I joke that my career went downhill from when I started. At first I had my own office, with a door, desk, computer desk, bookshelf with books, two chairs in front of my desk for small meetings. Then I had a large, tall cube, with reasonable space. Next I had a small, short walled cube I could barely fit in and would bump into my neighbor. Finally I was in a open space, with tens of other people yapping in their speakerphones many times in the same online meeting, with maddening echo. One person got sick, everyone got sick. If you want to get any work done you need to wear Bose cancelling headphones.
Finally I managed to work from home. Once again I have my private office, silence, communicate via Slack and email, and never been more productive in my life.
OMG I do the same thing. First job out of college, I had a private office, bookcase, huge filing cabinet, everything. As my pay increases, my working conditions deteriorate. I hate working from home, though. I am now on the FI train (Financial Independence) so I can either take lower paying jobs and live partially off my savings, or do whatever I want. I also, of course, maximize my income. Making 4x what I was making back when I had my own office takes the sting off a little, you know? But still. Ridiculous.
I love WFH. It helps that I have been happily married for many years, I have home cooked meals, more family interaction (well when I am working I am working but whatercooler conversations in your own kitchen are great). And I can literally work from anywhere, be it visiting relatives or travelling to Europe. I really hope I can continue like this for a long time; I might accept going back to the office - but it better be a real one.
Working from home... For some of us, that too, is becoming impossible due to noise.
I moved, to my own house, in part in the hope of starting to consult as a sideline. To end up tortured by a series of neighbors.
I just had another one move in next door, and find my previously quiet neighboring property now has a fellow who plays music while he works in his garage. At least that I can't hear, inside my own house with the windows closed and the A/C on.
This "all noise, all the time" culture has invaded home life, too. And, it seems, for more and more people, not just from those you choose (or, are forced to...) live with.
Like the selfish people with their straight pipe Harleys. The absolutely ridiculous car stereos, which around here at least, the police finally seem to have cracked down on, a bit. (Once we got a noise ordinance, that for a long time they weren't really enforcing, I felt like pointing out to them, "Look! Here's your revenue stream! Third or fourth violation: $1000. You can afford to buy some calibrated sound meters.")
Choose where you live carefully. Home, like work, is a place where inconsiderate -- or, bad -- neighbors can drag your life and productivity down. Whereupon your options shrink, rather than grow.
I have this same problem as well. I don't know if the world is getting noisier or I'm getting more sensitive. Probably the latter. My neighbor to one side has two vehicles with massive car stereos that he enjoys just letting run most of the day on some days. He's told me to pound sand when I ask him to turn it down. My neighbor to the other side has a straight pipe Harley that he warms up at 7:30 on the morning. He's told me that loud pipes save lives when I ask him to not do it so much. My neighbor on the other side of the duplex has a stoop that faces my window and enjoys holding mobile phone conversations in the outdoors where it's nice and breezy. That's roughly the same effect as people gabbing in the open space.
I tried renting one of those small offices in a quiet neighborhood. Nope, they're apparently built with tissue paper so when the tattoo parlor moved in across the hall and started dropping the beat, there went all semblance of calm. Same for the small business just to the other side where they have loud stand-ups (with applause) and lots of sales calls.
So, yep, I know the old saying of "if everybody else is the asshole it's you who's the asshole." I still can't shake the feeling that I have nowhere to escape. Work is people loud, home is people loud, away is people loud, even the bus to and from work is getting people loud, the plane ride to vacation is people loud. Maybe I just need to hermit.
I commute by car, but frequently take the DC area Metro train to go into town for recreation. It's actually pretty quiet; people don't talk loudly usually. The exception is sometimes on the weekend when you have tourists on the train.
At home, it's pretty quiet too: I live in a tiny condo on the ground floor. Sometimes I hear sounds from the plumbing from people flushing toilets above, or from someone dropping something in the shower above, but otherwise it's very quiet. Large dogs aren't allowed here.
