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Comment by coffeeski | Hacker News Reader

I would take a 10% paycut to have a small office that fits 2 monitors, a filing cabinet and some pictures, rather then dealing with constant clattering of the guy behind me that decided converting a type writer into a digital keyboard was a good idea.

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I understand your sentiment entirely. I have thought the same way. However, I have to ask, why would you, or I, or any other person creating substantial value for a company, ever in their right mind take a 10% pay cut (or any other level of pay cut or reduction) in order to be MORE efficient? Our attitude in this industry drives me crazy lately. And really it has been my own attitude for a long time. We ask to be more efficient, to produce better and more valuable assets for our employer, we believe in their vision, and in return we have to beg and plead to help ourselves become more efficient, often to our own financial detriment. It's rather disheartening.

why would you, or I, or any other person creating substantial value for a company, ever in their right mind take a 10% pay cut

Because markets. In sales you learn fairly quickly that price isn't determined by cost or value added but exclusively by what the market will bear. Since US labour has little negotiating power even a programmer will have to buy quiet space.

Because it makes me happier.

I couldn't care less for efficiency, I'm going to get roughly the same amount of work done in a shitty office and in a good one, that's just how I am - but it would make me a helluva lot happier and allow me to actually enjoy doing the job I should enjoy.

All things being equal, yeah I'd love to keep 10% of my pay, but if I have to give up X to get private space, which would help my happiness at work, I would do that. My happiness is worth atleast 10% of my pay. Life is more then money

The mechanical keyboard people in open offices bother me.

The problem is the open office, not the mechanical keyboards (which are awesome, btw).

I'm a nice guy, I paid the extra $$ for silent mechanical keys (http://matias.ca/switches/quiet/) ;-)

Yeah, but then you have to have those terrible, bastard ALPS switches. Sorry, strong personal preference here.

I use Topre anyway.

The switches are their own, they only use ALPS for the keytops. Unless they contract out to ALPS for manufacturing and I missed it.

Sorry, you're absolutely correct. Still, pain in the arse to get decent keysets for and I've always found the ALPS design to be 'wobbly'. Something about them is extremely uncomfortable to me.

Thank you! I've been looking for a keyboard like that for years, ever since I had to get rid of my old Zeos mechanical to keep my wife from going insane in our shared office space. The Quiet Pro PC looks absolutely perfect.

The noise is from bottoming out. Put spacers on the keycap stems, and it stops being a problem, no matter what kind of switch you use.

This is easy to do and only a little time-consuming. It's easier and faster when you take a cheap Bic pen, pull out the tip and ink tube, and use the body tube to press the spacers down on the stems - it's just the right diameter, and makes the job much faster.

The spacers are cheap, too, being simple silicone rubber O-rings, and as an extra benefit, the rubber eats up a lot of the bottoming-out force that'd otherwise be transmitted up the key into your fingers, which means you type more comfortably as well as more quietly.

Or people could just type with less force?

I'm not sure where the cultural norm of beating up a keyboard comes from but it's a very inefficient way to type.

Beats me, but if it comes down to a choice between reengineering people's behavior or reengineering their tools so they can do the same thing they've always done but not get such a poor result, I know which one I've seen to work and which one I haven't.

> The noise is from bottoming out.

Not with my Model M!

/buckling springs ftw...

I remember my Model Ms with fond nostalgia. I have no desire whatsoever to give up my MX Blues and return to them.

In my opinion, if you know you're going to be working in an open office setting, you should try to be courteous and minimize the negative impact you have on your coworkers. I think you should be willing to make the choice to use a quieter keyboard that isn't necessarily your favorite.

So I'd say the problem is with both. The open office is the ultimate source of the issue, but it can be compounded by workers who make choices that exacerbate the situation. The reality is that an open office can be quite pleasant if the people working in it collectively make effective choices that take into account the well-being of the group.

Agreed.

I have a mechanical keyboard at home (Corsair Gaming K95 RGB), but at work I use a Mac wired keyboard (on a PC). Super quiet and probably the best performing scissor switch keyboard.

edit: proper Mac keyboard type

I'm guessing you mean scissor switch not membrane.

Ahh, yes, you're correct.

Hey, I have the same keyboard! Do you actually use all the extra G keys or macros? I thought I would but the cognitive load of memorizing what each G key stands for is too much.

I've tried to, but I'm in the same boat as you I think.

