Music While Programming?

BubbaDoom writes "In our cubicle-ville, we have programmers intermixed with accounting, customer support and marketing. As programmers, it is our habit to put on our headphones and listen to our portable music players to drown out all of the noise from everyone else. The boss recently sent an email just to the programmers demanding that we do not use our music players at work because he thinks it distracts us from our jobs and causes us to make mistakes. Of course, we've explained to him that prattle from the other people is much, much more distracting, but he insists his policy is the right one. What is the Slashdot community's experience with music at work for programmers?"

Comments

Programming without music?

[javaguy]

Without music at work there won't be any more programmers, the issue will be moot

Re:Programming without music?

[otravi]

Working without music is fine, as long as there isn't any noise to avert your concentration. The easiest way to solve this little issue it just go to work with a pair of earmuffs. Your argument for using them should be obvious.

Re:Programming without music?

[beelsebob]

Surprisingly insightful comment... If you don't like the terms imposed upon you by your boss, you have very little choice.

1) Agree to his terms and get on with your job
1a) (in parallel) search for a new job.
2) When he complains that you're code quality has gone down in a review say "yeh, I can't concentrate without music to drown out the noise, can we change that policy please".
3) Leave the company to your now found new job.
4) ...
5) Profit.

Re:Programming without music?

[sg_oneill]

This attitude sucks, "If you dont like it, then get another job" roughly paraphrased.

Bullshit.

People seem to forget that without workers, the value of a company is nothing. Trying to hand-wave away problems on the premise stated above forgets that the most socially valuable part of a business isn't the product, nor is it the employer or shareholders, but the employees , the value they bring to society and the fair reward they get for their labor.

We SHOULD be discussing what makes a pleasant workplace, because the fair alternative is we all stop working.

But that isn't going to happen.

My alternative: Bosses: If you don't like the employees simple requests that make the day pleasant and productive, [i]get the hell out of business and hand management over to someone who will[/i].

Putting up with injustice , even by just walking away , makes you complicit in that injustice.

Re:Programming without music?

[Anonymous Coward]

By walking away you are in no way "putting up with injustice".

As you rightly point out, employees are the most valuable part of a business... You are punishing them, by removing a valued employee. This is the way capitalism (should) work, the companies compete for employees, if they don't offer good terms, they don't get them. Through this process, the terms on offer improve.

As I said above, you can quite reasonably approach your boss and say "hey, this really isn't making my day either pleasant or productive... change it, or I'll go". If he doesn't, then do the right thing, and punish him for it.

Re:Programming without music?

[nvivo]

Working without music is fine, as long as there isn't any noise to avert your concentration.

That may work for you, but not for me. I MUST listen to something when I'm doing something serious. And by that I mean that project I really enjoy working on, that code I want finish. Otherwise I can't concentrate. For regular boring work, I don't mind silence... but I tend to forget about the rest of the world easier when I don't hear the sound of phones, keyboards, people talking...And silence won't help. I tend to keep remembering guitar solos during the day that if I don't listen to then I guarantee I won't be able to focus enough to do something really good.

Different people focus in different ways. This manager is just crazy to think he will see any good outcome from this. The only thing that will happen is he will get a lot of unsatisfied employees and less work done.

Re:Programming without music?

[manicb]

Of course this affects everyone differently. (I'm an engineer, not a programmer, but much the same issues should apply.) I actually can't really 'tune out' music any more: maybe I could in the past, but since I started writing and producing in my spare time I can't help but analyse EVERY piece of music I hear. Regardless of its actual merit. One long day of working in a lab with Radio 1 on in the background pretty much made me hate the world. Even at my desk where I can listen to my own choice of music, I only listen to music if doing something repetitive and mundane - I can't solve problems when I'm thinking about how well the bass part fits around the drums. It's a bit of a curse: similarly, I know enough about the art of magic that I don't enjoy bad magicians any more, but enjoy the good ones all the more!

That said, I think I can make my own decisions about what will distract me and what won't, and be responsible for the quality of my work. Some people will be more distracted than they think - I guess the danger is that it's difficult to tell if this is the cause of somebody's poor productivity. Tricky one.

Re:Programming without music?

[zippthorne]

I would avoid making any ultimatums. The problem with ultimatums is that you have to follow through, and that puts the other party in charge of your actions.

Re:Programming without music?

