[rw140]

Round here we use a variety of techniques:

* As everyone else has mentioned: headphones.

* Work at home when you're doing a particularly complex piece of work.

* Stagger working hours so that there are times when not all employees overlap - start time is anything from (approximately) 8am to 10am.

* Set instant messenger statuses to 'away' or 'in a meeting' for critical work. (This one only works for people not within line-of-sight.

* Have team leads (approx 1 for every 6 people) who can answer more general questions and so act as a buffer between programmers and people who might need to interrupt them.

* Provide people with the ways to find answers rather than the answers themselves (This has the dual purpose of making it less convenient to ask you than to look stuff up, and teaching people to be more independent.)

* Have times when you are more clearly interruptible - this groups the questioning / passing the time of day, so you can get a longer uninterrupted stretch later.

edit: formatting