[keithpeter]

"We give everyone a pair of noise cancelling headphones as a way of shutting out the office noise."

Can't you just rent a 1950s vintage office building somewhere cheap and give your people the option? C.F. Claude Shannon (who stayed in a city centre building when his employer moved to the suburbs)[1].

I agree with others that the OA is confusing several issues (office layout and corporate goofiness).

[1] http://around.com/where-are-they-now-bell-labs/

[malandrew]

Options are key. I love headphones. I've spent more money on headphones than most[0], but a lot of the time when I'm working on some types of problems, I don't want to listen to anything and I don't want distractions or anything sitting on my head. Not everyone works well with headphones, so it is reasonable that there should be places you can get away to. Lacking a space like that, you oftentimes seek out a third place like a coffeeshop that may not be quiet but at least doesn't have chatter of immediate relevance to you.

I really wonder if we've lost something by not having more spaces in our life like libraries where the cultural norm is to be silent and to enforce silence in the space so it may remain a sanctuary from noise.

[0] ironically, I've also made more as the models I bought appreciated in value significantly, so yay!

[rubyrescue]

can you elaborate on the types of headphones that appreciate in value?

[malandrew]

Discontinued headphones that had great sonic characteristics, coupled with a lot of growth in the high-end headphone market.

The two that I owned were:

-- Joe Grado HP-1000 HP-1 (bought@ $700 , sold@ $1700)

-- AKG K-1000 (bought@ $750, sold@ $1250)

Both were amazing headphones. I especially loved the experience with the K-1000, but I never used them enough to justify them because I amped them with a pair of monoblock power amps which were normally connected to floorstanding speakers. The effort to change the cables coupled with the risk of burning out components if you wired something up loosely and one power amp was driven with no load lead me to rarely switch the floorstanders for the K-1000s.

Now I use a Denon D7000, which surprisingly works great unamped, but I'll be getting an amp in a few months probably.

[jfb]

The kind that are stapled to bearer bonds?