7 ms·
The mechanical keyboard people in open offices bother me.
by ronnier 9y ago
The mechanical keyboard people in open offices bother me.
- jcadam 9y agoThe problem is the open office, not the mechanical keyboards (which are awesome, btw).
- cdegroot 9y agoI'm a nice guy, I paid the extra $$ for silent mechanical keys (http://matias.ca/switches/quiet/ http://matias.ca/switches/quiet/) ;-)
- busterarm 9y agoYeah, but then you have to have those terrible, bastard ALPS switches. Sorry, strong personal preference here. I use Topre anyway.
- mark-r 9y agoThe switches are their own, they only use ALPS for the keytops. Unless they contract out to ALPS for manufacturing and I missed it.
- busterarm 9y agoSorry, you're absolutely correct. Still, pain in the arse to get decent keysets for and I've always found the ALPS design to be 'wobbly'. Something about them is extremely uncomfortable to me.
- mark-r 9y agoThank you! I've been looking for a keyboard like that for years, ever since I had to get rid of my old Zeos mechanical to keep my wife from going insane in our shared office space. The Quiet Pro PC looks absolutely perfect.
- throwanem 9y agoThe noise is from bottoming out. Put spacers on the keycap stems, and it stops being a problem, no matter what kind of switch you use. This is easy to do and only a little time-consuming. It's easier and faster when you take a cheap Bic pen, pull out the tip and ink tube, and use the body tube to press the spacers down on the stems - it's just the right diameter, and makes the job much faster. The spacers are cheap, too, being simple silicone rubber O-rings, and as an extra benefit, the rubber eats up a lot of the bottoming-out force that'd otherwise be transmitted up the key into your fingers, which means you type more comfortably as well as more quietly.
- abritinthebay 9y agoOr people could just type with less force? I'm not sure where the cultural norm of beating up a keyboard comes from but it's a very inefficient way to type.
- throwanem 9y agoBeats me, but if it comes down to a choice between reengineering people's behavior or reengineering their tools so they can do the same thing they've always done but not get such a poor result, I know which one I've seen to work and which one I haven't.
- cr0sh 9y ago> The noise is from bottoming out. Not with my Model M! /buckling springs ftw...
- throwanem 9y agoI remember my Model Ms with fond nostalgia. I have no desire whatsoever to give up my MX Blues and return to them.
- nilkn 9y agoIn my opinion, if you know you're going to be working in an open office setting, you should try to be courteous and minimize the negative impact you have on your coworkers. I think you should be willing to make the choice to use a quieter keyboard that isn't necessarily your favorite. So I'd say the problem is with both. The open office is the ultimate source of the issue, but it can be compounded by workers who make choices that exacerbate the situation. The reality is that an open office can be quite pleasant if the people working in it collectively make effective choices that take into account the well-being of the group.
- strictnein 9y agoAgreed. I have a mechanical keyboard at home (Corsair Gaming K95 RGB), but at work I use a Mac wired keyboard (on a PC). Super quiet and probably the best performing scissor switch keyboard. edit: proper Mac keyboard type
- kentt 9y agoI'm guessing you mean scissor switch not membrane.
- strictnein 9y agoAhh, yes, you're correct.
- arkitaip 9y agoHey, I have the same keyboard! Do you actually use all the extra G keys or macros? I thought I would but the cognitive load of memorizing what each G key stands for is too much.
- strictnein 9y agoI've tried to, but I'm in the same boat as you I think.
- maxxxxx 9y agoI recently got one and I admit it's really loud. But this shouldn't be an issue in a decent workplace. I have several guys near me who have loud voices and talk a lot. That's worse than a loud keyboard. Open office plans are the problem, not keyboards or loud people.
- softawre 9y agoThis is true. But, if you're in an open office, don't you think the decent thing to do is to not speak loudly (and therefore not use a loud mechanical keyboard)? There are mech keyboards with more quiet switches. At least use one of those.
- maxxxxx 9y agoSure. It's good to be courteous. But in the end it comes down to the fact that open offices are just plain stupid. I don't know what the motivation behind them is but it's certainly not to make a productive workplace.
- Declanomous 9y agoPretty much every mechanical keyboard will be loud. I use a board with Cherry Red switches at work, and while it's much quieter than my board with Cherry Blue switches that I use at home, it is still louder than the rubber dome keyboard it replaced. It doesn't bother my coworkers, but I also have an actual cube, so there's at least a little bit of fabric-covered foam inbetween us.
- nsxwolf 9y agoIf someone is complaining about Cherry Reds, I think they're asking for too much. Perhaps they should look for work in the library sciences.
- _jal 9y agoHeh. I had a former cow-orker who hated by Topre board. I told him if he'd (a) keep his computer volume off and (b) not hold impromptu, non-work meetings as his desk at bar-volumes, I'd try to use a crappy board for him. He was offended. I kept my board. Again, the root problem is the veal-fattening pens.