Years ago, I lived in a subdivision with my own house. It was much noisier: every neighbor around me had dogs that barked at all hours, we even got into a war with some of them that went to court (they lost: the police testified they heard dogs barking and that was that, since there was a noise ordinance). One neighbor had friends that would drive up to pick them up every day and honk the horn (the police were no help here). That neighborhood was miserable.
I recommend NOT buying your own house in a subdivision, and moving into a condo instead, preferably in a fairly new (and somewhat expensive) high-rise. The whole culture of cars, motorcycles, big dogs, etc., and the individuality that goes with that is anathema to people who want peace and quiet.
It's not you who's the asshole, it's Americans who live in the suburbs.
Not necessarily. I had neighbors do that with the car stereos -- across the street and down a house.
They played them so loud, and the subwoofers were so strong, that I would hear the glass panes vibrating within their frames, in my windows. In addition to the bass, itself.
There is simply no way to stop such noise from penetrating right through nearby structures.
In my last corporate job, that moved from offices to shared, low wall "cubettes", there was a contingent that would stand up and shout their conversations across the aisles. There was my immediate neighbor, on the other side of my cubette wall, who would pound our connected desk system incessantly while on hours worth of personal phone calls. (Sometimes "multi-tasking", which would show up when her work products would have to be redone.) Not only would I hear it, it would shake my own desk. When I asked her, very politely, to please not to hit her desk repeatedly, she reported me to HR and I ended up in the dog house.
All the... well, corporate propaganda, was about "collaboration".
And within that cubette you shared, you were supposed to tune out hour long cube meetings taking place 3-4 feet from your shoulder.
Grandparent commenter: I sympathize. That... "sounds" very familiar.
I had no support from family and friends. Actually, sort of active anti-support, until they experienced it for themselves. Which few, other than family, did, because I was so uncomfortable that I didn't invite people over.
My strong advice, after having let the stress pull me into a downward spiral, is to do whatever you can to get yourself out of it and to someplace safe. Screw what other people say; they're not living with it.
And, we don't all have to be corporate -- or start up -- environment drones.
Get out, before it's too late.
P.S. Lest people say I'm "anti-social" or poor at working collaboratively, at one BigCo, I had a senior manager outside my reporting structure present me with a corporate-wide award for independently and pro-actively throwing a cross-country team together to troubleshoot and solve a process that had been in chronic, repeated crisis for some years. These weren't people who reported to me, just people across the organization who benefited from -- collaboratively -- establishing responsibilities, expectations, deliverables, dates, and a process for problem resolution, for something we all depended upon and knew needed to get done.
"Collaboration" does not mean tuning out a bunch of noise that has nothing to do with what you're working out.
One of the most effective, and senior, development teams I was on, within a rather large corporation and development shop, was about 50% remote, with developers upping their remote time as much as they felt they could, as that became acceptable. (This happened particularly after the move from offices to those "cubettes", for those who had been working in the office. Oh, and the distracted, desk-pounding neighbor was not part of that team.)
The team had no problem working together, nor with other teams, internal and external. People knew what they were doing, and they could make the space to concentrate on it effectively. One of the most effective guys, off in Atlanta, I never even met face-to-face, over the course of a few years.
Sorry if I've gone on about this, a bit. But this "mythology" of the primacy of "open space collaboration" needs to be... "dispelled" is too weak a word.
As far as I'm concerned, if people want to work that way, let them. Somewhere away from me. I'll outperform them, if my own work preferences -- needs -- are respected, and the metrics are fair.
Furthermore, you need a living space under your own control, to enjoy and also where you can rest up from the parts of the world -- including the work world -- that aren't under your control.
The idea that you should somehow learn to ignore, or even "enjoy" your neighbor's loud music and other behavior. No. And, I've found, most often the people making such comments aren't putting up with such circumstances, themselves.
People in other circumstances may live differently. Even then, I think there is a difference between community noise and penetrating, amplified noise that invades your space and triggers your autonomous nervous system.
