Ask HN: How do you cope with a loud office? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you cope with a loud office?

10 pointsPaul_S23 comments

I am a programmer and I work in an open plan office with a 100 people. The office as a whole isn't excessively noisy (there are people talking but it's not trading floor level) but I sit next to 4 managers which means constant traffic and impromptu meetings happening next to me all day, every day. I already asked to be moved, unsuccessfully. I have good reasons not to quit. Do you have any advice or ideas on how to deal with it and help me concentrate?

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My current, not very imaginative solution is to use headphones and listen to heavy metal music. I use regular, closed back, circumaural headphones. IEMs aren't comfortable enough to use all day, and noise cancelling headphones don't work on office noise. I'm worried I'm getting "addicted" and can no longer concentrate without listening to metal. I'm not even a metal-head, it's just that it provides constant sound that Bach simply cannot (maybe except some of his organ works). When I was younger I wondered why so many coders listened to metal at work. Could this be it?

It doesn't need to be metal probably. Anything that provides constant sound is fine with me. That means anything from random metal to Deep Purple to Porcupine Tree to Air to Radio Head is on my "work" playlist. Singers / song writers don't give the same result to me since there are many breaks where I can hear office sounds shortly and it ruins the mood :(

I'm sure everyone can find something they like that contains fairly continuous stream of music with lyrics that don't force you to listen.

Hmmm, gives me an idea. Maybe if I ran all the songs through sox to create a spectrogram for each and then use graphicsmagick on the spectrograms to count up the black pixels (silence or quiet sound) I could create a playlist of solid and continuous sound songs... or I could just stick to Helloween.

Why not white (or pink or brown) noise?

Here's what works for me:

I usually have Itunes and Grooveshark open simultaneously, playing the following two things:

Itunes:

Pink noise/Brown noise, bring the volume up until it eliminates outside voices. Binaural Tones work well too. You'll have to do a bit of hunting to find the right sound, some will be too harsh on the ears. Try http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/mindwave-pro-binaural-tones... or http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/white-noise-for-sleep-singl...

Grooveshark:

Some ambient music, volume set to around 30-40% of Itunes. Something like http://grooveshark.com/#!/s/Music+For+Tundra+Part+1/2Wc6OO?s...

Searching up Tim Hecker on Grooveshark will do the trick, trust me, but any lyric-less music that creates a "soundscape" is ideal. You'll have to adjust the volumes to something that works for you, but I basically try to create effective background-reducing noise that isn't too repetitive.

Noise-cancelling headphones aren't good at blocking voices, so I also have a pair of over-the-ear passive noise-reduction hearing protectors, that work pretty well. Cheap, too, you can get them for around $10-$20. Mine have some kind of liquid in the ear pads, intended to help keep them feeling cool.

Look for them online, or in a sporting goods store (in the hunting/shooting gear area) or in a hardware store.

I've tried earplugs, but a) they aren't as visible, so people try to talk to you, then you have to pull them out, which is a little gross; and b) my ear canals get irritated.

I used to listen to music, but in the last decade or so that's become more distracting to me.

I like it when people have to repeat themselves 3-4 because they didn't notice the headphones or ear plugs.

It usually sends a message:

"Not now chief. I'm in the zone."

Personally, I feel that ear plugs make me look rude. So I get the next best thing, in-ear headphones. A good pair should cost anywhere from $100 - $400 (Good as in last for years, and you can get stuff that doesn't hurt your ears and fits well). I listen to mainly instrumental and consistently use the same playlist so that it eventually becomes background noise.

The noise cancelling headphones I have work wonderfully for voices. Though, they need some music playing in order to be effective, they don't just work by themselves. They work so well that people have to come up and actually stand where I can see them before I notice them.

Would you care to share the model? I've never encountered any that I thought worked well for voices.

Sure, Audio Technica ATH-ANC7B

I face the same problem at my workplace.

Here are some of the things that I do when noise around in the office starts distracting me:

1) Put on headphones and play music that I like.

2) If the work is really demanding, would need absolute concentration and that too for a long time, I prefer leaving office early in the day and come next morning at least 2-3 hours before others start filling in. Or sometimes, I come back to office after dinner.

I do actually sometimes do that - move the work over to the afternoon but I don't want to do it as it means staying longer at the office. The work efficiency difference is massive but it's my time.

Plus, if you shift your work hours (assuming your boss is OK with it), your commute will be much better because you're not traveling during rush hour.

