401–410 of 483 posts
Noise and distraction was quite effectivly reduced but communication was supported.
Is there anyone here who likes open offices more than a floorplan divised into smaller rooms? I ask because I've worked in an open office setting as a developer for years (the place is otherwise nice) and thoroughly despise it as a workspace. Yet some people don't seem to mind it. I don't mind serendipity. The problem is I serendiptously overhear everyones discussion which is incredibly disruptive for deep work. Fact…
I prefer open offices. You get a pretty significant echo chamber effect on articles like this because people who don't like it turn out to comment. Personally, I have no difficulty with noise (I prefer working in coffee shops to at home), and being able to easily start a design discussion with 4 or 5 engineers when necessary is extremely valuable. I totally get why some people don't like it though.
[1]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ask-the-brains-ba...
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did you mean potted plants, rather than pot plants?
I'm pretty sure they meant pot plants. It's a plant, but that's in a pot, not in the ground.
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Yep. Work in an office with communal[1] music, it's really bad for focus. I would say that this policy likely loses us money. [1] controlled by a clique, really
I thought listening to music all day was bad. Then I got moved in to a cube area when I got promoted. The old-timers listen to the radio all day. The radio is so much worse than just listening to other people's music -- not only am I forced to listen to music I don't care for, but the ads are twice as loud as the actual music. So I can completely tune out the music and still be interrupted by some grifter yelling abo…
Is there anyone here who likes open offices more than a floorplan divised into smaller rooms? I ask because I've worked in an open office setting as a developer for years (the place is otherwise nice) and thoroughly despise it as a workspace. Yet some people don't seem to mind it. I don't mind serendipity. The problem is I serendiptously overhear everyones discussion which is incredibly disruptive for deep work. Fact…
I dunno, I just don't feel particularly unproductive. I thought maybe I just didn't have any point of comparison, but then I had a few days working from home and it didn't seem massively different.
A lot of people here are talking about flow, but I don't really feel the need for concentration for the majority "tactical" level coding, and when I run into sufficiently complicated "strategic" level problems, I find it much more effective to discuss them than to try and solve them on my own.
Is there anyone here who likes open offices more than a floorplan divised into smaller rooms? I ask because I've worked in an open office setting as a developer for years (the place is otherwise nice) and thoroughly despise it as a workspace. Yet some people don't seem to mind it. I don't mind serendipity. The problem is I serendiptously overhear everyones discussion which is incredibly disruptive for deep work. Fact…
I prefer open. I've never seen cube farms or offices that have a decent amount of natural light. Also, I seem to be the minority in comments, but I don't mind people talking around me. I don't use my ears/hearing to code, so it doesn't distract me nearly as much as chat windows or anything visual on my laptop. I suppose the real issue is people having interesting conversations around me... But I have headphones and m…
My coding has very little to with sport-like activity and is more like the task of a lone clocksmith (although we have a team, individuals have quite large chunks of codebase carved for themselves).
For some problems I am straining on the edge of my working memory capacity.
The problem with the distraction avoidance is that it demands mental resources. If there is some benefit in training working in a stresfull environment there could be a sound proof room for such a purpose where employees could go for a limited time to train. The inverse of large open office/small quiet room pattern.
At first level there could be just white noise in the room. Once that is mastered as an added stimulus the feet could be placed in a bucket of icewater. At the next level the room is filled with monkeys. Etc.
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I had several years of that when I worked in a DOD closed area. Never going back to that again.
Working in a SCIF is the WORST. Never again. Though I was able to work in one, very briefly, that had windows. It was bizarre to me being in a SCIF but with windows that had blinds open...
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It depends on the headphones. A good set of active or passive noise cancelling headphones will block all the sound even with no music. I wear my headphones as earplugs on an airplane when I want to sleep, and I can usually keep my volume at 10% of max or less and hear everything crystal clear. The biggest downside is that my headphones cost $350 and are only available in Europe or Montreal, CA.
Noise canceling headphones are much more effective on constant noise like an airplane engine than transient noises like speech or phones ringing.
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It depends on the headphones. A good set of active or passive noise cancelling headphones will block all the sound even with no music. I wear my headphones as earplugs on an airplane when I want to sleep, and I can usually keep my volume at 10% of max or less and hear everything crystal clear. The biggest downside is that my headphones cost $350 and are only available in Europe or Montreal, CA.
Noise canceling headphones are for low frequency sounds such as those found in airplanes. They don't work well with conversations phones ringing and laughter.
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It depends on the headphones. A good set of active or passive noise cancelling headphones will block all the sound even with no music. I wear my headphones as earplugs on an airplane when I want to sleep, and I can usually keep my volume at 10% of max or less and hear everything crystal clear. The biggest downside is that my headphones cost $350 and are only available in Europe or Montreal, CA.
Even if they're at 10%, the actual volume of your earphones is more dependant on the drivers themselves and the amperage rather than the arbitrary 'volume percentage' on the device you're driving them with.