Inside Offices Where the Music Never Stops and Everyone Is DJ | Hacker News Reader

Inside Offices Where the Music Never Stops and Everyone Is DJ

bloomberg.com

>"To me, it seemed like trying too hard, like very lazily creating culture."

Hitting the nail on the head.

>Monson, Codeword's CEO, uses the music for a different purpose: his own privacy. He and his co-founder sit in a corner of the open office space, where they control the volume on the nearest Sonos speakers. When they want to discuss something sensitive, they turn it up.

And the bosses use it to opt-out of the open office plan they shove onto their employees, great.

"Ah yes, lets reduce raises by 0.5% ne-" Mr. CEO what are you saying?! "Hold on, let me just blast whatever garbage these kids are playing to distract them"

> The role of music at work is part of an unintentional arms race of sorts. Office workers embraced earbuds and noise-canceling headphones in large numbers as ways to cope with the lack of privacy that came with the open-floor plan. But using private music to restore some semblance of auditory personal space defeats the purpose of taking down cubicle walls

Yeah... That is exactly the point! Because taking down the cubicle walls was the worst thing to happen to offices. Managers need to stop trying to get around the walls, real or otherwise, that people set up at work. They benefit no one productive.

Advantage of wired over wireless speakers:

One place I worked at a long time ago installed (wired) music speakers throughout the engineering area. That evening, some engineer traced the speaker wires back to the source and disconnected them. The next day the speakers were reconnected. The following evening, in addition to disconnecting the wires at the source again, the cables were cut every three feet. This time the message was received by management and the problem went away.

Yo why ban young folk by pbj?

But really, novel idea maybe for an internal radio in the office that employees plug into. Playing over the speaker, maybe not so much. I wouldn't want to be that guy getting shamed for playing long boring droning music to help me focus.

I can already hear the "Ugh, not Insert band again". I wouldn't want to force my musical tastes onto anyone else.

[However awesome in love with a ghost is]

There are already websites that allow you to listen to / DJ music collaboratively, effectively creating an office playlist / radio. I've worked at companies that use these, they were fun but not intrusive.

This feels just a bit like Sonos-sponsored content...

This ends up on the next season of Silicon Valley for sure.

Is this a Sonos ad? What software did they use to manage their play queues and play music. I couldn't seem to find that anywhere.

I think they mentioned Spotify somewhere in the "Ten Commandments". I'm pretty sure that's their primary software.

This sounds even worse than the inevitable disagreements over light level or temperature.

That's one place I'll never be working at

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