What are the noise levels like at your job?

lenovoguy

Hi there

I'm curious to see what sort of ambient noise levels are experienced by other software developers on here. I work in a small software company but we're part of a much larger sales-oriented group, and we're mixed in with other developers and then sales people who are loudly spouting their waffle all day long. I think software developers need peace and quiet to reach maximum productivity, and while you can put headphones on, you shouldn't HAVE to surely?

Is there separation of divisions where you work i.e. are QA, development, sales all separate or is it all the one?

Sparks

Moderate conversation at times, other times it's just keyboards and aircon.
Loud enough to buy a pair of these though:

lowlifer

My old job was super quiet, lots of space for only ~15 people, comfy chairs. However, we were mixed in with marketing and tech support people. Having the phone ring even twice a day and hearing marketing women talk for as little as 2 minutes was far more irritating than my current job: super crammed, 15 developers in a tiny room, constant door and coffee machine noises.

For me, it's all relative. A phone with a stupid ringtone can make me go berzerk, but I have no problem with guys talking for a full hour about what they're working on.

imitation

Its the loud annoying people who get to me over general noise. I would also love to put on a pair of headphones but its frowned upon.

Another thing I had in a previous job was a server on a desk behind me, started driving me spare, especially just after it was turned on or off and you noticed how all of a sudden you could hear things like people walking by and people doing stuff at there desk.

Mort5000

Glad to see I'm not the only one affected by other people in the office.

We work in an old Georgian building, with wooden floors.
The three people I share the office with all suffer from the wobbly leg syndrome. And usually not at the same time.
So most of my day is spent looking at my screen wobbling around the place as their cheerful jigglyness transfers through the floorboards.
Added to that... the noise.
1 sales type and 1 tech support type, both loud alpha male types, and the 3rd that just loves to chat chat chat chat chat chat.
I can't wear headphones because the tech support person, with the most radically flimsy memory, needs to ask me the same question she has asked 149 times before, this week, and get REALLY annoyed if she has to repeat the question due to my earphones and lack of attention.
Amusingly, come annual review time, at least two people in the office complain about it being 'too quiet' and that there should be 'more talking'.
*twitch*
/vent

Earthhorse

It's not too bad where I am, sharing a room with other developers. Occassionally the chat can get a bit much, which is annoying if you're working on something particularly tricky or urgent, but it's rare enough that it's not an ongoing issue. Not sure about headphones as a strategy; I tend to put headphones on in order to listen to something, not the opposite.

BostonB

Open plan with about 30 people mix of development/operations and support noise level varies from very ow to medium if its busy day. Never too bad. But I use earphones where I can as I'm much more productive working to music. I use earphones that don't fully block out the phone. I work independently most of the time, so don't need to hear others in the office. I've also encouraged that queries via email are preferred and fast tracked over mumbling on the phone and playing phone tag with people.

dazberry

I used to relish the quiet programming environment, but that all changed 10+ years ago when I got put in the middle of a noisy support department for a project. Since then most everywhere I've been has been pretty noisy, in one job beside commercial sales soon followed by collections (given the way things went). That job didn't allow headphones either. Really it depends on the noise, and you do get used to it, I would at this point find it very difficult to work in a very quiet (pin drop only keyboard clatter) environment.

The other thing is that I find it very distracting listening to music when I'm working as I tend to start thinking about the music, the song structure, guitar riffs etc. The current job is pretty noisy, but it's fine by my standards until the boss on a couple of occasions at christmas decided to put on some christmas tunes on his PC - that wrecked all our heads.

D.

jester77

Nice where I work. We have 6 floors, top 2 floors are just development teams. Each team has their own area with project lead, product manager, devs, front-end and qa sitting together. The teams are sectioned off from one another and from what I see it works very well. They don't disturb others too much and others don't disturb them too much.

Sales, marketing, operations all have their own areas on different floors.

lenovoguy

jester77 wrote: »

Nice where I work. We have 6 floors, top 2 floors are just development teams. Each team has their own area with project lead, product manager, devs, front-end and qa sitting together. The teams are sectioned off from one another and from what I see it works very well. They don't disturb others too much and others don't disturb them too much.

Sales, marketing, operations all have their own areas on different floors.

That sounds ideal, to be honest. Sales people need somewhere where they can talk to prospective and existing customers all day every day, and developers need a space which facilitates flow, somewhere where they can work for long stretches of time uninterrupted.

