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Comment by meritt | Hacker News Reader

The open-office movement is actually a decade-long strategy backed by Sennheiser and Sony.

I know this was a joke, but I swear by the Audiotechnica ANC33is IEMs - http://www.audio-technica.com/cms/headphones/11871cf05c62c83....

I get 15-20 hours of the noise cancelling feature out of a single AAA battery. They'll still work pretty well without the noise cancelling turned on due to their shape.

It doesn't matter if you could perfectly cancel-out noise, hand-waving and shoulder-taps will interrupt whatever flow you were having.

I try to make the best of a bad situation - the ambient noise was a far bigger problem for me in my current location.

Lucky you, I'm the exact opposite. It's mostly quiet here, and relatively normal/plain/cheap ear phones remove the speaking around me. In that case ear phones are actually a distraction/nuisance; having to constantly take them in/out, people speaking to you having to constantly say "Sorry to interrupt", "just a quick question", because they're more aware of bothering you, etc.

True, but so will a knock or banging on the door, even if it is locked.

I have an office room although most colleagues are in open office with low-wall cubicles. Still, I find I can get more done at the hours when office is empty.

Also, doctors who specialise in hearing loss (given the volume we pump into our ears to block out the noise in open plan offices), as well as pharmaceutical companies making any drugs that deal with increases in stress (another fun side-effect of open plan nonsense).

See https://tommorris.org/posts/9403

Sigh... yet another entry for the "why I don't do business with Sony" list.

I'm not sure if you missed the joke, or if I missed a joke that you just made.

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