Kids playing in the neighborhood, quite audible through an open window, are no problem for me. There is a difference.
> There is simply no way to stop such noise from penetrating right through nearby structures.
I'm not sure that's literally true. With enough budget, I think you could pull it off with the judicious use of (a) lawsuits, and/or (b) extensive soundproofing.
Although it you have that ^ much money to solve the problem, moving is probably the best first step.
> They played them so loud, and the subwoofers were so strong, that I would hear the glass panes vibrating within their frames, in my windows. In addition to the bass, itself.
I gotta admit that I'm one of those people. But at home, not with a car stereo. However, I make sure to live in places where sound won't bother my neighbors. Partly because I'm a nice guy. And partly to avoid the hassle.
I've lived in close-packed houses. But we had A/C, so the windows could always be closed. For apartments, I've sought out old-school concrete slab and block buildings. And currently, I'm in a modern frame building, with extreme sound isolation (both floors and walls). Also, I put my speakers overhead, so I'm mainly driving the floors, which have better sound isolation.
Sorry to hear about your noisy home environment. It reminds me of a time when I lived in a house with drug dealing neighbors on one side of the property and blasting Metallica in the middle of the night neighbors on the other side of the house. What a nightmare of a scenario. The. I moved into an apartment in Irvine CA near the 405 and holy shit, the noise from the highway drove me crazy for several years before I finally had enough. I am lucky to live in rural Japan now with super quiet neighbors and nowhere near a large street. What a relief it is to live in quiet. I can actually open my windows and not hear a single thing at night!
I feel for you brother. If you have a chance, move ASAP. If not, make that chance yourself. Everyone who seeks it deserves peace and quiet.
I don't think that's anything new. It used to be that everyone had a boom box in their garage. What seems to be new is that the music is getting louder and louder because so many people have early stage hearing loss by age 30 as a result of cranking the music on their earbuds up too loud.
I'm semi-regularly amazed to discover the things I can hear and people 10 years younger than me can't.
You might want to talk to Leslie Blomberg of the Noise Pollution Clearinghouse. He's doing research into the kinds of noise ordinances that have been enacted in the United States and how effective and enforceable they are. In particular, it seems that giving police officers sound meters is more complicated than you'd think (they require special training) and not all that effective.
I work from home. I used to put in 8 hours at an office, then went down to 5 at home. Since I had a baby my work time is now 1-2 hours. To make up for the lost time I have to be super productive. Basically, I don’t work unless I’m in the zone. I should probably mention that I work for myself so it’s not like I’m stealing time from anyone. A deadline is a deadline and I meet them regardless of hours worked. I’ve learned that there is work, productive work and super productive work. I have to be in the zone 100% of the time I work or things turn into a shitshow.
Pretty sure the "great productivity while WFH" is contingent on having a dedicated workspace (I mean, I guess it can be shared with other work-from-homers in the household, but it should be dedicated). Which isn't something everyone can afford. That's why, even as I advocate for WFH as the default, I think companies should still have offices where people can do their work if they need to.
My last job was 100% WFH and I tell people this all the time who ask how I do it.
"Dedicate a work area for work and nothing else".
All I have on my work desk (which is an actual desk in a smallish room I converted for the purpose) is a monitor, keyboard and mouse and a coffee mug full of pens. The only thing in the room that isn't work is a Dualshock 4 PS4 controller that I use for gaming when I'm on lunch breaks or after work is done and I feel like playing some street fighter.
You don't just work at the house and expect to be productive. Much like muscles in the body working out for a marathon, you have to train at it, exercise and make deliberate efforts to get better. You don't just show up and run if you expect to have a good time.
YMMV though. I'm lucky to be a single-ish guy with a cat and no kids.
Yes, if I ever go back to WFH I'll make sure to have a dedicated office. You need a room where "work happens" and nothing else. The human mind needs boundaries.
Combine that with the growing popularity of "all-in-one-bucket" PTO (IOW, your sick days comes out of the same bucket as vacation/holiday), and it's a wonder anyone stays healthy for any period of time.