I have pretty strong opinions when it comes to this topic - I think the only people who should be interrupting developers are their superiors or other developers. Where I am, QA are constantly tapping developers on the shoulder, asking about whether some feature you've implemented should work the way it does, even getting into debates with them about it. Sales people whose clients requested features you're currently working on will come over and ask you "so how's that going?".

boardie100

on my floor it's all development and is usually quite which is a nice environment to work in.... the only really loud people are the uber nerdlingers..... is this a common trait?

Creamy Goodness

I get back at noisy people by typing a really looooooong email on my Das Keyboard, and I shield myself with a decent set of headphones.

quietriot

Set of Bose QC15s and a comfortable chair and it'll all be forgotten.

COYW

It tends to be noisy where I am. Luckily, I can work from home, so if I need real quiet time I can do that. Headphones are not allowed where I work, which is a massive pain.

AwayWithFaries

Headphones of some sort are a must I think.I used to have a desk in room which contained 10 or so servers running loudly all day. At one stage there was one with a fan about a foot from my face blowing air straight at me. All day. Everyday. For 3 months. I hated that place.

frezzabelle

With 30 odd people around me(maybe 10 non dev's) I found it a strange environment at first, being my fist programming job I wasn't sure about the headphone things and the loud and irrelevant conversations. After getting used to it I can't imagine not being able to have some tunes and a decent set of headphones Typing particularly loudly to annoy those who get on my grill.

Colonel Panic

4 programmers in a room, mostly quiet with a bit of banter or work chatter in the background that's easily filtered out.

[-0-]

Ridiculously noisy. It kills me. I need to buy a good set of headphones. Recommendations welcome!

MysticalRain

I work in a call centre populated mostly by female staff. So it's like being surrounded by a bunch of battery hens that never stop clucking. My days are spent listening to endless chattering about stuff like Coronation Street, Eastenders, X Factor, Talifornia, Katie Price and Cheryl Cole. Needless to say, my productivity is non-existent at times.

I do get the idea behind the concept of open plan offices. But a certain level of common sense would tell you that office space should be partitioned off into separate sections for sales and IT staff.

krd

MysticalRain wrote: »

I work in a call centre populated mostly by female staff. So it's like being surrounded by a bunch of battery hens that never stop clucking. My days are spent listening to endless chattering about stuff like Coronation Street, Eastenders, X Factor, Talifornia, Katie Price and Cheryl Cole. Needless to say, my productivity is non-existent at times.

Welcome to living hell......pop-u-lay-shun, YOU!!!

I do get the idea behind the concept of open plan offices. But a certain level of common sense would tell you that office space should be partitioned off into separate sections for sales and IT staff.

Yeah, I prefer veal pens - baffles just high enough to put you out of sight and block the sound. You spend less time pretending you're working, so you can get more work done.

komodosp

Mine is reasonable except on about once a week when one of the sales guys likes to come into the office and make cold calls, hearing him repeating the same crap over and over again to different potential customers is really annoying... Other than that it's grand, the usual odd operational discussions but mainly quiet

I used to work in a place with a lady in a cubicle across the way who used to be the most annoying, made long phone calls and just kept repeating
"Yessss..." {pause}
"Yesss..." {pause}
"Yesss..." {pause}
"Yesss..." {pause}
"Yesss..." {pause}
"Yesss..."

But this was compensated by another lady who had the sexiest laugh I have ever heard, unfortunately the person making her laugh was probably her boyfriend...

Colonel Panic

Corporate accounts payable Nina speaking! Just a moment!

fergalr

MysticalRain wrote: »

I work in a call centre populated mostly by female staff. So it's like being surrounded by a bunch of battery hens that never stop clucking. My days are spent listening to endless chattering about stuff like Coronation Street, Eastenders, X Factor, Talifornia, Katie Price and Cheryl Cole. Needless to say, my productivity is non-existent at times.

I understand you were writing humorously, and so on, but your first couple of sentences there struck me as a little sexist.

MysticalRain wrote: »

I do get the idea behind the concept of open plan offices. But a certain level of common sense would tell you that office space should be partitioned off into separate sections for sales and IT staff.

I'd go nuts if I was listening to chatter all day.

There's a lot of good stuff in the book 'peopleware' about office layout, and productivity. Joel-on-software also writes about it.

You are not alone in thinking open plan offices can hurt productivity:
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2004/12/this-is-your-anti-productivity-pod.html

Giblet

People are currently whistling one of the ring tones from the on call phones which was going off for a few hours earlier in the week.