Hacker News Reader

Comment by homosaphien1 | Hacker News Reader

I might be in the minority but I HATE cubicle farms and love open office design. Just give every a sound cancellation headphone if they complain. To me cubical farms are depressing.

View on HN

There are many of us who code in spurts, and spend the rest of the time goofing off on Reddit or hacker news. At the same time, we'd prefer not to get judged on what percentage of time we have Facebook open on our monitors, and more on the work we do. But when everyone can see what you're doing, it's hard to get rid of the nagging feeling that you're being watched.

It's not really goofing off, I absolutely work in several focused spurts during the day. Which is also why I'm never that fussed about turning up on time because I never do any real work in the morning anyway.

Can't dig it out now but John Cleese did a good talk on creativity explaining why this works and how brains solve problems in the background which is why inspiration hits in the shower and on the train. By alternating between focusing then procrastinating and ignoring work you can force a decent cadence of creativity into your work.

That's why working from home is the holy grail :D

The thing is sound cancelling headphones tend to cancel out noise, not conversation. So they actually make things worse for those of us who need to think occasionally.

For me, its not just about the sound. I can easily lose focus by being visually over-stimulated too, and there's no way to fix that except for cubicles.

> Just give every a sound cancellation headphone if they complain. To me cubical farms are depressing.

Just give everyone some anti-depressants if they complain?

Just give "them a good whack" if they complain. FTFY

> Just give every a sound cancellation headphone if they complain.

God dammit.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com