldn't ever adjust.

jb55 10y ago
With Bose Quiet Comfort + electronic music, I find it blocks out talking pretty well
williamscales 10y ago
Noisli — http://www.noisli.com/ http://www.noisli.com/ is a neat little site for playing ambient noise that I find works great to cut out the sound of talking when I'm using noise cancelling headphones.
ethanbond 10y ago
At the risk of seeming spammy since I just replied to another person on here, you should check out the Here One by Doppler Labs. I had the first version and it's incredible – albeit mostly a novelty device. They're taking preorders for the new one right now and it seems to no longer be a novelty device at all... Also since you specifically mentioned comfort, these are just little wireless earbuds that feel comfy enough that you forget you're wearing them, and then you forget how loud the world is when you take them out. https://hereplus.me https://hereplus.me My other comment for details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12800201 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12800201
- ghaff 10y ago
  Looks interesting. I have the Bose QC-20s and they're great for traveling. They're great on planes although, as others indicate, they're better at background noise than voices. I held off on noise canceling headphones for ages because I pack pretty light and refused to bring over-the-ear headphones traveling--and then hesitated at the price. But they were really worth it. I never realized before using them how much I was cranking up the volume to compensate for the background noise even with ear canal phones that isolated relatively well.

haddr 10y ago

Couldn't agree more on the article. Recently they put next to us a group of people who is 50% of their time on the phone. While some of them try to speak low, other just yell. It is probably the most frustrating work setup I experienced in my career. It is really distracting.

mgkimsal 10y ago
i post the same comments every time this topic comes up, but it really bugs me. the same people making these layout/seating decisions do not subject themselves to the same setup. have 2-3 sales guys on phone calls all day long in a room with the CFO trying to get his work done - he'd go insane, or ... have extremely low productivity. why do people think everyone else is different from them?

rdiddly 10y ago

Active noise-cancelling headphones plus a white noise generator, is where it's at. These are the best headphones I've used: https://amzn.com/B00X9KV0HU https://amzn.com/B00X9KV0HU They come in Apple- or Android-compatible versions. They won't cancel everything. In general they're great with anything constant (hums/motors/fans etc.) but the more impulsive (in the physics sense) a sound wave is, the more of it seeps through. Human speech I find it damps it pretty significantly but not all the way. That's where white noise comes in. From that dampened state, a very quiet level of white noise is enough to perceptually drown out any loudmouths who have no concept of an "indoor voice." Use something like simplynoise.com or an app. For Android I like Noise Machine - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.synopsia.noisemachine https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.synopsia.n... For iPhone I believe there's an app literally called White Noise. Not affiliated with any of these people. Don't use music... that's just as distracting as someone talking. YMMV

_raoulcousins 10y ago
The noise cancelling is incredible on these but I wish they had a replaceable cord like the over the ear version.
darkstar999 10y ago
"Apple-compatible version" oh god this is really happening. What a regression!

ryandrake 10y ago

Different strokes for different folks. I'm probably the only person on HN that prefers open office workspaces. I currently have an office to myself and it's so lonely and isolating. I think I'd go crazy working all day without human interaction, so I hardly ever use it. And, no, chat isn't an adequate substitute. I'll generally charge up my laptop and go out and work in a break room or some other common area with actual human beings around--much better. If it gets noisy and I want to block out distractions headphones work just fine.

Swizec 10y ago
Maybe you're an extrovert? Being around people gives you energy. For us introverts it's the opposite. Being around people drains us of energy. Even if we enjoy their company and enjoy social interaction. It's tiring. There's probably no silver bullet for office design. People are different, as you say.
- Matachines 10y ago
  There's sort of a silver bullet: Individual offices around an open area. Want to work alone? Close door. Want to work alone but be aware of things going on? Leave the door open. Can't stand working alone? Go to the open area.
  - clifanatic 10y ago
    > Can't stand working alone? Go to the open area. But the low-grade sadists that rise to positions of authority in U.S. corporations will punish the people that don't go to the open area. It's not about what you produce, it's about how much torture you're willing to self-inflict.
    - Swizec 10y ago
      > It's not about what you produce, it's about how much torture you're willing to self-inflict. Could it be about social dynamics? It's like caching. When you're thinking about whom to give an opportunity to, are you going to think of the friendly person that you see every day, or to that guy you've heard of once who's always in his office and might be a myth?

