I’ve always struggled with the noise in typical office environments. It’s conversational noise that’s the problem. If there is any kind of conversation going on within earshot, the part of my brain that deals with language just tunes in to it. I can’t help it, I just have to listen! Of course, that part of my brain is also used for reading and writing documents and code, so it makes it very difficult to get work done. I suspect I suffer from this more than most other people. Every office I have ever worked in was too noisy for me, even the so-called quiet ones. In fact, the quiet ones can be worse. If everyone is talking at once, the individual conversations become part of the general background noise and it’s hard to distinguish each conversation. But in a quiet office where there is one single conversation going on you can hear every word clearly.
I may have a particular problem with this, but I think the problem occurs to some extent for all developers. The effect of noise and interruptions on programmer productivity was covered extensively in the excellent book Peopleware. I’d love it if more companies recognised that developers need quiet time to get their work done, and gave them private offices. But I’ve never seen this in any of the companies I’ve worked for, and I don’t really expect it to start happening any time soon. If anything, the problem’s getting worse, as more and more offices get built or renovated in an open plan style. Continue reading