[MoosePlissken]

> So what I'm saying is: If you need silence, cool. Seek it out. Do whatever it takes to be the most productive you can[1]. But not everyone wants to live in a sound vacuum, and some people thrive in the environments that are the polar opposite of what you think is ideal.

I agree that different people work better in different environments, but I think what you've said should be flipped:

If you like noisy environments, cool. Seek it out. But don't ruin the concentration of others just because you work best in a place with noise and distractions.

I used to work in a noisy environment and it was hell because there were literally no quiet areas to work. I would have happily moved elsewhere, but there was nowhere to go. Virtually every office space has conference rooms and break rooms where you can go if you want to be noisy or work in a group. Very few office spaces have "quiet areas". Silence should be the default around people's desks and noise should be taken elsewhere. If you're being noisy in an open plan office, there's a good chance you're disrupting a silent majority.

[SheepSlapper]

I disagree that silence should be the default, I think that whatever the majority of people in the environment want should be the default, with the understanding that we should try to accommodate everyone. If I was the one developer out of 8 in my office that thrived on quiet, I wouldn't have punished the other 7 by mandating that silence should be the default[0].

If you're in a loud environment and need quiet, then communicate that to your boss. Ditto for <insert productivity issue here>. They've got a vested interest in you doing your best work, and will try to make it work the best they can for everyone. If they don't, then they're probably not worth wasting your skills on anyway (plenty of fish in the sea). But if you don't speak up, then you've no one to blame but yourself.

[0] Pertinent side note here, after about a year of working in the loud office, the owner mandated that we stop the distractions. No more TV, fewer breaks to mess around, etc. He thought it was affecting our work, and boy was he right (but not in the way he thought). The net result: Our productivity went down. Measurably. Strange world we live in, eh?

[MoosePlissken]

> If you're in a loud environment and need quiet, then communicate that to your boss.

I did, on many occasions.

> If they don't, then they're probably not worth wasting your skills on anyway (plenty of fish in the sea).

I agree, I quit that job :) There were many reasons of course, but the distracting environment and the lack of response to honest employee feedback didn't help their case.

> If I was the one developer out of 8

I think we're coming from different perspectives. If you're working with a small number of people, I totally agree that the group should be able to come to a sensible agreement (I would never demand that my 7 other co-workers act like they're in a library just to please me). My previous post was from the perspective of someone in a larger office (say... 20+ people to pick an arbitrary number) with the typical office layout (cubes, some private offices, conference rooms, break rooms). In such a situation, you're going to have more than a few people who prefer quiet when they're working. Those people are assigned a desk with little choice in the matter, and there's no viable alternative workspace for them to escape to. In this type of situation I think it's rude to intrude on a person's one and only workspace with noise, and silence (or at least low volume) should be the default.

If things were perfect, everyone would get to choose how they work. But things are rarely perfect :)