Futurebot 10y ago

I've worked in a private office, small shared-office, cube farms, open plan, and remote. What I've always thought was a good mix was: - Developers (and sometimes others that need quietude, like art/graphics people) get either a private office each or a shared, developer-only office - Marketing and sales that need constant communication / thrive on motion and energy get open plans - A mix of full-on conference rooms and small, private phone/meeting rooms - Account managers, finance, managers get their own space, which can be cubes or shared offices. Putting people who need to concentrate in with people whose job is to constantly talk and/or socialize is a recipe for (asymmetrically) poor productivity. The fact that office designs are sometimes dictated by the vicissitudes of management fads and a misguided desire to save money by just building one-size-fits-all layouts, even though a good design will pay for itself many times over, is very unfortunate.

mgkimsal 10y ago
And yet, most places I've seen inside, it's the opposite on those top two points. Dev/creative folks are in bullpen/open areas Marketing/sales get private offices Justification I got a couple times was the sales people need to talk numbers, and that needs to be private. Cynically, I think they don't want anyone else (like devs) overhearing the (over)promising that's done, or hear/witness some of the desperation when things are going bad. Also, was told once that having your sales guy talk on a phone in an open office will make it sound like they're in a boiler-room situation, and lose credibility. Fine - give everyone private/closed spaces, and give shared workspaces available to those who need it when they need it. Still amazes me that people will pay $100k+ for 'jr-mid' level folks in some areas, but cram them in bullpens because "cost".
- riskneural 10y ago
  I find it very hard to make sales calls when somebody non-sales is in the room. The rejection is enough for me without adding judgment :)
  - mgkimsal 10y ago
    thanks for that extra view point, and I totally understand that angle!

cafard 10y ago

NPR is a distraction in the house....

jjp 10y ago

For an summary of all the environmental/physiological factors that affect work performance in the office take a look at Creating the Productive Workplace [1]. Research material covered include affect of temperature (high/low and variation), humidity, indoor air quality, ventilation and it's control, lighting, crowding, daylight (too much/too little), artificial light (wrong type) and noise. One of the points that comes out quite strongly is that whilst each of the environmental factors does adversely/positively impact your performance your ability to control (or lack of control) can have a greater impact. For example you will tolerate colder and warmer environments if you know that you can have some influence on the temperature . [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279190533_Creating_the_Productive_Workplace https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279190533_Creating_...

ThePhysicist 10y ago

The company I'm currently working at bought everyone some top-of-the-line Bose noise-canceling headphones for the same reason, as we have an open plan office and coworkers can be chatty sometimes. And while the noise canceling is far from being perfect, it really makes it much easier to stay focused when working. I even wear them on my commute now as they are very good at filtering out constant amplitude white noise (such as engine hums), which helps me to focus on my reading. Unfortunately I sometimes miss my stops now :D

ethanbond 10y ago
Not sure if you've heard of this nifty-as-hell device, but a company called Doppler Labs made Here and is now taking preorders for Here One. Essentially little wireless earbuds that take this whole noise-cancelling thing to a whole new level. I have the first ones and they're pretty remarkable, already preordered the new ones which extend well beyond simple novelty. You can turn down engine hum, but keep voices/stop announcements at full volume. The new ones apparently also let you layer in music from your phone, which was the obvious feature ommission from the first version. Allegedly the new one they're also playing with directional filtering, live language translation (?!), ML-based baby/siren/annoying coworker cancelling, and tons of other stuff. I haven't been this excited about a technology for years, as you might be able to tell :) https://hereplus.me https://hereplus.me
mmanfrin 10y ago
I bought some QC25s when I moved to a big open office. For me, they don't help -- what they do is they kill all the background noise, but then the individual voices still come through and they come through as the only thing I hear. I could play music, but sometimes I like the roar of silence.
- gvurrdon 10y ago
  I'd like to buy a nice pair of headphones but that's the thing that worries me. I'm not at all bothered by the background noise (e.g. aircraft engines) but human-made noises are very distracting. There seems to be nothing that can filter them out; my current passive headphones will muffle conversation a bit when I've got white noise playing through them but throat-clearing cuts right through.

necessity 10y ago

For sure. But then again I just got a headphone.