I recently got one and I admit it's really loud. But this shouldn't be an issue in a decent workplace. I have several guys near me who have loud voices and talk a lot. That's worse than a loud keyboard. Open office plans are the problem, not keyboards or loud people.

This is true. But, if you're in an open office, don't you think the decent thing to do is to not speak loudly (and therefore not use a loud mechanical keyboard)?

There are mech keyboards with more quiet switches. At least use one of those.

Sure. It's good to be courteous. But in the end it comes down to the fact that open offices are just plain stupid. I don't know what the motivation behind them is but it's certainly not to make a productive workplace.

Pretty much every mechanical keyboard will be loud. I use a board with Cherry Red switches at work, and while it's much quieter than my board with Cherry Blue switches that I use at home, it is still louder than the rubber dome keyboard it replaced.

It doesn't bother my coworkers, but I also have an actual cube, so there's at least a little bit of fabric-covered foam inbetween us.

If someone is complaining about Cherry Reds, I think they're asking for too much. Perhaps they should look for work in the library sciences.

Heh. I had a former cow-orker who hated by Topre board. I told him if he'd (a) keep his computer volume off and (b) not hold impromptu, non-work meetings as his desk at bar-volumes, I'd try to use a crappy board for him.

He was offended. I kept my board.

Again, the root problem is the veal-fattening pens.

Cherry Reds are quiet for mechanical keyboards but they're still louder than most decent non-mechanical.

Also way louder than a MBP keyboard, for example.

  > they're still louder than most decent non-mechanical.

They're louder than all decent non-mechanical. They're also quieter than all decent non-mechanical.

But, if you're in an open office, don't you think the decent thing to do is to not speak loudly (and therefore not use a loud mechanical keyboard)?

No, that just shows tacit acceptance of the situation and exacerbates the problem over time. If you work in an open plan environment, the best thing to do is use the noisiest keyboard you can find, wear headphones that intentionally leak noise and listen to your music loud, do as many personal phone calls as you can from your desk, etc. And then, when people complain, point out that you didn't ask for an open plan office, and ask them to go to their manager and explain how horrible open plan is.

Worst case, you get fired. Big deal, now you have a chance to look for a place to work that isn't brain dead.

I am distracted by your loud keyboard. Frequently, I find myself wishing that you had a quiet keyboard like everyone else in the office. I am particularly irritated by the noise of your keyboard each morning when you write long emails or posts. When you are coding and there are frequent long breaks when you are thinking, it is not quite as distracting, but I still don't like it.

I agree with you that open office plans are the problem, but your keyboard makes that problem worse.

"I am particularly irritated by the noise of your keyboard each morning when you write long emails or posts."

My E-mails are pretty short :-). However, I don't enjoy you telling your coworkers about your weekend every Monday morning.

Open offices are just stupid. They cause conflict where there shouldn't be.

In my parallel universe, you're also the one telling your coworkers about your weekend every Monday morning, but I agree with your point. :-)

> Open offices are just stupid. They cause conflict where there shouldn't be.

Yes.

I would kill someone for a walled office, even if there was a high risk of life imprisonment, as long as there was some assurance that the prison cell would have walls.

At the same time, other people being inconsiderate doesn't excuse you being inconsiderate as well.

I was using a Model M when working in an open office in China. No one really cared, because the guy in the cubicle next to me had a sunflower/watermelon seed habit. Damn, no one should be de-shelling seeds in an open office! Or in the afternoon we would have fruit, and pear day everyone would be smacking and slurping (Chinese pears are much more watery than western pears, I hate pear day!), or everyone talking/arguing/whatever. Turns out my keyboard wasn't weird in what was already a high noise environment.

I had to invest in a pair of Bose noise cancellation headphone a long time ago.

I won't even use my model M and I have a personal office (that I usually leave the door open to). It's loud as hell. I'm skeptical nobody cared.

But typing on a model M is pure sex.

Trust me, when your office mate is chomping down on watermelon seeds, no one cares about your Model M.

I agree with you that open office is the problem, however my old mechanical keyboard is louder than most people with a loud voice and it would probably be used more often.

Mechanical keyboards are better for RSI and general comfort.

If you don't like them, complain to your manager that you need walled offices.

Also be careful not to point out that "keyboard noise" is the crux of the issue, since then you'll end up with those employees being told they can't use their nice keyboards that they probably paid a lot for just to use at work, which will result in said employees really, really not liking you if they find out it was you that complained.

Exactly. That's a great way to poison a relationship with a coworker.

Any source for the statement on RSI? I googled but just found anecdotes.

