| A good pair of IEMs. Headphones still leak outside noise even with the best noise cancelling. A good seal with a good pair of IEMS pretty much cancels out any ambient noise in the room. This is the #1 distraction remedy for me that helps me maintain focus. Given an empty room and nobody around I can get a lot of shit done. From this engineers perspective every b-hole with VC funding thinks `open floor plans` are awesome and exposes their engineers to the constant distractions throughout the day for little or no reason other than to be trendy. If I were an investor I would never invest in a company that puts their engineers in an open floor plan UNLESS that floor was only 100% engineers in which they would all be telling each other to STFU if they were too loud. Telling people in other departments to PLEASE STFU rarely ever happens, and when it does it is usually scoffed at. So many companies in the bay area are pissing their money away faster than our water can be consumed because of this. I really don't understand the higher level objective. Conway's law still applies - open floor plan or not. Companies should maximize productivity - they seem to only realize the benefit amongst marketing and sales teams, leaving engineers wondering "WTF mate?" |