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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?"
Yeah, sure your headphones don't leak, but other people's do. And I'm not running around buying headphones for everyone. Why should I change, they're the ones who suck!
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I am pretty sure, that the official reason is not the real reason. My best guess is that other employees have complained about the privilege of the programmers (listening music while working). Since your boss knows that giving this reason would create dissent, he has choosen the quality issue as official reason. That is the reason why discussing the pretended reason will not make him change his mind. I have seen this happening a hundred times... humans are so petty. CU, Martin
That just depends on how much you concentrate on the music: if you really listen to it, it can be distracting. If you merely hear it, that shouldn't be detrimental.
Personally, I find the best music to code to - if any - is either ambient music or "smooth jazz", genres that are mostly made for staying in the background and not claiming too much attention.
I've heard bosses and professors before say that if you're listening to music, then you're not 100% focusing on your studying/work. In an environment where its perfectly silent, then I can see how music can be distracting. However, most of us work in an office where there are cubicles with people within earshot talking about work or talking to other people on the phone. The problem with that is that people talking is very erratic. Pitch and volume changes unpredictably and those unpredictable changes suddenly distract me from my work. On the other hand, the music I have playing is, for the most part, music that I've heard numerous times. On top of that, there's a consistent "flow" to the music. It drowns out the distracting random noise and provides some constant noise that lets me focus on my work.
I like music, and when it's on, I can't help but listen to it. That means that while music is playing, I can't concentrate on reading a book, let alone write code. This applies to all but the most ambient styles of music. And a drone doesn't help me work either. If I thought all programmers were like me, I'd ban headphones too.
But, we're all different, and I know some people do their best work when zoned out behind their headphones.
It sounds like this management decision comes from someone who doesn't realise how much people vary.
It would make sense to provide programmers with an environment where they can escape prattle when they need to, as well.
Ask him if foam earplugs (nonmusical, just noise-dampening) are acceptable. I know music helps achieve flow state, but even the reduction in noise level might help somewhat. This is a good test also, if he says no to foam earplugs then you know it wasn't really about the music. And it may penetrate his pointy-haired mind that the surrounding noise level is really a problem.
I never had any problems regarding this issue. What might be a solution is to use earplugs. A colleague of mine uses earplugs when he is doing "serious" work (as he says) and he seems to do just fine. It's just a little bit funny that you have to ask him everything twice, as he won't hear it the first time and first has to remove the earplugs -- ad you don't know beforehand if he is currently wearing his earplugs as you can't see them (at least not from two meters away). The earplugs have the psychological advantage of making other people disrupt you less often: It takes some time till you remove the earplugs and they have to ask their question twice, so they think twice if the effort of this is worth the answer -- Dummy-questions good-bye!
Too much silence if even more distracting for some people, myself included.
Music makes good background, and can be easily tuned out.
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.
I have programmed drunk, with not enough sleep, in my dreams (thats code that always run but is written in the most volatile material), angry, happy, hot, ...everything. I have programmed in enviroments with HEAVY noise around, not problem. But I can't work with music, and much less with radio of people talking. My mind is distracted by sound (information) that has a message. To be honest, I like programming in the night, with zero sounds. I like the silence much more than music.
-Woof woof woof!
It sounds like your boss isn't a programmer, otherwise they wouldn't even be making their assertion. sigh...
:-)
So your boss claims when you listen to music you're collectively distracted and you make more mistakes. You should then, since you take anything that can improve the quality of the code seriously, hold this meta-contribution to the corporate codebase to the same standard as anything else - in other words, require it be tested and verified before committing it.
While from your standpoint this is likely to get you what you want, since it's very unlikely that your boss has anything factual to back up their position, it's also the most respectful way of considering your boss' potential contribution. "OK, even though you're not a skilled programmer, we'll still accept and treat your contribution just as if you were. Now here's the level of quality we all expect and demand from everything we put in our product - does what you intend to add actually meet the standards our company requires?"
And this also gives them the possibility of showing you how they're right, and for whatever reason the programming group is distracted and error-prone. Even if music isn't the immediate cause (perhaps more of a late-stage symptom of some other systemic problem), that would still be very helpful to know.
Of course, if you're just a bunch guys sitting around slinging code, you're gonna be SOL in this if you don't have any structure, testing and metrics to your development - and if you don't then your boss might strictly speaking be mistaken but indirectly be life's way of helpfully prompting you to get your act together.
Good luck improving your work environment. Rock out with your awk out!
I do a lot of work next to the sales team -- mostly that is not a problem as I am fairly able to tune out their prattle.
But something I really NEED to concentrate on something. I find that listening to white noise (ocean waves or something) quickly filters out the conversations around me.
I am completely unable to work with music on -- my preferred working environment is one of pure silence.
Get a white noise generator. I have an ancient one that sits in the corner of my office. It helps drown out the background chit chat and definitely helps me focus my attention without distraction. No one notices that is is on but if I ever turn it off you suddenly become aware of just how noisy everyone is, you can hear every sniffle and word spoken and you realize just how distracting that really is. Maybe stage such a demo, have your noise generator running for a couple of weeks, then one day when your boss is in your cube, just reach over casually and turn it off. When he suddenly becomes aware of all the distracting chit chat pouring in, point out how much more productive you have been since you got the white noise generator and how it serves the same purpose for you music used to do when it was allowed. It might open his mind a little. Or not. But the main thing is you can concentrate.
