A somewhat related question: I'm about to start a job at a company with "open office" structure, after having my own office for the last 4 years. Anything I should be prepared for?
* On top of the direct impact of interruptions and distractions, you'll want to be aware of the way you are seen to react to them.
Pay attention to who the rest of the office does or doesn't attend to when that person decides to convene a huddle or start soapboxing - regardless of the topic
Dutifully working away under your headphones when a ranking person is looking for attention is a great way to end up labeled in a bad way.
* Don't mistake an open floor plan for an open structure. Be careful about who you accept work from / collaborate with / delegate to until you understand the landscape.
Want a quick heuristic to know who matters in the company? Watch the people that steal the conference rooms every day to do work. Make friends with them.
I've worked in both environments and my productivity (not to mention my morale, overall happiness, etc, which are likely related) were much, much higher in a non-open seating environment. Even shared offices (2 people to an office) were far better -- still much easier to avoid distractions because you don't get cafeteria-style escalation of volumes from different conversations and people are far more likely to be sound-considerate in a 2 person setting (especially if both are developers... don't mix devs with sales).
It is virtually impossible for me to hit real states of "flow" in an open office. Unfortunately the industry has gone bonkers and it is really difficult to find developer jobs that aren't using open office layouts anymore. I'm at the point now though where the next time I am looking for a job I will assign a lot of value to any company that provides real offices or allows nearly full-time remote work.
I've also worked in both, and have been far (far) happier in an open office layout, to the point where I'll never work in a closed-door office layout again. It's so isolating and depressing to me. Sure, I could get into a flow -- that's all I could do. I'd go to work and work for 8 hours a day, not talking to anyone. A pretty miserable existence.
Also why I could never work remotely/from home, I guess.
Having used both noise-canceling and noise-isolating headphones, I'd recommend going for noise-isolating headphones, at least if you expect office chatter to be your major irritant. Most active noise-canceling systems do best with constant sounds and not so well with random bursts of speech.
I use Beyerdynamic Custom One Pro headphones and am pretty happy with them. They don't provide complete isolation, but they do block out a lot of sound, and I don't need to play constant music to make up for bad noise cancellation.
For a cheaper solution, wear earplugs and just put on some crappy headphones for the visual signal.
When I worked at a big company with an open office wore ear plugs while also wearing earphones, on really high volume. It was like I had my own office.
Is it a case where you have to take the job because you need the money? If so, fair enough, but always remember 'have to take this job today' doesn't imply 'have to stay in it indefinitely'. Go ahead and start work in the open office, but in the meantime put out feelers, be quietly looking for a job that will give you a private office or let you work at home. The best situation in which to be looking for a job with your preferred conditions is one where you aren't desperate to find something quickly.
While well-written, his conclusions on a number of headphones (particularly the extreme love for the AKG K551s) seem a little idiosyncratic. It's worth cross-referencing any of his suggestions with head-fi or other review sources.
I have found that whatever peace blocking noise gives you, it is more than offset by the paranoia of being watched or the terror of people sneaking up behind you.
For me visual distractions (even if it is just people walking) are a lot worse than noise. I can tune out the chatter but whenever I feel or see movement around me, my head snaps to attention to find out what it is. Some evolutionary thing most likely
I have had this happen to me a few times. Really into my work with my ear phones & music playing, can hear nothing besides my music. Turn to the side and my co-worker is there waiting on me to go over something. Scares the *$#$ at of me every time.
FWIW, I've seen some people attach a small convex mirror to the edge of their monitor to avoid this kind of surprise. I'd expect this is just trading audio distractions for visual ones, though.
Unless you fly or are muting HVAC or server room sounds, I haven't found that noise-cancelling headphones are superior to isolating (close-backed circumaurals or in-ear monitors). NC doesn't work well for voices, and the extra expense tends to put them into "I'm too paranoid to keep them on my desk" category.
I'd save the $$$ and just go for a nice pair of isolating ones.
I've also become a huge fan of wireless headphones for the added mobility--I switch between a few different computers and monitors, and not wrapping myself up in the wire is worth a slight hit in the sound.
Sony MDR-10RBTs are an excellent model for the price, hella light and comfortable, don't leak much sound out or in, and sound quite decent with Bluetooth AAC/AptX enabled (I listen to rock, metal, industrial, pop, dance, rap--can't speak much for classical, jazz, etc.)
I use the Sony MDR-7506 which are rated as the best $150 Over Ear Headphones (actually $90ish on Amazon) and they are very popular with audio pros. Not noise canceling but they are comfortable enough for wearing all day and if you're listening to something, you don't have sound leaking in or out.
