Hacker News Reader

Comment by bunderbunder | Hacker News Reader

Y'know, I've been working in one for 6 months now, and, despite some initial trepidation, I haven't found that to be true at all. Sometimes you do have to put on headphones to cut down on the auditory distraction, but otherwise it's been just fine.

Granted, every office has a different culture. I'm guessing the most distracting offices are the ones where everyone is distracted to begin with. For example, if you're at a startup where everyone works 60-80 hour weeks and is so chronically sleep-deprived that their ability to concentrate for any length of time is shot, then yeah, that's going to be a hellhole.

View on HN

I'm in an open floor plan space with about one hundred desks in it and it's never particularly distracting to me. I barely ever even have to use headphones to concentrate. People simply don't have loud distracting conversations. It'd be different if I were mixed in with salespeople having phone conversations from their desks all day every day, but we're all engineers. I appreciate being able to easily ask my coworkers a question as it occurs to me immediately.

OK, fair point. I did once get rearranged into an open plan office where all the teams were intermixed for I-still-don't-know-what reason. Half the staff was sales, and yeah, it was impossible to concentrate. Fortunately, we had a liberal work from home policy, so I had a means of escape when I had a deadline approaching. But I still only lasted for a few months after that.

Just to reiterate, I don't think the open plan office was really the fundamental problem. It was the attempt to mix oil and water.

They are probably working 60 hours a week as they can't concentrate in the office. So then they work 65.

Wearing headphones every day will permanently damage your hearing. If you really want noise, put on headphones. Respectful quiet should be the default.

It's not quite so absolute - it has to do with what kind of headphones, how loud, and for how long. The problem is that people tend to use crappy earbuds, crank the volume, and listen for hours on end.

If you instead use a good pair of over-the-ear headphones so that you can get the sound you want at a low volume and without the assistance of any active noise cancellation, it's not quite the same story. Probably still shouldn't be doing it all day just to be on the safe side, but from what I've been able to find in the literature it look like it's probably fine.

The biggest factor appears to be the level of sound isolation before you play anything, the better the isolation the lower the volume you can comfortably listen at.

I don't use expensive headphones (mostly in-ears as they are more comfortable) but I went through a few different sets til I found some that worked like ear plugs.

>Sometimes you do have to put on headphones to cut down on the auditory distraction

That's exactly the problem. You are plugging inefficiencies that exist for no reason. Listening to music hampers my work because I focus too much on it. I just want a quiet room.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com