thefastlane 10y ago

i've noticed that if coworkers tend exhibit a high level of emotion in their voices during their conversations, that's very distracting -- e.g., some people seem to just have a pattern of vocalizing stress or confusion in their tone of speech, either to each other, or on the phone etc. it took me a long time to identify exactly what was bugging me (besides it obviously being noisy), but then it dawned on me, and now i pay close attention to it -- being able to cateogrize it, and then compartmentalize it away, helps a lot i think. moving to an off-site coffee shop on occasion has made all the difference, despite being an equal or greater amount of noise. still would prefer an office, obviously.

omgherpyderp 10y ago

I'm not really sure where the issue is? I work in a noisy office. The only reason why my productivity goes down is because I'm nosy as shit and have all these opinions I want to share.

dasmoth 10y ago
It's hard not to be "nosy as shit" when the conversation a couple of desks over contains just enough high-relevance keywords that your subconscious keeps pinging you to say this might be important.
kps 10y ago
Satire doesn't go over well on HN.

broahmed 10y ago

My solution is over the ear head phones + nature sounds. I personally like: http://texashighdef.net/ http://texashighdef.net/ http://whitenoisemp3s.com/ http://whitenoisemp3s.com/ (these are for purchase, but I've found them to be of very high quality and return to them repeatedly). Your mileage may vary; some people find this stuff puts them to sleep.

pjlegato 10y ago

Open office plans are a great example of cargo cult management, second only to Agile. Despite numerous well controlled studies debunking the myths that people are somehow happier, more creative, or communicate better in open plans, we get: "Company X was very successful, and they had an open office plan; therefore, the open office plan made them successful and we should have one, too." Company X was successful despite the open plan, not because of it.

jmcdiesel 10y ago

Or we can adapt to the real world where people around us necessarily have an effect on us - and learn to live in that world? We don't need to work in libraries, we need to just adapt.

CaptSpify 10y ago
Just like we need to adapt to poor eyesight instead of relying on these "glasses" everyone keeps raving about. /s I find it hard to take your statement seriously
- jmcdiesel 10y ago
  Those two things are completely non relatable. If your eyesight is bad, there are things YOU can do for YOURSELF to fix that problem, without asking anyone to change what THEY are doing. The "quiet office" is something that only some people prefer. Many of us (I'm one of them) prefer noise - music playing, background noise, etc ... I find it hard to concentrate in silence, and I know more people like me. To ask others to be silent to ask them to change how they comfortably work to suit you. Let everyone work how they work best.
  - chris_7 10y ago
    > I find it hard to concentrate in silence Great! Put on some headphones, then?
    - jmcdiesel 10y ago
      You can! They have great noise canceling headphones these days, so go ahead and put those on and let everyone else do their thing?
      - chris_7 10y ago
        I don't understand how that will create silence, not just "different noise".

ar15saveslives 10y ago

It's better to work in somewhat noisy environment, where everybody can stare at your monitor, than commit suicide after two years of sitting in dark gloomy gray-walled cubicle without any natural light. I honestly can't understand people that can work in those depressing conditions.

mwfunk 10y ago
Different people are different. Crazy huh?
- ar15saveslives 10y ago
  People, who can choose where to sit, never pick a cubicle.
  - jpindar 10y ago
    I would take a pay cut to be allowed to work in a cubicle. (Especially if other people would cut back on the chatter a bit, as typically happens in cube farms as opposed to open offices.)

nisse72 10y ago

I am currently working in a very crowded open office. We have small desks where we sit almost elbow to elbow, the place is all hard surfaces (it's an old industrial building made into office space), and there is a fair amount of noise. But none of this would bother me except for the fact that one senior person has decided to have speakers installed in the ceiling, and we have to listen to non-stop spotify playing top 40 or whatever, all day every day. The constant music drives me insane, it just drones on and on. I wear noise cancelling headphones with rain sounds to drown it out but I don't like wearing headphones all day and it hinders collaborating with my neighbours. I can't tell if management is clueless or simply does not give a toss. Probably both.