For the longest time I joked with my wife that I'd take a $20K pay cut to not work in an open office. The job market called my bluff. gulp Sure, it's less money (and probably right around the $20K I was willing to trade), but I'm pretty sure my office is bigger than the one I had at Microsoft back in the day. Ask me today, and it's a trade I'm glad I made. And I haven't been sick in the five months since I started. :-)
I worked in a hallway cubicle at a law office for a while. Once a day an attorney would start chatting with another behind my back and would stay there for an hour. I got so annoyed at some point that I stopped working for the entirety of their conversation any time someone started talking. I felt wrong for taking up company time but these people did not respect my space. At some point I also started just turning around and looking at them while they talked. A few got the point and left but others just kept on talking even after making eye contact.
That almost never works in software jobs as workplaces are not mobile.
Move a big desktop with hardware? Good luck. Try to access local state from a laptop? Does not work or is inconvenient.
Multiply by number of people talking.
It really was nice back when I started to have a dedicated office. When I was at Shell even the "hot seat" SA who had to answer the hotline and customer emails rotated into an office dedicated to that task for their week in the hot seat.
But it wasn't all perfect - Chevron used to allow in office smoking. Fortunately for everyone else the two smokers had their own shared office but still everything in there was covered in a yellow tar miasma and the offices on either side didn't fare much better.
And Shell's offices were in a building that could be resold as a hospital, so we sat in rooms that were meant to be a private hospital room and were jammed in with easily removed furniture: in my case that meant sharing a room with four card tables and literally getting up and leaving the office so my office mate could walk past my desk and exit the room.
OMG my office might as well sponser Bose noise cancelling headphones. "Warehouse style" bare concrete on every surface. The cheapest shittiest office space for a bunch of people making 70+k a year. It's crazy.
In my company everyone from the janitor to the CTO sits in the same shitty chairs in the same giant concrete warehouse. At least they're fair about it...
Noise cancellation does nothing for office noise. It is only useful for things like fans, engines, etc. So, any headphones with isolation will do in an office.
As someone who uses noise cancelling headphones (Bose QC35) every day in the office for ~1.5y, I can tell you that yes it re ally help for me.
It won't hide the voices of people's talking but it will mask them somewhat (like if they where more far). It's the only way I'm able to be functional and talk with clients and continue working in an open space..
However Bose mic is catching everything, but that's another problem..
Programmers are a trade worker the same as plumbers and electricians, etc.... There was a bit of 'magic happens here' in the industry for a while but nowadays we're pretty much a skilled trade.
Trade means "skilled work", so programming has always been by definition a trade. That's not disparaging in the least. There's absolutely nothing wrong with trade work.
My only issue is the matter of supplies. If you hired me as an electrician but wouldn't let me have any wire cutters, I would have a very difficult time doing my job. Likewise, a quiet space to think is one of the necessary reagents for programming.
It depends on how close to the sales pipeline you are, or whatever creates value in your company. It's still possible to have an outsized, leveraged effect as a developer.
Yeap, I'm looking for an exit from being a permanent programmer employed by someone else. Whether that's self-employment, or transitioning to a PM or BA type role. Code monkey is a dead-end if you're outside a tech-hub.
I don't wear headphones that play music much (unless I want rainy mood or something) but Shooting Earmuffs are perfect. With a good pair I would forget I'm even at work at times.
At the same time if someone comes to my cube and is close by, I can still hear them. Far away noises, not so much.
I highly recommend getting a pair, they're super cheap, all kinds of styles and sizes.
I'm in a dead end job right now but I'm reluctant to leave because my office is huge. big bookshelf, multiple chairs, nice view. I'm going to need a big pay increase to go back to an open office, and no one is ponying up.
Same, except I don't work from home. After open floor plan came "flex-seating" where spaces in an open floor plan office are available 'first-come, first serve' and you can't leave pictures, papers, books, or anything on your desk when you go home.