As someone with moderate OCD, I can tell you that silence is one of the most disrupting things I can endure.
Moderate silence, such as you would find in an empty office building, is full of small, repetitive noises and visuals such as fans, air conditioning, blinking router lights, analog (face) clocks ticking, etc. To this day I am unable to work, concentrate, watch television or even sleep in the same room as an analog clock that ticks. Even if the ticking is so faint you can barely hear it.
Complete silence (isolation room quiet) is a little better, but at that volume I start counting my own hearbeats, breathing, the number of times my teeth touch each other. As many people here can probably contest, the smallest things can cause the biggest distraction. I can hear a CRT television (as rare as they may be now-a-days) turn on through 3 walls and a server clicking from a floor away.
I have found that some music, particularly "house" or "trance" music (without vocals) to be very calming by covering up those subtle distractions while not supplying a new one. The only thing I have EVER found to be more effective than music is a real water fountain. I have tried simulated and even recorded water, but only real water (my previous workplace co-worker had a real miniature one on a table) will work.
Not everyone fits the general results of a widespread "experimental study" and the sooner people start to both understand their own bodies and more importantly the fact that not everyone's is equal, the sooner we can get some real work done.
If a boss ever told me to not use my headphones because they distract me, I would ask him to first turn off the AC, heating and the noisy computer next door that is clicking.
Or listen to swedish death metal, there might be lyrics at some imaginary level, but nothing I can discern. Literally something to scream along to.
One place I worked had a guitar we could use when we wanted. Again, no lyrics, just people quietly playing away to the best of their ability, easily drowned out by headphones if necessary.
There is something about the rhythm, pace and harmony of playing on a guitar for half an hour that seemed to help me make the right changes to the code when I went back to the computer. This was a place where the importance of making the right changes (and preferably only the right changes) was well understood.
It would be even better if every programmer sent out their updated resumes, and those that can find jobs coordinated their start dates for maximum impact. It might send an important message.
Where I work, we still have a couple openings for Java, Python, and/or C++ programmers. Programming experience counts well for lack of the exact language experience. Search skills, like figuring out how to get the resume to me, counts well, too.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I've found the second half of this to be persuasive in the past:
* http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000068.html
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Here's the trouble. We all know that knowledge workers work best by getting into "flow", also known as being "in the zone", where they are fully concentrated on their work and fully tuned out of their environment. They lose track of time and produce great stuff through absolute concentration. This is when they get all of their productive work done. Writers, programmers, scientists, and even basketball players will tell you about being in the zone.
The trouble is, getting into "the zone" is not easy. When you try to measure it, it looks like it takes an average of 15 minutes to start working at maximum productivity. Sometimes, if you're tired or have already done a lot of creative work that day, you just can't get into the zone and you spend the rest of your work day fiddling around, reading the web, playing Tetris.
The other trouble is that it's so easy to get knocked out of the zone. Noise, phone calls, going out for lunch, having to drive 5 minutes to Starbucks for coffee, and interruptions by coworkers -- ESPECIALLY interruptions by coworkers -- all knock you out of the zone. If you take a 1 minute interruption by a coworker asking you a question, and this knocks out your concentration enough that it takes you half an hour to get productive again, your overall productivity is in serious trouble. If you're in a noisy bullpen environment like the type that caffinated dotcoms love to create, with marketing guys screaming on the phone next to programmers, your productivity will plunge as knowledge workers get interrupted time after time and never get into the zone.
With programmers, it's especially hard. Productivity depends on being able to juggle a lot of little details in short term memory all at once. Any kind of interruption can cause these details to come crashing down. When you resume work, you can't remember any of the details (like local variable names you were using, or where you were up to in implementing that search algorithm) and you have to keep looking these things up, which slows you down a lot until you get back up to speed.
Here's the simple algebra. Let's say (as the evidence seems to suggest) that if we interrupt a programmer, even for a minute, we're really blowing away 15 minutes of productivity. For this example, lets put two programmers, Jeff and Mutt, in open cubicles next to each other in a standard Dilbert veal-fattening farm. Mutt can't remember the name of the Unicode version of the strcpy function. He could look it up, which takes 30 seconds, or he could ask Jeff, which takes 15 seconds. Since he's sitting right next to Jeff, he asks Jeff. Jeff gets distracted and loses 15 minutes of productivity (to save Mutt 15 seconds).
Now let's move them into separate offices with walls and doors. Now when Mutt can't remember the name of that function, he could look it up, which still takes 30 seconds, or he could ask Jeff, which now takes 45 seconds and involves standing up (not an easy task given the average physical fitness of programmers!). So he looks it up. So now Mutt loses 30 seconds of productivity, but we save 15 minutes for Jeff.
Anyway, I fully expect that most of you, reading this, will write to say, "what the heck are you doing reading Upside anyway? You get what you deserve". How true. Serves me right.
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Requiem for the American Dream
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.
Agreed. I tend to listen to video game soundtracks (usually C&C: Red Alert and Total Annihilation) or sometimes the Star Wars or Lord of the Rings movie soundtracks.
I'm glad I'm not the only one!
I found a few years ago that VG soundtracks were the best coding music for me. It makes sense, though, since VG music is by design not meant to grab your attention but to be a pleasant background layer.
I just pooped your party.