The solution is to penalize the offenders, in a nice way.

I interned at Goldman Sachs on an FX trading floor (very open plan). We had an Interrupter Jar. Everytime someone interupted another person, the interrupter was required to put 20$ (yes 20$, it's chump change for FX Traders) into it. When it filled up, we'd go out and buy beers for the entire team.

It worked quite well until we had a fratboy from Boston College. He would interrupt me just so he can fill up the jar and we go drinking.

> He would interrupt me just so he can fill up the jar and we go drinking.

Now that's a pathological case.

Yes, tuning out other conversations around me takes a lot of my energy to where I trudge through the day and want to go to sleep when I get home. I find when I work in a space by myself I am energized and productive. I'm currently at a desk by two other devs who have to talk to each other all day and I'm considering leaving an otherwise great job because of it.

From the HN guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html):

Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put asterisks around it and it will get italicized.

I share your feeling about noise, and so does the person who wrote that guideline. But allcaps is noise in its own right.

It's indeed the noise. I work in a co-working space for a few weeks now - the noise is unbearable.

Also, prepare for lots of folks with hearing issues once the headphone overuse kicks in. It won't be pretty.

When I was younger, I was perfectly happy to listen to music all day long while coding. Now I find even that distracting and need quiet. It seems insane that in order to do our job effectively we have to put headphones on and play white noise!