I agree with the same concerns that Raimo and Markus have. It's not just acoustic noise, it's also visual noise. I face the entry to our open floor plan office and every time someone walks in I can't help but look to see who it is.

One man offices are cheap and by far the most productive work environment for software development. Any software development organization that's not investing in them isn't thinking strategically. Engineers should be able to face somewhere that's not distracting, and have a quiet work environment without requiring headphones (music can be a distraction too). If you want to collaborate, do it in your office, it should be big enough for a couple people to join you, or a conference room if you need more.

The only criticism I have for one man offices is that it makes it too easy to goof off and surf the web, but that's a different managerial problem. You should make sure all the offices have glass walls so you can see if someone is in their office and have an idea what they are doing. But mainly you should review all code as it's checked in for quality, and it should also give you a good idea of their productivity.

I think Apple has the best idea for this. Their work pods at the new campus have all glass walls facing the hallway, sliding doors to maximize room in the office, and built in storage. There looks to be plenty of room for a couple of coworkers to join you and help collaborate when need be.

> "Get... ceiling baffles for the whole office."

Yes please! At least this. For some reason there has been this huge trend with new buildings to just have exposed concrete ceilings and HVAC plant. Why? Seemingly because it's "cool" and how the "start ups" do it. (Back when a start up meant working from a low cost warehouse.) But ceiling baffles were there for a very good reason, to dampen and prevent reflection of noise in office spaces. How did we forget this?

EDIT: (At the last place I worked like this their solution was to install white noise generators on the ceiling. So the whole place was like being on an aircraft and very sleep inducing.)

I'm not sure the problem is with the physical decibel level of office noise at all. My workplace is silent as a tomb, we all have our own offices with closing doors, and I still bring headphones to work.

Sure, even something little as phone chatter can be distracting, but the main distractions come from people just passing by and saying 'hi', or worse, actually needing something from me and interrupting my work. Headphones and a closed door tend to signal that I'm busy, but even then someone will knock on the window and see if they can come in.

People are intentionally distracting, and I think it's something that's way harder to fix than just a stop light indicating noise level. It has to be "fixed" on multiple levels. Having an office culture of "just stop by their desk" is a huge problem, but I can't imagine being unavailable because there's so many distractions that really are urgent and need my synchronous interaction right now. That's a tough thing to fix.

Something about this doesn't feel right, I want to call it "passive aggressive" but that doesn't feel right either.

In an open office I've always felt that headphones were the best solution to the need for peace. I feel like spontaneous dialog would be cut short by this solution more often than being moved.

I guess what works for one may not work for another, and the frequency and varying views on this topic reminds me of the "tabs vs spaces" discussions.

p.s. tabs

We are asked not to lead with negativity on HN, but once in a while an article comes through that just screams out as requiring an exception.

Asking people to reduce the noise level is straight up a horrible idea. Especially the obnoxious /noisy command and the nanny state thinking it encourages.

I thrive and get in the zone when there is plenty of noise and varied conversation around me. I know that many people feel the same way. A quiet office is the worst for maintaining focus, as then any little conversation will stand out and catch my attention.

And I say all this not as a loud person. Quite the opposite.

I almost never use headphones; don't need to because the office is noisy enough to stay in a good coding zone. But having some social stigma about wearing them, that would be bad.

Sometimes people wear headphones because they find listening to music helps them work, regardless of the noise level in the office.

I wouldn't have to wear AirPods beneath 30dB landscaper earmuffs to get shit done if management would do something about the 5% of noisy people polluting the common space we all have to sit in. The best office layout would be the one that puts the inconsiderate primates behind soundproofing.

Slightly OT, but any recommendations for an alternative to music with headphones?

The reason I'm asking is because I don't think I could concentrate with any form of music. I tried some "fake cafe sound" and I still felt distracted (more than I do in a real cafe). White noise? Ear plugs? Binaural beats?

I actually work from home with my wife across the desk. We have a relatively quiet environment, with no or very low volume music playing. I'm not hyper sensitive to noise at all. But I would still like to be able to isolate myself completely some time to focus. So just wondering if there are any tips.

I have read dozens of articles like this and as a developer, it would be great to work at a place like that: WFH option, non-open plan layout / 4-man offices. But the people who want that are rarely the ones in a position to implement that sort of environment. So nothing ever changes.

As a software engineer, unfortunately, the sound sources that drive me to the edge of insanity are things like loud typing, or hands fishing around for chips in a bag. While I feel totally comfortable asking people to quiet down a conversation, there is something too personal about asking someone to consider, specifically, how must force they drop down on the space bar. I like the idea behind /noisey, but I feel like I may be alone in being concerned that no one would register these fringe noise sources when considering their contribution to a soundscape. There probably isn't a good solution, so headphones will have to do.

Depending on roles, it can make sense to do the following:

- have reservable floating offices and various sized-conference rooms w/ doors

- some dedicated offices w/ doors

- some open layout for pair coding, but not exclusively

- some casual multipurpose hangout/couch meeting/work/relax areas

- remote work from home, coffee-shop, beach, mountain top, etc.