I shifted my work hours ahead by two hours and cut down my commute by a half hour each way, and those first two hours are my most productive (no meetings, no urgent emails, no loud conversations next door). I highly recommend it.

Yeah, quitting would definitely be an overreaction.

How about telecommuting? Let your manager know that noise levels really bug you given where you sit, and ask for a trial run. Then use the trial run as an entry point: code at a coffee shop or library, then add your manager to the commit. Voila! Evidence that telecommuting lets you produce!

FWIW, I occasionally do this, (and my manager is very supportive of it) but I've found in-ear headphones to be sufficient.

Telecommuting isn't on offer. Back in the 80s, when they promised that by year 2000 almost everyone would be working from home, they were lying. I feel more cheated on this than on personal jet-packs. I don't work in a startup, it's just a boring old medium sized company. You have to be at the office 10-5, no exceptions. Did I mention I'm not in the US?

Sad.

I jump in the coding soundtrack room on turntable.fm and put on the headphones.

My suggestions, of perhaps limited use/viability:

1) Work remotely/virtually. You may have to initiate this as a perk. (I saw your comment about this not being a ready option.) You've done particularly well during one review period, and they're seeking to reward you (preferably without spending too much -- if your environment is similar to some I'm familiar with). Introduce the idea/desire to work one day a week remote. One out of five may not seem too risky. Add some personal arguments, and the savings on commute expense (maybe the business has some degree of "green" initiative or attitude, however real or "for show" it may be).

If you get the occasional day remote, build a track record of its particular effectiveness and an argument for (eventually) increasing this. Ease them into it. And be very careful/mindful of avoiding breeding co-worker resentment. Keep your head down, and cast it in terms of "needed/required" as opposed to a perk.

2) Re-evaluate your need/desire to stay. You may have a lot invested. But, how much do you risk if you burn out? And how quickly will they, in turn, throw you under the bus if you do?

Akin to this: BE PRO-ACTIVE. Like a canoe-er or other river-goer, you have to maintain some forward momentum in order to maintain control.

I went through a series of positions and organizational changes that left me extremely exposed to disruptive noise. I compensated until I burned out. At which point I ended up "under the bus".

You don't want that. And, again, pay very close attention to the loyalty you think or assume is present on the side of the organization. Upon what it is contingent. And how quickly, and through how many or few staff changes, that might change.

Finally, I'll mention that there are some businesses that sell "background noise". One has CD's of e.g. fan noise, wind, rain, brook, clothes dryer noise (also good for some infants, I understand), etc. Another has -- or used to have; I haven't checked in a while -- a program with adjustable parameters that would produce specifically incomprehensible, pseudo-roomful/cafe-conversations type noise. They also had some pre-generated recordings, useful where one can't run the program (e.g. a constrained work environment).

P.S. Dug up a few links. I've purchased from the Ear Plug Superstore. By coincidence, part of Farhad Manjoo's NYT article may read a bit like a promotion for them, but at a skim appears to have useful information. And the top response in the Quora thread might be of interest.

Quick and by no means comprehensive nor particularly ranked, but FWIW:

http://www.earplugstore.com/

http://www.earplugstore.com/whitenoisecds1.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/07/garden/noise-cancelling-de...

http://www.quora.com/Whats-the-best-set-of-noise-canceling-h...

When I was in this situation I used noise canceling headphones playing lyric-free music, and a pair of sunglasses on my desk so I could notice movement directly behind me.

That bit wit the sunglasses is quite clever. A mirror without announcing to others that you're using one. I'll keep that one in mind.

I have worked on trading floor most of my corporate life so far. I am so used to loud noise, paper planes, ball throwing, swearing etc. that I forget sometimes that loud noise is actually a hinderance at work. People like us consider it a part of work culture even though we may not like it. My advice: Use headphones. Talk to your manager again about moving. If you do not sit with other team members, may be you can get moved if you continue trying.

The trading floor description strikes me as what I think of as the "cafe experience". In a busy cafe (e.g. the one next to the university, a few towns over), all the conversations can "blend" into a wall of sound that lacks much in the way of consistently distinguishable components. As a result, my brain stops trying to pick out the pieces, and my concentration actually rises.

It's still exhausting, though, over the long term. 2 - 3 hours, typically, and I am somewhat fried. But it's at a subconscious level, rather than e.g. the frustration of the cubemate who insists on making speakerphone phone calls, or the one who's personal volume is always set to "11".

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