[paganizer]

Sort of different, sort of similar.
I was working doing CAD at a place called Campbell-Rhea in the mid 80's. My habit at the time was when i got to work, I would grab a bottle of Pepsi from the machine in the breakroom, go to my cube, and review what I had to do for the day, what I did yesterday, while sipping Pepsi.
One day, the owner was walking by in the hall as I was walking out of the breakroom, trying to dodge the various people grabbing their morning coffee; when I got to my cube, my department head told me the boss wanted to see me. went to his office, and he started asking why I was taking a break before I even got to work. I told him that I didn't like coffee, so unlike everyone else, I grabbed a Pepsi when I first got in.
long story short, Coffee was perfectly acceptable 1st thing at the job drink, but soft drinks were only for breaks.
I was still sort of caffeine shy, and very confused; I kept thinking he was trying to haze me in some way, so i tried to get him to explain it.
10 minutes after I walked into his office, he was nice enough to give me the option of quitting, or being fired.
BTW, I was his fastest, most accurate CAD guy out of 7. got a raise 2 weeks before this for productivity.
The Moral: The Boss is the Boss. sometimes they do stupid shit. either live with it, or leave.

Re:Programming without music?

[Ash Vince]

On the other hand, conversations are something I can't help but respond to, especially when it's a question.
Even worse, a questions of a technical nature regarding computers.

Learn to concentrate, its a valuable skill. I know it is incredibly hard at first, but it can be done. The first step is to not respond unless someone asks you a direct question. If someone in your vicinity just asks a general question, then ignore them and carry on with your work. You might have already been distracted and listened to the question, but this is the first step and you have to not answer. This is about breaking the habit of responding to things you do not need to and the first bit is the hardest. Once you start viewing these things as annoying distractions from your work rather than welcome distractions you will find blocking them out easy.

I used to always be the first to answer the phone in our team, and the first to answer general questions to the room. Nowadays you can ask me a direct question and I can still tune it out and not actually hear what you said if I was not looking at you right at the start. It is truly amazing how nice it is to be able to just block out all background noise unless I want to hear it. It also helps you tollerate annoying co-workers much more easily, you simply forget they are next to you in no time.

As to original topic of programmers all being forced to not wear headphones, that is just something we all have to deal with. There are so many development houses where this is not allowed that you just have to deal with it unless you are going to spend your entire life at one company under one boss (not realistic). I suppose you could always ask the question at the end of an interview but that might come across as a little bit petty.

I personally would never like to work for a cubicle style company where there is no interpersonal contact. I like being able to talk to another human being occasionally. Sometimes when a colleague talks to me, i have to politely say I really need to concentrate, but sometimes it is nice to spend a few seconds reminding myself that I am a human being not a coding machine. The recommendation for people working in front of computers all day long is that you do take regular breaks and stand up periodically so why not also walk across to one of you colleagues who also looks like he is doing the same thing and have a quick conversation.

Re:Programming without music?

[awyeah]

What AC is saying - let me say it a little differently - is that labor can be thought of as a market, just like the market for beer, the market for butter, and the market for whatever product or service your company produces. We'll call it the "labor market."

I'm going to over-simplify this, but hopefully not to the point where it no longer applies ;) Also, anyone more well-versed in economics, feel free to jump in here.

There are a lot of companies that produce butter that goes on your grocer's shelf. They're all in competition for your business - they all want you, the butter consumer, to buy their butter, and not anybody else's, because that's how they will make more money. stay in business, and succeed in the market place. How do they do it? They sell their product at the highest price the consumers are willing to pay - although they may try to undercut their competitors' prices. And they try to make a better product than their competitor (or at least convince the consumer that their product is better).

If you think of the labor market in those terms, it's easy to see. Think of your career as if you're competing in a market. Your product is code, and you get paid per unit of time. Your competitors are other laborers, and your consumers are companies that pay for your time and code. The difference here, IMO, is that you want not only to produce better "product" than your competitors and make as much money as you can doing it, but you also want to have all the "perks" and benefits that you can. At least, that's what it is for me - money is important, but it's not everything.

And one of the biggest "perks" I can think of is to be able to do your job in whatever manner you please - within reason (no nude programming in your cube, nobody wants to see that) - assuming you're outputting the quality of work that's expected of you.

I think you should try to have the policy changed, first and foremost. I don't think it's appropriate or professional to just quit immediately over something like this. It's not like it's some kind of human rights violation.

If you do decide to leave, I don't think you should flat out say "change it or I'll go" - you'll have more luck if you're more tactful about it.

Ultimately it's up to you to decide whether you want your company's business or not.

Re:Programming without music?

[MrNaz]

While I can accept that music would be less distracting that office chatter, I simply don't understand the concept that music is better than silence. I can work with music, but if I need to concentrate on something intensely, like a complex coding problem or making decisions based on a large amount of data, I need silence.

