Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The #1 Office Perk? Natural Light

hbr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 348 posts

Re: The #1 Office Perk? Natural Light

#321

Post by loco5niner »

gammateam wrote: post #314
beat wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it difficult to work while wearing headphones. Music is very distracting. I just spent two and a half years working from home, where I could leave the tv on in the background. That was awesome. A little motion out of the corner of my eye, some noise, but nothing structured in a way I cared about. Loud reality shows about mechanical stuff were my noise-companion. I could just ignore them. Music is full of struc…

A pair of headphones with good sound isolation doesn't need to play music. It converts it all into crystalline white noise. You can practically perceive the sound waves convert into a low pass filter, as soon as you turn the noise cancelling on.

You must have quiet co-workers.

Re: The #1 Office Perk? Natural Light

#322

Post by vibrolax »

abledon wrote: post #302
beat wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a musician, so I find most music to be almost ridiculously interesting. Leads me to thinking about the music rather than the work I should be doing. And I find headphones to be physically uncomfortable very quickly.

Haha same! Any melody at all totally refocuses me into the song, how the fingering and chords would be played on a guitar , what riffs they are reusing and Which audio effect pedals are being used for the music (mostly rock / indie / pop )

Double same! Doesn't matter whether I like the music or not: it must be dissected layer by layer. Some of my non-musician friends wonder why I never have "background" music on at home.

Re: The #1 Office Perk? Natural Light

#323

Post by ConceptJunkie »

Natural Light is a big thing, but the #1 Office Perk is not working in an open office. I would trade the open office I work in, which has a ton of windows and natural light, for a regular office, even just cubicles in a heartbeat.

I love the natural light, but I hate the noise and visual distraction 10 times more than I love natural light.

Re: The #1 Office Perk? Natural Light

#324

Post by ConceptJunkie »

msisk6 wrote: post #290
drewg123 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like natural light at a medium level (eg, blinds 1/2 closed). I despise bright artificial light. When I went to work at Google, in a large windowless room, I was one of those people with a cover over their cube. Without the cover, one of the rows of artificial light would shine right in my eyes.

Same when I worked at Rackspace. I was in a football-field-size windows-less room (there were actual windows at the periphery but I was so far away it didn't matter) right under a fluorescent light fixture shining right in my eyes. Most of us had these gigantic plastic leaf shades we found in the kids section of Ikea blocking the light. Some folks went as far to drape their cube in surplus camo netting. Now I'm in an…

It won't. Open offices are a lot cheaper and managers are almost universally too stupid to realize that the adverse effect they have on productivity costs them anything.

Re: The #1 Office Perk? Natural Light

#325

Post by t0mbstone »

EricLemieux wrote: post #173
CalRobert wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My preference is nearly a dark cave and people think I'm odd. I also use a plugin to make FF have dark backgrounds and light text. I don't enjoy squinting all the time. In at least one case, it wasn't just me. I used to work editing photos on California's central coast and after we moved to a building with loads and loads of skylights, and got a bunch of new glossy-screen iMacs, it was really hard to get color accura…

What plugin are you using in firefox? I have just been using stylus and using dark themes for sites I use often, but would love a more automated approach, especially for sites I don't use that often.

I use this addon called "Dark Reader" for Chrome and it's amazing! I can't live without it. Eye strain is a very real problem for me without it. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dark-reader/eimadp...

Re: The #1 Office Perk? Natural Light

#326

Post by wildrhythms »

beat wrote: post #220
jwr wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, music is more distracting than people think. Its effects can be subtle: it engages your creative brain, so you end up working like crazy, only to notice afterwards that the work was not needed at all (there was a better solution, but your creative abilities were busy processing music). Don't listen to music while doing creative work. Use noise, like sounds of the sea (I use an app called "Naturespace" for high-q…

I'm a musician, so I find most music to be almost ridiculously interesting. Leads me to thinking about the music rather than the work I should be doing. And I find headphones to be physically uncomfortable very quickly.

I also cannot simply "listen to music in the background" while I'm doing something else. I almost immediately start focusing on the rhythms and chords instead of whatever I'm supposed to be working on! I studied music all through K-12 so maybe that has something to do with it going by some of the other comments here.

Re: The #1 Office Perk? Natural Light

#329

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

s73v3r_ wrote: post #252
mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then I’m just the whiny asshole or primadonna or something. It’s not possible to have these preferences treated in an adult way in modern corporations, and anyone the issue got escalated to will just see it as whining. You have to keep your head down and act like it’s Candide: whatever your company currently does is the best possible thing they could ever do.

"Then I’m just the whiny asshole or primadonna or something." The way you approach doing this goes a long, long way toward how you're perceived. "It’s not possible to have these preferences treated in an adult way in modern corporations, and anyone the issue got escalated to will just see it as whining." I imagine you think this is the case because you see others asking for similar types of things as also being "whin…

Why do you think I perceive other askers as whiny? I don’t. I think corporate culture is sorely anti-humane, and we need better sociological solutions in dev teams and orgs, closer to what is described in Peopleware.

I take other peoples’ preferences very seriously and treat them with respect. People should at least be heard and compromises attempted.

Management and capricious brogrammer types in every company I’ve ever worked for across 12 years however do not act this way at all, and reasonable requests will only be used against you. This has been outwardly and definitively proven time after time.

Re: The #1 Office Perk? Natural Light

#330

Post by jrnichols »

lozaning wrote: post #256
jimmy1 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here I feel the need to share what I feel like is my ultimate setup: put in earplugs first, then cover with sound deadening/isolating headphones, finally play white noise. I don't hear shit. Added bonus: put your chair and feet on a mat with vibration deadening material such as sorbothane, so you don't even feel people walk by. Next I am planning on experimenting putting up a tri-fold poster board to block out visual…

I've been dreaming of putting an E-Z Up with 3 side walls around my desk. Maybe build a 4th wall and a door out of cardboard on the last side.

the fire marshal would frown upon that, unfortunately... even though they might think it's a fun idea.
Post reply on HN