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Re:I’m Thinking. Please. Be Quiet. by tzs on Monday August 26, 2013 @01:19AM (#6275330)
I find it is a tradeoff. For the deepest thought, I feel I'm best in a quiet environment. However, if I've got to have sound, then music I'm very familiar with is better than something more random.

For instance, from my office I can hear the tech support people. If I'm trying to solve a hard problem, and I can hear some support person trying to explain for the 10th time to a customer that if the customer schedules our software to run overnight, the customer has to leave the computer on overnight for this to work, I'm probably not going to be able to think effectively about my problem.

If I then put on the headphones, open Spotify, pick a playlist that I've listened to a hundred times, and turn the volume up enough to mask the support person, then I can pretty much ignore the music and concentrate on my problem--maybe not quite as hard as if I had quiet, but enough to feel useful and not get frustrated.

Re:I’m Thinking. Please. Be Quiet. by noir_lord on Monday August 26, 2013 @08:13AM (#6276491)
I once had to do software development in an open plan office with sales, business manager and someone from a different company in it.

Never again (it's actually a large part of why I have my own company), I actually threatened to quit unless I could work somewhere quiet (hell I'd have worked in one of the storage units as long as it was quiet).

I'm 2-3x as efficient in a quiet office where I can listen to music when I want to and have silence when I don't than I am in a noisy one.