- perhaps an discreet workspace indicator (web + IoT physical) that says (perhaps using color codes):

- out for the day

- out temporarily

- free to socialize (which auto-suggests people to chat with in this state)

- working

- do not disturb, unless it's an emergency

This way, there's more choice and people can self-select some common-sense and have enough variety to not get stuck in open floor-plan, panacea, audio-visual-social distraction hell.

My current office is pretty ideal for me. We have 6 devs, and we sit in a room with a door. It's quiet, but we can hear if there is a concern or something going on that requires attention. The issue with single person offices is that you'll miss when somebody is discussing an issue they're having, maybe they mention it offhandedly, and you know the solution.

That said, I would still vastly prefer an office to myself than a god awful open-floor bullshit abomination. How anybody can work in that kind of environment boggles my mind.

I increasingly suspect visual and auditory noise are symptoms rather than problems. The underlying problem may boil down to this: while easy collaboration helps us be productive, having our own space also helps us be productive.

Here's an idea: every worker should get their own big desk, maybe an L-shaped one, with file cabinets and ample storage, and even shelves and walls behind the desk that they could put up memos, calendars, whatever. But they don't have to be completely walled-off little offices. Don't give them doors; don't make the walls go all the way to the ceiling. This would greatly reduce visual noise, and combined with good acoustic design for the rest of the office (as the article touches on), it would at the least cut down on auditory noise--and more importantly, it would make it so going over to talk to a coworker in person required just a little more effort than it does in an open office. Collaboration would still be pretty easy, but raising a little more barrier than the current fashion might improve concentration and, dare I say, the little bit of emotional boost that comes from having your own perceived space.

I'm not sure what we would call these purely hypothetical half-wall workspaces--these "cubicles," if you will--though....

The traffic light reminds me of SoundEar [1], noise monitors which were popular in Swedish classrooms fifteen years ago (and might still be). It worked well in my seventh grade classroom.

I'm not so sure about the red light being manual trigger only. I think it's better to decide objectively on what the desirable noise level should be.

[1]: http://soundear.com/

The company I work for has open plan offices — it's a US company with multiple offices worldwide. The specific one I work from is small, and devs and non-devs are _mixed_ together.

Whenever I tried to bring up noise-related issues and made specific proposals, I felt I was ignored because of a) clash of cultures (non-devs might not understand/value "being in the zone" [1]), b) spending money in sound-proofing is seen as a cost, not an investment.

What worries me the most is that in the course of a few years I haven't heard any internal voices putting open plan offices in doubt. This office layout looks to be seen as a good default with problems that are either ignored or that people have to learn to live with.

So I wonder if the situation is similar in other companies with open plan offices, and whether people see there's any trend to question the given default or not.

[1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/19/where-do-these-peo...

> " This is where Noisy comes into play, a small Slackbot I wrote that enables people to anonymously raise the issue for everyone else to see"

It's a good idea, but it might be counterproductive to message everyone that they're being too noisey; that might contribute to the noise

I am so happy to work 100% remote. Interruptions and noise are real productivity killers to me.

> "I assembled this chart to show how this can already have an impact five days into the experiment..."

https://rradczewski.github.io/ymmv/assets/office_noise_noisy...

I don't think this chart demonstrates your point. Don't you want people to eventually stop needing to use Noisy at all? As of now the chart just shows that more people are familiar with the Slack command.

I would also be interested in knowing how large the team is that this is being tested on.

I often have the opposite problem. We are like 15 people in our office, and some are very sound sensitive. I feel like I can't even properly discuss things with my other colleagues or even peer program out of fear of disturbing the others.

If you are really that sensitive get earplugs, instead of cussing at others!

I'm a big fan of this. Work environments should be optimized for productivity. Most software is a team sport, so they should generally be optimized for team productivity.

What that means will be different for everybody. But for me I've had the best results with team-specific spaces that have some visual and noise isolation from other teams and wandering interruptions. I also like to have clear separate space for non-whole-team discussions and for hanging out.

Places where everybody gets in and cranks up their headphones to protect from the madness strike me as the modern noise equivalent of the 1960s/1970s rivers that were basically open industrial sewers. [1] If that's what it's like, you might as well let people work remote, as you've already lost most of the productivity gains that come from close collaboration.

But those gains really can be amazing, so personally I'm going to keep pursuing them.

[1] E.g., the Ohio river that caught on fire: https://clevelandhistorical.org/items/show/63

> GitHub, Slack, Screenhero, Hangout etc will make sure nothing gets lost and we stay up to date. Except for that you miss being challenged at the soccer table … just sayin’.

Sometimes when you're not there at the meeting in person, your point isn't taken as seriously.

I like the idea of acoustic padding and visual blockers. My desk is in a darker area with lots of conversation and visual noise. Can anyone recommend how to set up padding and simulate sunlight without being weird/blinding others?

Hopefully when we start using voice activation as much as we now use the mouse, then the open office space will become a thing of the past.

One can hope.

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I've read so many articles about people who can't stand noisy offices, but the only complaint I've ever heard from co-workers IRL is the office being too quiet. If it's quiet, no one is collaborating.

What I dislike even more than noise, is smoking. Smokers stink all day, sometimes smoke gets in via doors/windows and wind streams, it has always been my worst trouble, to avoid that