I blame life in a modern city causing people to hardly ever hear silence, which makes them uncomfortable with it. I grew up on a small country town, and silence was just something I got used to when walking in the bush or playing in the yard. Even traffic noise was not present. I remember finding the constant sound of cars going past when we moved to the city to be a novelty, and soon an annoyance for many years after moving to the city. To this day, 22 years later, I still find my trips to the country a relief from the sensory barrage that is life in a city.

Re:Programming without music?

[WuphonsReach]

While I can accept that music would be less distracting that office chatter, I simply don't understand the concept that music is better than silence. I can work with music, but if I need to concentrate on something intensely, like a complex coding problem or making decisions based on a large amount of data, I need silence.

Music without vocals is a lot easier to concentrate to. It also needs to be non-novel, where you've listened to it enough that it is familiar to the brain.

My personal favorite for getting into the zone is either pure classical symphonies or 1-2 hour long dance (house/techno/etc) mixes (sans vocals). Because the pieces last for at least 45 minutes before switching to another track/style, you can get deep into the flow with music that is familiar.

(It's why I categorize my dance tracks by vocal / no-vocal along with approximate energy level of low/med/hi.)

Re:Programming without music?

[nine-times]

I hesitate to acknowledge something like this as "injustice". Not allowing employees to listen to music is a dumb policy, but it's not really persecution.

Not that it's not important. I think that you could trace some of our social and economic problems back to our latent view as employers/executives as creatures of massive genius who must be coddled and rewarded at every turn, but common employees as tools. There's even a bit of an assumption that workers are all lazy and stupid, since "if they were smart and hardworking, they'd have someone working for them!" Still, even when employees are viewed as good, hard workers, there's still the viewpoint that they're no more than tools to be used and manipulated by master craftsmen (the craftsmen being employers and executives).

This sort of viewpoint adds to a sense of entitlement among the rich and successful, and it also is used to justify a million small abuses of power.

Re:Programming without music?

[tomhudson]

Too much silence if even more distracting for some people, myself included.

That depends on how used to silence you are, silence being a rarity today.

So what we need to do is

1. get rid of cubicle farms.
2. give people doors to their offices
3. have management get a clue as to how to measure performance, rather than thinking "warm body sitting in chair that I can see" when I walk around the office

Then again, if they were able to implement #3, most of us could work from home, saving fuel, energy, office space, time, our sanity ...

Re:Programming without music?

[Mr. Freeman]

"While I can accept that music would be less distracting that office chatter, I simply don't understand the concept that music is better than silence. I can work with music, but if I need to concentrate on something intensely, like a complex coding problem or making decisions based on a large amount of data, I need silence."

Well, you answered your own confusion. YOU are comfortable with silence. OTHER people are not. It's not a big mystery.

Answer

[KefabiMe]

Your boss is a retard.

track the difference

[Cederic]

Find a way to measure relative productivity, and relative error rates, for before and after you had to stop using music.

Use objective facts to show your boss what a twat he is.

Re:track the difference

[AmiMoJo]

Or just start goofing off right now and watch productivity nose-dive, then blame it all on not having your tunes.

Why bother gathering scientific data when your boss clearly hasn't. This is classic boss behaviour - trying to justify his existence by imposing rules that make it look like he is improving things. The only way to communicate with him is through productivity stats.

Micromanagement

[nahdude812]

For your boss to try to dictate how you work like this is a form of micromanagement which demonstrates distrust.

Brush up your resume, in my experience managers who act in this fashion tend to get worse, not better. Working there is going to be an exercise in frustration. That said, a company is wholly within its rights to expect something like this of you. But by doing so they make themselves less competitive and attractive. Maybe they can get away with that for now, but in doing so they're destroying loyalty and directly contributing to a Dead Sea Effect - when the economy picks up the decent developers are going to evaporate, and the company will be left with a brackish collection of sub-par developers.

As to the original question, I find that the right music selection can really help with my code quality and speed. If I'm really ramped up on what I'm working on, a good fast paced techno, industrial, or otherwise highly rhythmic repetitious and fast paced music can contribute to a mental wave to surf. If I feel like my project pace is overly frenetic, there are too many expectations, and there's just really no way I'll meet all the obligations in the time allowed, something slow and soothing can bring down the blood pressure levels and let me concentrate on my work better.

be constructive

[obarthelemy]

I assume, since he's a boss, that he has a private office ? If that's the case, offer him to come do some cerebral, non-social work (not on the phone, more like writing a report or something) for a half day in one of your cubicles, and judge for himself if he really thinks he wouldn't have worked better being isolated from the chatter.