Anecdotes are the best you're going to get on that. Who's going to fund a serious scientific study on the effects of mechanical keyboards on RSI? The mechanical keyboard makers comprise a very small, niche industry these days.

The anecdotes are correct: with a proper mechanical keyboard, you don't have to bottom out on the keys, and only have to press enough to make them click. Once you retrain yourself to do that, then you're putting a lot less stress on your fingers, compared to rubber-dome keyboards where you're forced to mash the keys down until they bottom out.

So you would prefer your coworkers develop RSI symptoms from straining to use a laptop keyboard? Not all of us can use laptops for extended periods of time. Now if I could type with my brain (and I don't mean by smashing my head repeatedly on the keyboard), that's Sam Altman status quo shattering next-level stuff, but I don't think we're there yet.

As others have replied, the problem isn't my typing, it's <40 square feet of personal space and no noise partitioning whatsoever.

Anything noisy in an open office, including me when forget to lower my voice, is bothersome :)

The standard keyboard layout, which every mechanical keyboard I've ever seen (including my beloved model M) is terrible for your wrists. The people using mechanical keyboards are not saving themselves anything.

Get a proper ergonomic keyboard like the microsoft sculpt if you actually care about the health of you hands.

Mechanical keyboards are cool, which is why I own one, and when I had an office why I used one every day. But mechanical keyboards are like the loud exhaust that people put on their cars. Yeah, there is a reason that some cars have loud exhausts, but that isn't why you put that on your honda civic.

> The standard keyboard layout, which every mechanical keyboard I've ever seen (including my beloved model M) is terrible for your wrists.

If you type a lot over a prolonged period of time, yes. If you type in short bursts (like most programmers), no, mechanicals are actually useful.

> Get a proper ergonomic keyboard like the microsoft sculpt if you actually care about the health of you hands.

Again, if you are an old fashioned typist working on memos, this advice holds, otherwise....

>If you type a lot over a prolonged period of time, yes. If you type in short bursts (like most programmers), no, mechanicals are actually useful.

Is this really how most programmers work, though? When I'm learning a new language or tool, sure, but after that it's mostly just the activity of writing the code.

> Is this really how most programmers work, though?

Yes, well, I guess it depends on how mundane the coding is. It is possible that a programmer spends a lot of time typing and not a lot of time thinking, but then it is probably brain dead boilerplate that should have been automated somehow.

> When I'm learning a new language or tool, sure, but after that it's mostly just the activity of writing the code.

I guess it depends on what you mean by "writing code".

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2039522

Look, I'm not trying to get into an argument with you here, but:

1) You are not an authority on all programmers, or even most programmers.

2) The primary way that programmers express their work is by typing. The idea that programmers don't do very much typing, or that typing comfort/safety isn't relevant to programers is demonstrably absurd.

>"it is probably brain dead boilerplate that should have been automated somehow."

3) This thinly veiled derision is, imho, not constructive/rude. Do you consider the linux kernal "brain dead boilerplate"? Just some quick googling shows that the per developer code contribution is about 11,000 loc per release. That is code that was in the release, and doesn't even account for code that was typed, then removed, then retyped, etc.

Believe whatever you want, but I find the idea that programmers somehow don't need to care about ergonomics extremely shortsighted.

Again, there is plenty of opinion that programming is much more thinking than typing. Any programmer who says they code at even 20 wpm is probably BSing, or are caught doing a lot of transcription work.

You can write 11K lines of code without continuously typing a lot, especially over a few weeks.

I've been down this route many times. And after Dvorak, Kinesis, and a wide assortment of supposedly ergonomic keyboards, El-cheapo $15 Kensington USB keyboards and $20 Logitech trac-balls turn out to work best with my wrists, occasionally aided by Imax smartgloves.

I have a veritable museum of failed keyboards and pointing devices in my closet. IMO there is no silver bullet here. Also to extend your automotive metaphor, my nephew's late model diesel pickup gets 30+ mpg. Appearances and brand new shiny can be deceiving.

Have you tried the sculpt? I was having wrist pain that was preventing me from working up until about a week after mine arrived.

Its predecessors, yes, many times. The brand new shiny $100 Sculpt? No.

The sculpt with the mouse is about $60 on amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CYX54C0/ref=oh_aui_deta...

Used, not new...

If someone were to lend me this combo for a couple weeks, I'd be happy to evaluate it, and if it worked, I'd buy a bunch of them. But I have a working solution right now so I'm not really in the market for an upgrade.