- Arizhel 9y agoMechanical keyboards are better for RSI and general comfort. If you don't like them, complain to your manager that you need walled offices.
- NTripleOne 9y agoAlso be careful not to point out that "keyboard noise" is the crux of the issue, since then you'll end up with those employees being told they can't use their nice keyboards that they probably paid a lot for just to use at work, which will result in said employees really, really not liking you if they find out it was you that complained.
- Arizhel 9y agoExactly. That's a great way to poison a relationship with a coworker.
- martinknafve 9y agoAny source for the statement on RSI? I googled but just found anecdotes.
- Arizhel 9y agoAnecdotes are the best you're going to get on that. Who's going to fund a serious scientific study on the effects of mechanical keyboards on RSI? The mechanical keyboard makers comprise a very small, niche industry these days. The anecdotes are correct: with a proper mechanical keyboard, you don't have to bottom out on the keys, and only have to press enough to make them click. Once you retrain yourself to do that, then you're putting a lot less stress on your fingers, compared to rubber-dome keyboards where you're forced to mash the keys down until they bottom out.
- varelse 9y agoSo you would prefer your coworkers develop RSI symptoms from straining to use a laptop keyboard? Not all of us can use laptops for extended periods of time. Now if I could type with my brain (and I don't mean by smashing my head repeatedly on the keyboard), that's Sam Altman status quo shattering next-level stuff, but I don't think we're there yet. As others have replied, the problem isn't my typing, it's <40 square feet of personal space and no noise partitioning whatsoever.
- amorphid 9y agoAnything noisy in an open office, including me when forget to lower my voice, is bothersome :)
- blhack 9y agoThe standard keyboard layout, which every mechanical keyboard I've ever seen (including my beloved model M) is terrible for your wrists. The people using mechanical keyboards are not saving themselves anything. Get a proper ergonomic keyboard like the microsoft sculpt if you actually care about the health of you hands. Mechanical keyboards are cool, which is why I own one, and when I had an office why I used one every day. But mechanical keyboards are like the loud exhaust that people put on their cars. Yeah, there is a reason that some cars have loud exhausts, but that isn't why you put that on your honda civic.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago> The standard keyboard layout, which every mechanical keyboard I've ever seen (including my beloved model M) is terrible for your wrists. If you type a lot over a prolonged period of time, yes. If you type in short bursts (like most programmers), no, mechanicals are actually useful. > Get a proper ergonomic keyboard like the microsoft sculpt if you actually care about the health of you hands. Again, if you are an old fashioned typist working on memos, this advice holds, otherwise....
- blhack 9y ago>If you type a lot over a prolonged period of time, yes. If you type in short bursts (like most programmers), no, mechanicals are actually useful. Is this really how most programmers work, though? When I'm learning a new language or tool, sure, but after that it's mostly just the activity of writing the code.
- d883kd8 9y agoThey are like Accelerationists, bringing about the end of an undesirable system by increasing the damage it causes until it cannot be ignored.
- _jal 9y agoDrifting rather off-topic here, but why credit the "heighten the contradictions" strategy to a weird modern academic cult? Rebranding Leninist ideas about sabotage, I guess, makes it seem fresh to the rubes. Never mind that attempting to time social and political systems doesn't work much better than timing the market, and if you get it wrong, you're just being a horrible person. (Assuming your underlying goals are good ones to begin with.)
- abritinthebay 9y agoBecause it's a cute one word term?
- mahyarm 9y agoI've seen the concept mentioned in writing from the 1800s, and you can probably see it even further back. I don't know if it's that modern ;)
- bitexploder 9y agoI have never suffered the tyranny of an open office. I do use a loud keyboard and honestly can't imagine going without it. I am easily distracted by sensory stimuli. It ruins my concentration. At home I have some nice in ear noise isolating ear buds and some of those ear muffs designed for yard work. My children can, and do, reenact world wars on the hard woods above me and I can't hear it. If I ever were in an open office, when I do deep work, those things would stay on. So I sympathize, but the open office puts knowledge workers who need to concentrate and type in a lose / lose environment.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoThis is why I gave up my old IBM Model M for a quieter DAS Model S. I don't really want to type on cheaper mushy keyboards, so this is a nice compromise.
- djsumdog 9y agoI have had mechanical keyboards four different offices (1 cube, 3 open workspaces) and got very lucky with people either not minding or, at one company, a co-worker saying "that's music to my hears." I've had a friend on the wrong floor at one company who had to switch to MX Browns with o-ring dampeners. If a company banned me from using a mech keyboard entirely, I'd start looking for another job.
- bitmapbrother 9y agoIf you're going to use a mechanical keyboard in an open office have the courtesy to at least install dampeners.
- Jach 9y ago"Hey everyone, I'm working!" Personally I'd rather listen to mechanical keyboards rather than people having meetings at their desks, I can fairly easily tune out non-human sounds... Unfortunately not many people seem to have them despite my office being the 'geekiest' in the Seattle region. sigh