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Comment by Thaxll | Hacker News Reader

Get a Bose QC 35, it will change your life and also your future flights.

Unfortunately headphones and noise cancellation don't help with the fight vs. flight reflex that gets automatically triggered by foot traffic near your desk or especially behind your back. This is why reaching a state of flow and getting really productive is just totally impossible in an open-plan office setting period. The most basic requirement for being able to focus is privacy. Quiet is also important, but not nearly as important as privacy.

Many people also find the physical feeling of anything covering / touching / inside their ear to be too uncomfortable to focus, ruling out all possibilities of headphones, earbuds or earplugs from consideration. And even more, lots of people have sensitivity to music that distracts them or makes them feel tired very quickly. And in severe enough cases, someone can have full-blown misophonia, and truly need the ability to completely customize their workspace in order to totally control all sounds during periods when they need to focus.

I know your advice might help some people, but I really wish there was a way en masse that developers could communicate that headphones absolutely do not solve the problems created by open-plan office layouts (one of the main destroyers of focus). It's sad that as a collection of workers, we've allowed ourselves to be put into this position by not demanding private offices and turning down jobs that won't provide such a cost-effective tool.

Open plan offices for any kind of knowledge work should be made illegal since they are a health hazard. Private offices should be the norm.

This would benefit everyone as open plans destroy productivity. The "free market" (oligopoly) has obviously failed here so the state needs to step in.

I know most people here would find this drastic, but I agree with you. We already have things like OSHA to regulate workplace safety procedures. We legislate things about break times, overtime, etc.

I think creating a specification that office workers must be given a certain measurable protection against general workplace noise and a certain minimum of private floorspace in which to work, would be quite reasonable.

I wonder if a change.org petition or something would be worthwhile.

I tried making a poll to gauge interest in the possibility of a petition or general support for disallowing open-plan offices, but it quickly dropped out of the first page of “new” posts...

< https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17558732 >

I own the Bose QC25 and have never really been happy with its capability to block human voices. Perhaps the QC35 are better. I also read that the Sony noise cancelling headphones (MDR-1000x and successors) have eclipsed the Bose ones in noise-cancelling quality. Anyhow, having to charge (or change batteries) for headphones every day is really annoying.

My current setup involves in-ear monitors (Massdrop x MEE Audio Pinnacle PX IEM) plus gigantic 3M Peltor X5A earmuffs on top of them [1].

I look ridiculous wearing the 3M Peltor X5A but it sends a strong message that I don't want to be disturbed, and they do a much better job than the Bose headphones at blocking human voices.

I have read that an alternative is to wear headphones on top of in-ear monitors, playing music on the IEMs and white noise on the headphones. This is the setup for Starcraft II professional gamers in tournament settings, for example.

[1] pic: https://pics.dllu.net/file/dllu-pics/20180716_151629.jpg

The QC25’s are on sale right now for $120 which I’ve heard is insanely cheap. Do you still not recommend them for that cheap of a price? I was just about to bite the bullet on it.

> for $120 which I’ve heard is insanely cheap

What? My earphones are $15. What do $120 headphones do to deserve being 8 times more expensive?

Active noise cancellation?

Why the downvotes? Is my surprise at seeing $120 headphones considered as cheap somehow inappropriate for the site?

downvotes for comparing headphones without active noise cancellation to headphones that have very good noise cancellation.

until you try them, you wouldn't understand.

and yes, that is cheap considering that NC headphones typically go for $299 and up

Many have said that noise cancellation does not work for coworkers' voices. Is that your experience or are these for another reason?

If you listen to music on normal volume while the noise cancellation is on, you can drown out anything.

I used to do that, and got tinnitus. Now, I try to keep the volume pretty low

Hm that sounds kind of worrying, but maybe we have different definitions of normal volume? I've been using noise cancelling headphones pretty much daily for 3 years and still no tinnitus in sight.

I also had some sinus issues that likely contributed. I really did have the headphones on for at least 8 hours a day. Then going home watching TV, not getting enough sleep. I'm guessing it all added up.

Sorry to hear that. Hope you're doing better now.

That depends on the distance -- it won't work for coworkers very close to you, but anyone more than a few meters (depending on volume) will be removed.

Though keep in mind that they remove noise, so things like fans are going to be gone, but they aren't made to shut everything out.

It depends on the distance from your co-workers, how loud they talk, and how much you are willing to damage your hearing to drown them out.

And also on your office's acoustics.

Agreed. And your office's arrangement/open-ness

The QC's don't completely wash out background noise. If you listen to your music loud enough (which is probably too loud), you literally won't hear anything around you. But normal use, I find that it muffles outside voices enough not to get distracted, but not so much to the point where if someone says my name I can respond. An added plus, is people will bother you less if you're wearing them. Sometimes I like wearing them without listening to any music, just to create a quieter environment.

I do this too, sometimes I just don't want to listen to other people in the other.

On a plane I find that I can actually hear voices better, because the background of the plane is gone. I don’t believe people who say “noise canceling headphones”, because they just don’t work that way. You’d need both the headphones and music or something, and having to listen to music all day can be just as fatiguing.

I have been having this problem too

Can also recommend the Sony WH1000XM2 cans for the exact same reason.

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