Sometimes I think one of the more important innovations in development technology is the headphone. Open-plan development without great ways to block out noise would be ridiculous.
If I ever have another company, if I can't afford the office space, I don't need the person. Office space is cheap compared to salary and wasted productivity.
I was miserable working by myself in a private office.
Life is better now I work from home. It's better to have the kids screaming in the background than people tapping your shoulder and blasting your entire thought process out of the window.
I work in an open plan office. I don't wear headphones. Yes, it's annoying. Yes, it's distracting. Yes, it's better than losing my hearing.
Also, noise cancelling headphones can allow you to listen to music at quieter than the office's ambient volume.
I've been listening to headphones all day, most days at work for 15 or so years. No hearing problems.
Well, none that can be put down to headphone use, last time I got tested apparently they found conductive hearing loss in my left ear and asked if I'd had a head injury o_O
You can get a good 10db attenuation from just closed back headphones alone.
Thanks for the idea. :)
http://www.earplugstore.com/ultrafit25.html
When I'm feeling like I really need quiet I'll throw on a pair of ear muffs on top of that. The only caveat is that you need to be comfortable with silence: the ear plugs will really cut down on background noise (e.g. AC and TV).
In my experience the levels you need to drown everything out (to a manageable level and with closed headphones) is way lower for white/brown noise than it is for music.
However, in the case where the open floorplan is simply an office cost savings measure that puts mixed goals in a small collocated area, then yes, headphones..
(Disclaimer; Microsoft employee without a personal office, quite jealous of those with.)
Open offices can only work, IMO, when there's a breakout room, or in general some sort of closed door room anyone can jump into and get things done or have a 4 person meeting. There's just no escaping the need to have privacy for the point of thinking, or even privacy for the point of talking. Maybe there's a perfect job in a perfect world where everything is open, but in my experience, there's a need to get away from the group once in a while, either alone or with a group.
There are these sort of offices available, but the problem is the cost of the context switching, a distraction being an involuntary context switch.
So many people focus on open vs private offices and miss the whole point of which one is better for when.
Realistically, getting the choice seems to be more encouraging.
I'm, unfortunately, at an open office as a cost savings measure type place and without headphones I would get absolutely _nothing_ done.
I believe the last role took the biscuit, though....
Open plan with hotdesking and lockers... Primary coloured lockers, so it looked like a poor man's GooglePlex. Where the meagre budget had run out halfway through.
You could never be sure where you would be the next morning, or next to whom (inc. constantly teleconferencing middle managers). There were two banks of desks with dual monitors, supposedly reserved for developers. Sometimes, non-technical personnel would grab them, and not even use the monitors... Just their laptop screens (for Outlook, basically).
That was slightly irksome :-)
But you'd probably go insane in my working environment, which is in a house surrounded by fields miles from a city with no one else in it, except me.
Point is, you should tailor the spaces to the individuals working in them. There is no Generic Industry Standard Employee. Which is why trying to enforce Generic Industry Standard Working Environments is maybe not such an effective way to get cool stuff out the door.
As for Agile etc - it's a 20th century methodology, not a 21st century one.
I have no idea what 21st century software development is going to look like. Nor does anyone else, because no one has invented it yet.
Good for you. Not everyone can.
Google for "more productive at coffee shops".
That would seem to suggest that maybe private offices aren't quite always best
I suspect whether one can work better with some background 'noise' (sounds and sights) is partly a personality characteristic, but that interruptions are universally disastrous when one tries to be productive.