digler999 10y ago
If you don't like them, and you have no hope of using direct methods, you might be able to turn them in to either spotify or ASCAP. I think they might need a special license to play music for more than one person. It's dirty and it's snitching, but it might make your problem go away.
- nisse72 10y ago
  I would love to do that, but even though my opinion is shared by possibly 80% of the staff here I would also be the prime suspect since I've been quite outspoken about it. In fact there's a note on the back of the amplifier telling me specifically to keep my hands off the speaker cables! (They have been unplugged on a few occasions, but not by me). My manager is sympathetic but powerless. However we're expecting some major changes soon so I am cautiously hopeful, but I'm also keeping my eyes open for other opportunities in my area. This will sort itself one way or another.
  - keithpeter 10y ago
    Suggestion: you and the rest of the 80% arrange to wear headphones all the time for one day. (No need to have any sound in the headphones) and conduct all exchanges via email/internal messaging. Sort of silent protest? Might get the message through...

m3kw9 10y ago

I find if there is a big contrast in noises, say if the office is usually quiet and a coworker starts making noises, they are more distractive than if in a constantly noisy environment and a loud coworker makes noise. I would say the contrast is a huge factor as the article seem to suggest

sampsonetics 10y ago

Let's be careful with the phrase "open office plan". Many articles lump cubicle farms together with partition-free spaces in the same category, but whenever they're treated as separate choices the research tends to show cubicle farms being worse than partition-free spaces on most dimensions, including noise distraction -- i.e. private offices > partition-free spaces > cubicle farms. Interestingly, this particular article mostly avoids this distinction but does address it in the final paragraph: "There are solutions, says Cornell's Hedge. The trend toward open offices and hard office furniture makes noise distraction worse, so adding carpet, drapes and upholstery can help. He recommends, perhaps counterintuitively, getting rid of cubicle walls, which provide the illusion of sound privacy, but actually make people less aware of the noises they create."

buckbova 10y ago

> Dooley says he found the carrot-munching funny. If you have an open office, no eating at your desk period. Show some respect for your co-workers. I worked next to an apple eater some time ago, slurping and chomping on his apple every day. Drove me insane. But every so often there was the bag of baby carrots. Which although less disturbing lasted much longer. Then there's the fish eaters and microwave popcorn eaters. Don't bring that into the office. Keep it in the lunch room, eat outside or don't bring it in!

artificial 10y ago
This is hilarious, I wholeheartedly agree. I cannot stand popcorn in the office, especially since the microwave is a high wattage variant and nobody watches the popcorn so it burns frequently (with the fire department making an appearance recently)

douche 10y ago

When it gets real bad, sometimes I put in my handy old industrial orange foam ear-plugs[1]. What's good for bringing the scream of a chainsaw down to a dull wail will just about block out all but the loudest conference calls completely. Although I suppose it might be a tad ruder than headphones... [1] http://www.howardleight.com/earplugs/max http://www.howardleight.com/earplugs/max

zimpenfish 10y ago
I use http://www.howardleight.com/earplugs/laser-lite http://www.howardleight.com/earplugs/laser-lite for sleeping and occasionally when walking through London. Good value in bulk from Amazon.

allsystemsgo 10y ago

As someone with ADD, are work places required to accommodate for my learning disability and allow me to WFH or work in a quiet place? I'm in the US.

sien 10y ago

Has anyone ever worked in an open plan office space with high, transparent partitions like these: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Fireproofing-transparent-office-partition-office-low_1938784208.html https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Fireproofing-transpar... http://stab-group.com/en/products/of%D1%96sn%D1%96-peregorodki/ http://stab-group.com/en/products/of%D1%96sn%D1%96-peregorod... It seems like you could have, say, 1.5m of solid partition and then higher transparent partitions and a few lightweight doors and sort of have a cube farm that allowed in light but blocked noise.

reality_czech 10y ago

In related news, water is wet. Unstructured space is terrible for working and terrible for collaboration.

