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Oh for fuck's sakes. I wear headphones 90% of my day WITH NOTHING PLAYING IN THEM. We need to stop treating developers like precious children. You do not need

Oh for fuck's sakes. I wear headphones 90% of my day WITH NOTHING PLAYING IN THEM. We need to stop treating developers like precious children. You do not need ABSOLUTE SILENCE to be able to do your work. 99% of us are not writing the next PageRank or inventing the next Djkstra's Algorithm. And even when we are 99% of the time is spent on build environments and configuration and plumbing. This does not require absolute uninterrupted focus surrounded by silence. Making a mistake does not cause a bomb to go off or a plane to fall out of the sky. Put on a pair of comfortable headphones and do not plug them into anything and 75% of the noise around you is gone. Turn on some white noise or some gentle ambient music of dozens of lyrics-free genres and it goes up to 95%. If the only way you can work is if you can't hear any other noise outside of your own head, you have failed as a human being because no other profession requires that.

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
It would appear that empathy is not your strong point. No, most people don't need to work in an anechoic chamber. But any distracting noise adds to cognitive load, and since you're being paid to use your cognitive abilities, productivity suffers. If you're paying people to do something and then making it harder for them to do it, the problem is not with the people.
- deanCommie 11y ago
  Everything is a tradeoff. Cognitive load decreases productivity. Open communication and easy collaboration increases it. The argument is that it makes up for it. The current popular opinion on HN is it doesn't. I'm sorry I don't have empathy for bullshit rare disorders like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misophonia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misophonia
  - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
    Rationally, it doesn't matter whether you have empathy or not. But you need to demonstrate rational understanding of the issues, and I don't think you've done that here. There's a lot of evidence that open offices destroy productivity, and almost no evidence that they increase it. So whatever your reasoning hiring people, paying them a lot of money, and then making it harder for them to do their jobs is an irrational position.

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago

It would appear that empathy is not your strong point. No, most people don't need to work in an anechoic chamber. But any distracting noise adds to cognitive load, and since you're being paid to use your cognitive abilities, productivity suffers. If you're paying people to do something and then making it harder for them to do it, the problem is not with the people.

deanCommie 11y ago
Everything is a tradeoff. Cognitive load decreases productivity. Open communication and easy collaboration increases it. The argument is that it makes up for it. The current popular opinion on HN is it doesn't. I'm sorry I don't have empathy for bullshit rare disorders like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misophonia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misophonia
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  Rationally, it doesn't matter whether you have empathy or not. But you need to demonstrate rational understanding of the issues, and I don't think you've done that here. There's a lot of evidence that open offices destroy productivity, and almost no evidence that they increase it. So whatever your reasoning hiring people, paying them a lot of money, and then making it harder for them to do their jobs is an irrational position.