No, that is the brand new cost. I just bought one.

You may have to be logged in to see it?

Well I'm past the edit period, but apparently it isn't available at this price anymore (although I swear it was this morning when I linked it, huh!)

Cheapest I'm seeing now is $80 :( -- bummer!

(My order: http://imgur.com/fUyKeIC)

I need large mouses to not get hand pain, and the sculpt mouse has been the biggest mouse that I've found that fit that criteria for me quite well. It's even bigger than the mx master.

I haven't found a larger traditional mouse yet.

You appear to think that mechanical boards cannot be ergonomic. I agree that the Model M and friends are terrible, but that's hardly[1] the end[2] of the mechanical[3] ergo[4] story[5].

[1] https://ergodox-ez.com/ [2] https://atreus.technomancy.us/ [3] https://trulyergonomic.com/store/index.php [4] https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/649yo0... [5] http://matias.ca/ergopro/pc/

Fair point. There are some ergonomic mechanical keyboards. I have never personally seen one in use. It's always stuff like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/6cnfta...

Which are beautiful, and make wonderful noises, but are certainly not built to prevent the type of RSI that comes with typing.

> Get a proper ergonomic keyboard like the microsoft sculpt if you actually care about the health of you hands.

I had this conversation with my coworker a few minutes ago who uses an ergonomic keyboard. I believe that the amount of stress you're going to have from a non-ergonomic keyboard is directly related to your posture, which is directly related to your anatomy. For instance my coworker is very wide and he prefers to spread his elbows out while typing.

I, on the other hand don't spread out my elbows that far out, so I don't really feel that must stress while typing for long hours.

One thing which I do notice is that I type by moving my right wrist around (and most people do that to keep their wrists free for grabbing mouse and other things). But if I try doing touch typing where I keep my fingers on the homerow, then my wrists hurt.

Maybe I'm going to give ergo-dox a shot to see what am I missing.

I struggled a long time with RSI, and for me both the mechanical and ergonomic keyboards solve the problem. A model M fixed it, and then later a microsoft comfort curve also fixed it. The comfort curve is a lot more quiet, so out of respect for my coworkers I use that one, although I do miss the feel of the model M.

I have a proper keyboard[1], thank you very much. It also destroys a Microsoft Sculpt in terms of ergonomics.

1. https://www.kinesis-ergo.com/shop/advantage2/

How do you like this keyboard?

I love it SO much. I wouldn't be able to be a software engineer without it. The amount of neck, shoulder, elbow, forearm, wrist and hand pain I once had is now gone completely. Not to mention I am a much faster and more accurate typist.

Data point added! Thank you.

I've definitely been on a bit of a kick lately trying to make my work setup as healthy as possible.

I re-bought everything, chair, monitor stand, electronically raising desk, keyboard, two vertical mice - for left hand and right hand. I didn't find it that hard to use a left handed mouse as a right handed person but your mileage may vary. I swap between the two throughout the day.

I think out of all of those, having the monitor at the right height, vertical mouse, kinesis advantage and then using a pomodoro timer are the best bang for buck. The standing desk is nice but not really essential in my opinion. Just getting up and walking after a 25-30m pomodoro session is good enough.

I have a Kinesis ergonomic keyboard with Cherry Red mechanical switches, without it I get wrist pain.

They are like Accelerationists, bringing about the end of an undesirable system by increasing the damage it causes until it cannot be ignored.

Drifting rather off-topic here, but why credit the "heighten the contradictions" strategy to a weird modern academic cult? Rebranding Leninist ideas about sabotage, I guess, makes it seem fresh to the rubes. Never mind that attempting to time social and political systems doesn't work much better than timing the market, and if you get it wrong, you're just being a horrible person. (Assuming your underlying goals are good ones to begin with.)

Because it's a cute one word term?

I've seen the concept mentioned in writing from the 1800s, and you can probably see it even further back. I don't know if it's that modern ;)

I have never suffered the tyranny of an open office. I do use a loud keyboard and honestly can't imagine going without it.

I am easily distracted by sensory stimuli. It ruins my concentration. At home I have some nice in ear noise isolating ear buds and some of those ear muffs designed for yard work. My children can, and do, reenact world wars on the hard woods above me and I can't hear it.

If I ever were in an open office, when I do deep work, those things would stay on.

So I sympathize, but the open office puts knowledge workers who need to concentrate and type in a lose / lose environment.

This is why I gave up my old IBM Model M for a quieter DAS Model S. I don't really want to type on cheaper mushy keyboards, so this is a nice compromise.