deathanatos 10y ago

> "In general, if it's coming from another person, it's much more disturbing than when it's coming from a machine," he says Huh. My most pet peeve in the open office floorplan was always the coworkers whose phone — not on vibrate — would start ringing. They'd look at it, decide not to answer it, and proceed to just let it ring out loud until it hits voicemail. Just… why? And attempts to educate the owner on how to silence a ringer¹ just seem to go unheeded. One commenter I read once noted the concept of "cell phone time out" — a basket with a blanket for ringing phones with no owner to be found. My current office boasted "great amounts of natural light"; I have exactly zero paths to natural light from my desk. (The upshot of this is that we're in a corner that largely isolates us from the noise.) While I lean towards cubes (simply for the affordance of quiet and disease prevention), do they not mean that people in them get absolutely no natural light? (Not that I am right now myself, but it crosses my mind.) We recently lost a manweek to a cold that just ran absolutely rampant through the desks. Perhaps the sad thing is that I feel that was pretty good, and could have been much worse. (Perhaps because I seem to have dodged it myself.) Our new office came with less conference rooms and quiet areas. Less actual useable space per person. ¹And just in case you're wondering: squeezing nearly any cell phone's power/volume buttons will silence the ringer during an incoming call. It doesn't cancel the call or voicemail it: the other end is still listening to a ringtone. You can still pick up with call with the on-screen UI if you want. (At least until it truly goes to voicemail, which happens after the normal delay.) You can even do this with the phone in the pocket pretty easily, e.g., if it rings inconveniently during an important meeting.

keithpeter 10y ago
"One commenter I read once noted the concept of "cell phone time out" — a basket with a blanket for ringing phones with no owner to be found." Microwave oven? (Faraday cage approach)

b2600 10y ago

I understand people can be and are distractions but from my background I believe you should be able to perform your tasks regardless. While a legitimate issue, this sounds like searching for excuses. You perform in the environment you are in. Everyone else is suffering the same distractions.

rhizome 10y ago

It's funny how in the past 20 years the VC funding rounds have gotten much larger while the work environments have gotten much worse.

bigger_cheese 10y ago

I work in an open office and honestly it doesn't bother me. When I'm working on a problem intently I tend to get into a headspace where I don't notice the distractions around me. Sometimes if I'm deeply engrossed in a problem a coworker will have to repeat my name several times before I realize they are trying to get my attention. Other people in my team complain about the environment a lot. The ones that do tend to listen to music on headphones to tune out. I think a lot of it depends on your upbringing. I grew up as the oldest child in a house full of younger siblings my home environment was always very noisy so I suspect I have a higher tolerance for working/studying etc in a distraction rich environment. The benefit I see to an open office is being able to contribute to colleagues discussions several times a week I'll overhear a conversation or a colleague will be listening to mine and be able to interject. Several valuable conversations have started based around "I overheard you were working on... I had a similar problem I solved by doing... Then often a third colleague will jump in etc. If we were each in private offices this wouldn't have occurred. Edit: Related anecdote when I was at University I spent some time working as an apprentice the company wasn't expecting me to show up or there was some communication issue etc didn't have a proper desk for me when I arrived so for several weeks they shoved me into the room with all the photocopiers and this huge B0 drafting printer the Mechanical Engineers used to print technical drawings. This thing was based on old dot matrix technology used to make a hell of a lot of noise when it fired up it would scare the crap out of me every time. That obviously was distracting...

joshstrange 10y ago

I'm a little late to this discussion but I wear headphones/earbuds the entire time I'm in my office and if people are being loud I just turn up my music. I am no fan of open floor plans but at the same time they don't bother me as long as I can wear my headphones and people aren't constantly trying to get my attention vis non-chat methods (chat me and say you need to talk, saying my name or waving at me it not going to grab my attention).

shmerl 10y ago

This isn't news. That's why open offices are often so annoying. Good circumaural headphones are indispensable there.

ofcapl_ 10y ago

How many people in one room makes open space? I work with 8-10 people in one room and found a moderate distraction till I've turn my desk to the wall and I have everyone behind me.

belvoran 10y ago

I was working in an open space for a couple of years. The phones were ringing happily, including the official corporate ones, which were standing on each desk. People were talking all the time. Talking, walking, looking at my screen, of course with lots of comments to my code. 70 people in the floor. We had all the funny things for the group integration all the time. All the things except for thinking. Yes, I was sitting all the time with my headphones, shouting maximally to my ears. Until one of those people making noise told me that it is not team friendly to have so loud phones, as he hears the music, and cannot concentrate. Of course the management had their separate offices, with walls, and doors. They didn't see any problem. For the last 6 years I've been working remotely from home. Well, what a change. In 4 hours I could do more than for a week in the open space.