Yeah, the MDRV6 with Beyerdynamic Velour earcushions are my secret sauce for getting in the zone. The stock pleather earpads will give you "hot ears" that make long shifts uncomfortable.
If you keep going down the audiophile rabbit hole like I did, next up is a DAC or a tube amp. A good starter cheap one (sub $100) is the Qinpu:
I've been highly recommending Sony's for a long time now, but for my left-at-work pair, I use a MDR-XD200 headset that I paid $18 new 10 years ago. They're nearly indestructible, sound better than most non-Sony sets I've tested them against and when I've got music playing, they block out the world really well. And, most importantly, they're so comfortable that I forget I've got them on...I almost wish they were less comfortable so I didn't have them ripped off my head when I stand up without remembering to take them off first.
I use a more expensive pair of Sony's at home where there's less chance they'll be damaged.
Get a good pair of over ear noise canceling headphones that are light. In-Ear work well but will probably start hurting you ears if you wear them for an extended period of time.
It depends. Are you a manager, or PM and is your main responsibility to socialize and play the game? If yes, it is gonna be great! The game is a lot more engaging with the "open office" structure.
Are you an engineer? Well... sorry. You'll have to sit in the headphones now. Get a pair of some good ones.
Parent probably talking about Bose QC-15 mythical noise cancelling headphones. Some people say their build quality is meh, which prevented me from buying them.
Does anyone have any thoughts on the comfort (for extended use in an office) and effectiveness of the QC-20 vs the QC-15. It seems the QC-20 is better on both counts, despite its in ear design. One downside to the QC-20 is that he battery isn't replaceable, but I plan to use them plugged in, so they should still work even when the battery can't hold much charge.
Anything in-ear or over-the-ear will start hurting your ear one way or another.
Around the ear + active noise cancelling is the way to go.
My choice is Bose Quiet Comfort 15.
The guy behind me talks whole day explaining low level network connectivity issues to half of the world.
The guy in front of me talks spanish to someone he loves non-stop for a few hours daily.
"The Devil's Cup" is great! He also has "In the Devil's garden", which is quite good as well. It presents the history of food in terms of the seven deadly sins.
Just finished Patrick Leigh Fermor's "A time of gifts" and I can't recommend it enough! One of the best English books that I have read. You will particularly like it if you're interested in European history (political, as well as art history), if you like traveling, if you're into foreign languages and if you don't mind using a dictionary once in a while. I'm really excited to start its sequel "Between the woods and the water".
Compared to, say, Russian or Ukrainian French is really not that complicated. It also has way less "exceptions to every single rule" than English. You should choose a language based on your goals, not "how many countries use it" (and even by that metric French would still be really high up). For example, if you ever want to work in Canada knowing French would help you a lot more than knowing Spanish.
>From 2000 to 2009, no province had lower so-called “firm entry” than Quebec. In fact, in the manufacturing, retail, transportation and finance sectors, more companies went away than were created. No other province had that level of “destruction” without the customarily accompanying “creative.”
To be fair though, the technical excellence of his paintings has always been a subject of considerable interest to people.
That's an article about Vermeer and his art.
This is an article about the technical aspects of his painting.
They're different topics and it's not really surprising to see this one generating more interest; but yes, indeed. There's a lot more to his work than simply the technical means by which he produced them; that's true of any artist (composition, etc).
Also, that site has a really horrid and hard to read layout. The densely packed sans-serif font blocks that academic sites seem to favor are terrible. It's ironic given the attention that typesetting gets for academic papers seemed to get completely ignored once the web comes into it. -__-
I took a look, read the subtitle, the first paragraph, scrolled to the bottom and closed the tab. I would like to at least remotely know what the topic is before reading something this long and dense.
> I figured someone who speaks X and wants to begin learning English would use an X-English / English-X dictionary.
At first. You should switch to X-X dictionary as soon as you can, far before it becomes natural and easy to use X-X dictionary. X-English/English-X dictionaries encourage people to continue "thinking" in their language, while successfully learning a new language would absolutely require embracing new ways of forming phrases, building sentences, etc.
Source: English is my 3rd language, I'm on my 5th now.
> I find it ironic to think that in Australia the government is singing praises for copper network lines [...] yet war torn anarchic Somalia is pushing in the other direction.
Yeah, that is the point. It is not an apples to apples comparison between copper and fiber or wireless. Fiber and wireless do not require hanging dollar bills from wooden poles in impoverished war torn countries. Even if copper were a superior technology it would be hard to recommend investing in infrastructure that is going to be torn down and sold for scrap metal in order to feed someone's family.
EDIT: Any headphones suggestions?