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For me, noise isn't the problem. Since moving from the SF bay area to North Carolina, I work at home a lot for my California job. I like to get out for several hours almost every day, though. I head to either Krankies Coffee or Camino Bakery in Winston Salem, and both venues have: a lot of people talking about family, studies, work, business, gossip; the espresso machine; music; and at Krankies the coffee-roasting machine. * Undifferentiated noise actually helps a lot! * I find the background din soothing and conducive to designing and coding. The one thing that's annoying is the occasional person who insists on carrying on their half of a conference call very loudly, but I don't see that much. I've had pretty good experiences with open floor plans in companies too. They've never been the row-upon-row of adjacent tables depicted in the post, but close enough see/hear everything that's going on. In the open environment, a lot of the noise will probably be discussions about coding/design matters on other projects, or general office hijinx. There are downsides to that, but there's a lot of benefit too. You don't need to wait till the water cooler to see some matter needs discussion. I can see how both the open floor plan and coffee shop environment will be distracting for some. I always hated libraries as a student, and always did my best work in non-quiet environments. (I miss having coworkers just five steps over -- they're now 2700 and 8000 miles away.) |