icehawk219 10y ago
Same story here. At my previous job when they rolled out the open office a bunch of us complained and the boss explained how he'd be giving up his office to work out on the floor with us. Not even joking, less than an hour after he moved his stuff out he moved it back into his office saying "it's too distracting, I can't get anything done out here". Now working from home I make more progress per day then I did on a weekly basis there.
- Tenhundfeld 10y ago
  I agree with all of this. I worked in open offices and Agile "team rooms" for many years, and I've been working from home for the last few. There's definitely a huge increase in the amount of quality code I'm able to crank out working from home. However, I do think some intangibles are lost. They're hard, maybe impossible, to quantify. Instead, I'll just link to a post from PG that's a transcription of a speech by Richard Hamming. http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html And to save you a click, this is the paragraph that stuck with me: "Another trait, it took me a while to notice. I noticed the following facts about people who work with the door open or the door closed. I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don't know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do is sort of tangential in importance. He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important." Obviously there are ways to mitigate that, e.g., involvement in the developer community or establishing habits to replace "water cooler" chatter, but they take deliberate effort.

sauronlord 10y ago

I just quit my software development Job at 120k /year (Waterloo) I couldn't fucking stand the noise and distractions. Now I work remote, at home, on my own gigs. Never work in an "open office again"

alexellisuk 10y ago

I can relate to a lot in the article having worked in open plan for 10 years. I always get a lot more done working from home - ambient distraction level is really low. The worst thing is sick people contaminating and rowdy loud people especially when we are expected to take regular video conferences at our desks. It would be interesting given a poll who would opt for: - open plan, no separators - hot-desking - individual offices - individual offices + open areas

0x54MUR41 10y ago

Cal Newport recently is discussing about the open office. I am sure it is related to his new book, Deep Work. These following posts are explained it: - Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers? [1] - The Opposite of the Open Office [2] The previous discussion of one of that post also appears on HN. You may check it out here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12677866 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12677866. [1]: http://calnewport.com/blog/2016/10/09/is-facebooks-massive-open-office-scaring-away-developers/ http://calnewport.com/blog/2016/10/09/is-facebooks-massive-o... [2]: http://calnewport.com/blog/2016/10/19/the-opposite-of-the-open-office/ http://calnewport.com/blog/2016/10/19/the-opposite-of-the-op...

gvurrdon 10y ago

Office noise has become a bit of an issue for me recently, this being the reason: http://www.tinnitus.org.uk/hyperacusis http://www.tinnitus.org.uk/hyperacusis Although the amount of talking in the office is low and not very disturbing, and there's certainly nothing like the horror of Spotify which one commenter here mentioned, there are people at work who make noise which sounds particularly intrusive and distracting to me (e.g. sniffing, throat clearing and similar). Of course, to many others these would not seem to be much of a problem, being more like background noise, and so most don't fully appreciate how much of a nuisance it can be. A lot of it can be covered up with earphones playing white noise, nature sounds, or similar, but too much of that during the day does seem to have a deleterious effect on hearing, such as by making tinnitus louder. Wearing them also interferes with those occasions where it is useful to talk to colleagues.

agounaris 10y ago

But why? Its so much fun to place 10 sales people in an open space office and watch it burn!!

skc 10y ago

It's very strange that HN seems to sway so heavily against open offices. I genuinely think the reality is that opinions are split squarely down the middle, otherwise hacking/working in coffee shops wouldn't be a thing for example (people seek out that specific experience) It also implies that the likes of Google/Facebook aren't being as productive as they can be, which is hogwash in my opinion.

dasboth 10y ago
For me the difference between an open plan office and a coffee shop is direct interruptions. I can drown out the ambient noise of a coffee shop and get into flow when coding. In an office, people walk up to you/phone you/whatever which is a direct distraction "aimed" at you specifically, which is much more jarring and difficult to ignore.
clarry 10y ago
Are 50% of developers hacking in coffee shops? More likely the people who choose to hack in coffee shops are people who are good at shutting out distractions. Or maybe the alternative is worse, e.g. working at home with wife and kids who can't seem to fully comprehend what it means to be working. Maybe they are working on some "light" tasks that don't require deep concentration?
knorker 10y ago
If you've ever been to a Google/facebook office you'll know that it's mostly deserted. It works to some extent mostly because people aren't actually at their desks.

rdlecler1 10y ago

For those who might be distracted by music, I bring earplugs to work. That you also have to take them out to talk means that you're also distracting less people. They should be giving them away at the front desk. Bright orange so people know not to disturb you unless necessary.

aries1980 10y ago

What about the distractions in peripheral vision? It is easier to suppress sound than moving people and hailing or “shaking” wooden floor.