I have had mechanical keyboards four different offices (1 cube, 3 open workspaces) and got very lucky with people either not minding or, at one company, a co-worker saying "that's music to my hears."

I've had a friend on the wrong floor at one company who had to switch to MX Browns with o-ring dampeners.

If a company banned me from using a mech keyboard entirely, I'd start looking for another job.

If you're going to use a mechanical keyboard in an open office have the courtesy to at least install dampeners.

"Hey everyone, I'm working!"

Personally I'd rather listen to mechanical keyboards rather than people having meetings at their desks, I can fairly easily tune out non-human sounds... Unfortunately not many people seem to have them despite my office being the 'geekiest' in the Seattle region. sigh

Brown-type switches are OK, it's the blue-type keys that are problematic.

I was told my brown switches were horrendous :(

It's the keys bottoming out. Add some rubber o-rings to dampen that sound.

That only works for some keycap profiles, if you use DSA or SA profile then you can't really dampen them well.

Learning to type without bottoming out not only will mostly elliminate the noise of brown switches but also reduce the shock tranmitted to the fingers. Ever since I stopped bottoming out (except for the spacebar and pinky-operated backspace) my typing comfort went up a lot.

Was once commended on my hard work since a manager could hear my constant typing on my Browns. Annoyed a lot of people in the process, of course.

Funny thing about loud keyboards. A few years ago my company had a programming pit, and I could tell when ever one of my younger programmers was chatting with a friend rather than working. His typing rate would go from 20 wpm to 100 wpm. FYI I quickly abandoned the programming pit, back to quite workspaces for all!

In most cases, it's the keys bottoming out rather the switches. Guy in our office with a membrane keyboard who smashes the keys into oblivion is far louder than the two mechanical keyboards in the same space.

I have brown keys and bottoming out is definitely the noisy part.

Buy some o-rings, they really do help with the bottoming out noise. Alternatively, train yourself not to bottom out.

After some coworkers complained I bought some o-rings for my brown-switch keyboard. It's much quieter although there are now other keyboards in the room that aren't quietened.

Still I like the newer quietened version, so I'm considering buying some more for my home keyboard (it is an identical model).

Yep. Kinesis Advantage plus o-rings is plenty quiet.

By the way, I cannot type without bottoming out, and I suspect this is something many people simply cannot learn to do. My hands will just not cooperate. I use Topre switches, which are supposedly quite ideal for practicing this magical voodoo typing technique, and when pressing a key enough to activate it but not bottom out, I have about a 50-50 chance of not activating the key at all. It's not something that's ever going to get better with practice, and frankly, I'm not personally aware of any detrimental effects of my bad bottom-out typing.

I use a topre too, and I bottomed out too, as it turned out that blues a lot better in terms of teaching you not to bottom out (because they have an audible click which provides you about the feedback of the actuation point).

I'd recommend to get used blue and try it out.

you can get o-rings to dampen the bottoming-out of the keycap.

I use green switches with o-rings in a semi-open office layout and the only people who have ever noticed it are other mech enthusiasts. Browns with o-rings would be even quieter than greens.

I used to work in a room with over 300 Model M's. I think I have PTSD from it. Machine gun fire from 9am til 5pm.

Yeah, but he's talking about the conversion kits to digitize input on a typewriter. That's next level annoying.

Wait, that's a thing? (Quickly Googling...) OMG, that's a thing.

People in the office are still using old-school typewriters for certain official documents, so I expect I can get away with it. If I can't concentrate due to existing office noise, I may as well have some fun. Thanks!

I used to be the blue-vs-brown guy (mostly because my brown keyboard made a lot less sound that my coworker's blue), but then I tried his keyboard and let him try mine and it turned out that it wasn't about the keyboard switches, rather it was about the person using them. My blues made a lot less sound than his browns.

I have all that, and the best part is I don't need to commute. :) Working remotely is perfect.

Working remotely is probably the most-likely trend to supplant open offices. It doesn't cost the company any hard cash (like real offices would), and any productivity differences are nearly invisible, as they are with open offices.

I used to work out of an open-floor co-working space. I just moved to a new space that's 2x the price, just because it comes with an enclosed office.

I'm so glad I did it. If I can get just a few more hours of productivity each month then the upgrade pays for itself.

Make sure you ask for a ceiling as well. I asked for a small office and I got one. It doesn't have ceiling because my boss didn't want to put one, for whatever reason, so it is useless.

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