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Comment by a1a | Hacker News Reader

That's one of the main takeaways from the story tho. In an open office those who need silence cannot get it, even if there are private rooms available: "Some of us even feel that escaping to a quiet room is a sign of weakness" and "it can feel as if we’re not pulling our weight if we’re not present"

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One thing that that would bother me in that situation is I do not enjoy doing work on laptops. I prefer to work from a desktop where the monitor (1) reasonably sized, (2) at eye level. I also prefer a full sized mouse and keyboard, as I feel handicapped by a trackpad. Most quiet places do not have this, so I am effectively chained to my desk, where my desktop is.

At my company, we are fortunate to have quiet spaces that have dual monitors, keyboard, and mouse, for your laptop. I agree, it's a necessity.

Yeah the worst is when they want all the work done onsite and expect extreme hours at the open office space total recipe for disaster

Over ear headphones are a pretty good workaround if you don't want to be distracted by the noise.

A visual barrier may be needed also if you've got people roaming around. At one place we had large black fold out cardboard pieces to alleviate that. Was kind of absurd, but better than nothing.

Watch your volume levels, though, if you're listening to music. A few years' worth of listening to metal with noise cancelling headphones trying to drone out the noise has probably contributed to the slight tinnitus I'm having.

They're really not, though. In addition to "hey, hearing damage!" if you're listening loud enough to actually counteract the din of crap around you, it's a profoundly isolating thing to be wearing them for six hours a day. It's symptomatic relief that pushes the buttons of way worse problems, IMO.

Which is why I just bought some of those Bose noise cancelling cans. Listen at a safe volume and block out noise. They're great.

That you have to block out noise by strapping things to your head for six hours a day is the problem that you are steadfastly not solving, though.

You can't get around needing to strap things to your head when you're operating a jackhammer. Nerd at a desk? At the least we should fight for a little dignity.

Additionally, it's not a universal work-around. Noise canceling gives a significant fraction of us nausea

Or some people are very sensitive to the (white?) noise that noise that NC headphones still generate.

Agreed, I know that noise-cancelling headphones are a solution to noisy offices for some people, but for me at least it's almost as distracting to have something (anything) strapped to my head for hours on end. And yeah, no one should have to do that in the first place.

There is a huge overlap in my experience between people who like open offices because it's easy for them to socialize and ask questions, and people who like to pester their busy coworkers with questions they could have figured out themselves. Also people who get bored easily and like to pester coworkers because they need a break from whatever they've been working on for the last 15 minutes.

Basically whenever I hear someone say, "I love open offices because when I don't know how to do something, my coworkers are right there to help me", I can't help but think, "yeah, I bet you do, and I bet your coworkers are ready to claw their eyes out when you come around asking something because you couldn't be bothered to read a man page". Every time someone touts coworker accessibility for questions as a critical reason to have open offices, I can't help but wonder what the ratio is between the time they spend asking other people questions and the time they spend answering other people's questions, because it always sounds like it's pretty huge.

Same thing goes for availability over Slack, HipChat, etc.

"We should all be on the Slack/HipChat channel so we can get instant answers to all of our questions!" - the people who have lots of questions

"Great, all I need, another source of interruptions!" - the people who get asked lots of questions

(Guess which one I consider myself to be?)

Il take async communications over interuptrupts any day of the week. Just disable notifications and check it when you're not balls deep in something.

>...noise cancelling cans...

Active noise cancelling systems generally only suppress continuous steady sounds, e.g. fan noise or motor hum. It actually makes conversations and other transient activities _more_ audible by reducing the background sound.

Solution: sit near your most monotonous colleagues.

Depends on the model. QC20's from bose (in-ear noise canceling) are basically magic in that regard - turn them on, add relatively quiet music, and I might as well be deaf to everything, including conversation.

That does lead the the annoying problem that I have to have something stuck in my ear (vs on, which isn't quite as annoying) for 6ish hours a day. Also, they're expensive af, and require frequent charging since I never remember to turn off the noise cancelling when I'm done with them.

They're expensive too. I know it's not a concern for some but it is for me.

No, they're not. Headphones are a marginal improvement over listening to all the conversations in the room, but not nearly as good for concentration as an actual quiet room.

I've found IEM-style headphones are better. Since they already block out some of the ambient noise by plugging your ears, much lower volume levels are required to block out distractions.

I find any kind of headphones to be painful/disturbing after a while. On-ear are the worst (who the F * * * thought pressing your ears into your head was a good idea?), followed by in-ear. The only ones I can wear for any amount of time are over-ear but eventually (if nothing else) your ears will be all warm and that will be disturbing as well.

Besides I really enjoy just silence sometimes, being forced to listen to music does not necessarily improve my focus.

> On-ear are the worst (who the F * * * thought pressing your ears into your head was a good idea?)

There also exist on-ear headphones that don't apply so much pressure. So it rather seems to me that the model that you tested simply does not fit your requirements.

I also prefer over-ear over on-ear, but did not have the problem with on-ear headphones that you described.

I sometimes wear my headphones with no music, just in noise-canceling mode. Just like you, I think music can be distracting or tiring after a while. My Sony headphones have such powerful noise canceling that it silences even the slightest hum, sort of a anechoic chamber. It helps me concentrate and I like keeping my ears warm. If I'm in the mood, I also put some white noise sounds on (youtube has plenty of it) including rain, beach waves and train rides.

And I work in my own private corner office.

It isn't just the noise that is distracting though, visual stimuli can be more distracting than noise; at least they are for me. I guess we could solve this problem via headphones and VR goggles with views isolated views of your desktop, but if you're going to go to that extreme, why not just work remotely or in a closed office?

One problem with that is that in an open-plan office, meetings can be de-formalized into open conversations and you'll have to monitor those if you don't want to be left out or might have something to contribute.

I once worked in an office where the founder would stroll out of his office (natch), and have a conversation with one person, extending to a second person, into a decision-type meeting with more people. Call it an evolving standup.

Even if you're locked into headphones this is can be a big distraction equivalent to not wearing headphones at all.

tl;dr: sometimes "the noise" is not noise.

And for those of us who get distracted by visual noise? Maybe blinkers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinkers_(horse_tack))?

I often do this, but find it enclosing. I also can't stand headphones when I leave the office. I like to listen to music while I work generally. When I work from home, I leave the speakers on. I can move about while I work, not tethered.

No one outside of trendy Bay Area tech startups respect the 'headphones = DND' social guideline. Open offices suck for this reason because people just take it as open season to come up to your desk whenever they want to ask a question. I'm forever interrupted by this, not just the movement around me in my peripheral vision and the noise (particularly social converstions in the hall behind me near the printer).

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