Stress out to him that it's not like you're buying 10 new CDs a day and listening intently to them while on the company's time, but just whiting out very distracting noises so that you can focus on your job.

Show him how you come to work with your music already chosen, and spend 0 time on it (I can spend hours building a playlist :-p )

Be careful to NOT discuss music with you coworkers for a while, nor visit any music sites...

Try and find examples of companies that he will judge well-run (not geeky nerdy ones, more in his frame of reference - Google, MS... don't count) that do allow music for programmers.

If all that doesn't work, try and work out an agreed playlist / music genre, or just wear earplugs/muffs ? That would suck, though.

Re:Other reason

[darf]

I need mod points. I predict there is a 99.95% chance that mseeger is spot on. This was the first thing I thought of. For those of you who think "The Man" is just a control freak - he probably couldn't care less if you wear headphones or stuffed bananas in your ears. All he cares about is productivity and his bonus and probably not in that order. If some weenie in another cube is bitching that they can't listen to music because they are tied to a phone and "it's unfair, whaaaaaa" then he'll do whatever he thinks will create the least friction in getting his bonus. Apparently dealing with your programming group bitching about not being able to listen to music is the path of less frustration.

Re:Def better with music

[DangerFace]

While I agree that music is much less annoying than the noise of other people trying to get their jobs done, sometimes when I'm coding alone in my house I need to crank some Aphex Twin or other discordant mentalism just for a base level of distraction - I find if 10% of my mind is trying not to get distracted it helps the other 90% just get on with the job in hand.

I suppose it's sort of like chewing gum or fiddling with stationary - there's just a bit of your mind dedicated to looking out for tigers, and if you're confident there are no tigers in your office you need to give it something else to do.

Re:Your boss is...

[tsm_sf]

One of the best moments of my programming career was when my boss came over and said he hated to see me with my feet up and hands interlaced behind my head (the classic 'kicking back' pose). My manager interjected with "right now he is earning the money you pay him".

So rare to get a manager that understands the process.

This is like sociology....

[Joce640k]

...and the only conclusion ever reached by sociologists is: "Some do, some don't!"

Re:Programming without music? Listen Up Cog

[Casualposter]

Forget you. You are not valuable. You are an expense. You are a necessary evil that cuts into the profits. Why do you think the company stock goes up when a bunch of you are laid off? If you were valuable assets, then the company could borrow against your value like it can against inventory and accounts receivable. You could be sold or traded like inventory or the old company car.

Right now there are fifty guys in line for your job. Your manager can replace you with another monkey in clothing faster than you can say "But I like music." IT does not matter what your experience or your skills or education, you are a cog in a machine and when you squeak you get replaced with some less squeaky cog.

That's the nature of companies in our day in age.

Re:Ah, good

[Bigbutt]

How do you feel about listening to sales calls and marketing speak when you're programming?

[John]

Re:Programming without music? Listen Up Cog

[Sxooter]

This is an extreme, and inaccurate oversimplification. There are thousands of unemployed programmers, but honestly most of them are shitty and I would never hire them. During this current downturn we interviewed about 25 developers for an open position and found 2 acceptable candidates.

Plus, you invest a lot of time and effort training someone in how to work at your company with your development process. It takes them time to become familiar with the code they're working on. Employees in general, and coders in particular are not simple cookie cutter replacements and your boss knows this. The average cost to bring a new coder up to speed measures in the 10s of thousands of dollars.

Re:Programming without music? Listen Up Cog

[Hognoxious]

Employees in general, and coders in particular are not simple cookie cutter replacements

True.

and your boss knows this.

You do, I do, and most people here do. But the boss? Nope.

The average cost to bring a new coder up to speed measures in the 10s of thousands of dollars.

Your typical PHB doesn't even understand that. He'll probably think it means you hired someone who can't type very fast.

Boss' perception of unproductivity or poor quality

[Dr_Art]

The big issue here is the boss' PERCEPTION that developers are not producing at a level he expects or that the code being produced is crappy. The music edict is just a proxy for his real concern. It is critical for you to make sure the boss doesn't have this perception about YOU specifically. If so, you need to either find a way to change the boss' perception of you, or find another job. Most likely the boss' perception is general, and is not based on any real metrics of productivity or quality. What might help is suggesting to the boss how to collect such metrics, and more importantly how to present to his management that his team is very productive and has the highest quality work. It's very likely that the boss is being pressured by his management, so giving him the tools to fight back will help your teams' chance of avoiding the next round of layoffs. This is good for everyone: the boss gets credit, you are adding value, and everyone is aligned with the company's goals.