Open plan worked for me when there was a very clear contract between every stakeholder.
Firstly, everyone had free, good quality, sound blocking headphones. Not just free as in standard equipment on your first day free. There were buckets of the things lying around and if you needed a new set you just grabbed some, no questions asked. VC funded opulence, yay!
Secondly, there was an understanding amongst everyone on the shop floor that “headphones on” meant do not disturb, just as much as a closed office door. Violations were not tolerated but it was a social norm thing not an HR write up thing. Maybe people were getting the latter behind the scenes though?
In return you end up with an office architecture that’s considerably easier to manage at the expense of turning the physical challenge of giving everyone an office into a — potentially intractable for some teams — people management challenge.
I’ve seen this work tolerably well in an open space that’s entirely engineers or similar roles, assuming there are enough conference rooms for people to peel off to for meetings and calls, and you can establish the culture of the main room having a library-esque hush.
As soon as people start having multi party conversations in the main space because the conference rooms are booked 100% of the time, or people whose jobs involve talking all day are seated there, it’s game over. Noise cancelling headphones are no match for the 25th “Hey Bob, this is Jason at Intertrode, do you have 5 minutes?” of the day.
Active noise cancellation is said to be improving, but it’s hard to go wrong with a big hunk of plastic if you can find a comfortable pair of closed-back circumaural phones. I’ve gone through about three pairs of HD 280. A former colleague would wear the same ear pro he uses at the gun range.
A coworker repeatedly ignored a person’s headphones and would interrupt them anyway. One day I put a bright post-it note on my headphones: “Joe, don’t bother me”. I was in middle of flow, making some huge changes, when I noticed Joe standing next to me, laughing. “Hahaha, someone put a post-it note on your headphones!” I coulda killed him.
I printed out the infamous quote "Go away, or I will replace you with a small shell script." It was primarily meant for one specific employee known to have the gift of gab. Seeing how my job was to automate the most mundane/error prone tasks, it seemed to be pretty effective. I heard murmurings about how some thought it was rather rude, but I never had to speak to HR about it.
I've often run into the "just wear headphones" argument and never been a fan of it. Do you code with noise cancellation in a sort of sensory deprivation mode? Or do you listen to music?
Listening to music while coding severely reduces my concentration, and I find it in no way to be a substitute for silence.
Me neither. If I'm concentrating I don't want to wear headphones all day. Even with my very comfortable ones, it's not that comfortable and as you say, it's not the same as silence, or just the quiet of a room without human noise.
It's also the inverse problem as well though. Sometimes I want to listen to music, but I'm not doing anything that requires me to be unapproachable. Heck, sometimes I'm looking for a distraction, which is WHY I'm wearing the headphones, listening to something distracting!
The idea that wearing headphones should mean "leave me alone" just doesn't work for me, and when I want to be left alone, wearing headphones doesn't mean I can concentrate
> Listening to music while coding severely reduces my concentration, and I find it in no way to be a substitute for silence.
Me too. I can't work with music in headphones as I inevitably start listening to it. It's weird that many people don't even consider this a possibility when recommending headphones. Well, I guess it's not weird as they just aren't affected by it the same way, but still.
We are all to "suck it up" because, for some reason, being constantly interrupted is something that we supposedly have to be okay with. I say no, let the busybodies and loudmouths adapt to us for a change.
Contra-opinion: music significantly improves my concentration, but it has to be instrumental or classical otherwise brain gets distracted processing the lyrics.
I will never actually experience silence, due in part to listening to loud music way too often as a kid. Music or other low-interaction media is better than the constant high-pitch tone I hear ~16x7.
Truly we are all unique snowflakes. I can't exist in complete silence (even while coding) it drives me nuts. I always have some sort of noise. Usually music without lyrics for coding.
that said... I don't like wearing headphones and certainly not for extended periods of time. So, "just wear headphones" doesn't work for me for an entirely different reason.
However I definitely get ear + head + hearing fatigue from wearing any kind of headphones for more than an hour or two.
Noise canceling is nice, but it seems to be hard on my ears somehow.
In a private (or home) office, I can play music through speakers and it seems to be better than headphones for me.
One thing that is both good and bad about offices is the loud air conditioning/ventilation (which of course is largely a good thing given covid, etc.) The white noise drowns out sound, but it is also fatiguing to my ears. I have been in offices during power outages when the AC/computers/etc. shut down, it's amazing how quiet it is.
> Do you code with noise cancellation in a sort of sensory deprivation mode? Or do you listen to music?
Related to what dboreham wrote in his sibling comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38695799): under some specific circumstances specific kinds of music can increase the concentration for me when programming. If these circumstances are met, I do sometimes listen to music on my noise-cancelling headphones when programming.
But typically I love to program in sensory deprivation mode (the same holds for learning).
Yes I can imagine Wagner or Cardi B being counter productive here. Musical white noise — plaid noise? — works wonders though. As another commenter said: EDM has been a key factor in my productivity as a software engineer over the years.
The type of music is very important on whether it works in this manner as well as individual personality types. I personally find anything with lyrics no different than listening to the chatter of the space you're trying to avoid.
Sorry that's just you. As an amateur musician myself, music helps me concentrate. Actually, if I have been writing code for a while without music, I would notice that "something is missing" and turn on my music. I know a number of colleagues who use their headphones all the time as well.
"that's just you" is dismissive and inaccurate. I can only listen to music when I'm slacking and if I begin to do real work the music I normally enjoy becomes an annoyance and I have to turn it off.
I’m not not a developer, I work in the IT space and require deep focus for a myriad of other tasks (like anyone else, I presume). I’m no longer a musician but consider myself to have a rich musical background. Music does wonders for my focus, but it also generates fatigue. So I’m often alternating between music and silence. Have you noticed the same thing or is this less common?
I worked in an open office plan that did the headphones thing. I found that made it even more intolerable -- I can't stand being in a room with a bunch of people and being cut off from my senses. It makes me hyperaware, nervous, and even less able to work.
Firstly, everyone had free, good quality, sound blocking headphones. Not just free as in standard equipment on your first day free. There were buckets of the things lying around and if you needed a new set you just grabbed some, no questions asked. VC funded opulence, yay!
Secondly, there was an understanding amongst everyone on the shop floor that “headphones on” meant do not disturb, just as much as a closed office door. Violations were not tolerated but it was a social norm thing not an HR write up thing. Maybe people were getting the latter behind the scenes though?
In return you end up with an office architecture that’s considerably easier to manage at the expense of turning the physical challenge of giving everyone an office into a — potentially intractable for some teams — people management challenge.