Too much noise in my workplace, can't focus on my code,
bought 300 bucks noise cancelling headphones,
best money i've spent

I got this coworker who ask me about everything every day. That is fine with me, but the way he does it is not. I always use noise-cancelling headsets. Every fucking time he walks up to my desk - and just stands there. And every fucking time I randomly turn my head and freaks out. HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN STANDING THERE, YOU CREEPY CRETIN?!

Do you as a developer use
1. Noise cancelling headsets
2. Music
while working?

If music, what kind or genre?
Personally, I listen a lot to Electronic Ambience/Chillstep.

I received a shiny new pair of Bose QC 35 II's for christmas -- bluetooth headphones with active noise cancelling.

They're similar to the $500 pair my previous boss lent me at work. Lower quality, but much newer, and rechargeable! and bluetooth! Yay!

I paired them with my debian machine, and... it failed. No explanation given. I tried everything I could htink of, but nothing changed. Well, okay; bluetooth came out within the last decade or so, meaning it takes some extra effort in Debian. truth. So I did some reading on bluetooth connection issues, changed some configs, learned how to use the bluetooth cli, and used that to pair and connect them. Worked like a charm.

But! No audio.
Damn.

Cue more research (on pulseaudio this time) and more configs. Did some fiddling, etc. No progress. Also discovered `pavucontrol`, a gui-only (😕) utility which lets you select audio output devices, among other things. It doesn't list the headset. Nor does `pactl list`, but that does list the correct bluetooth modules. It also lists Lennart Poettering's name many many times, for all the good that does. Bragging about building something as needlessly complicated and crappy and buggy as pulseaudio? I will never understand that egotistical doucheballoon.

Anyway.
I paired the headset with my phone in about six seconds. I'm now controlling my phone's music via spotify on my computer. yay. Doesn't work for games or movies, but I can always just plug them in.

But woo!
Noise canceling!
Yay, silence! At last!
and music! How I've missed you!
❤💜🖤

(systemd and pulseaudio can still die in a fire.)

Since 4 weeks i have during work my noise cancelling headphones on, thanks to the new open space office.
I don't even hear my phone ringing 😂

I don't always listen to music while coding, but when I do, it's because things are absolutely unmitigably fucked and it's going to take some herculean effort to unfuck it.

I have this thing I've done for more years than my kids have been alive when shit really hits the fan and I need to show the staff the old lady can still lay waste.

Step 1: put on "the playlist," which consists of only the most aggressive 90s marilyn manson songs.*
Step 2: put on the headphones, which are noise cancelling and super bassy
Step 3: pound a monster (blue, obv)
Step 4: get super manic
Step 5: get in the zone and destroy several features or a flotilla of bugs in a single night
Step N: make absolute fucking magic
Step N+1: call in sick the next day and sleep til noon

What's your hero process?

*Content has less to do with it than the headspace I've come to associate with it and the fact I can't get drowsy with the constant aggression.

Woohoo! I fixed a huge memory leak in our app! ... In one class.

Time for noise cancelling head phones, 80s hacker music, tons of caffeine, and more leak hunting. :)

Manager: we require people to work in the office but we'll give you a space to get as comfy as you want.

Me: *walk into the open space office, set my mechanical keyboard, plug in my noise cancelling headphones, start coding and mumbling every now and then*

Manager: keyboard is distracting others and we don't allow headphones as we want to be able to speak to you when we feel like it.

I fucking love noise cancelling headphone. Not just to block the noise but also to dive elbows deep into focus mode with code.

That is until your partner sneeks up to you on the side you don’t see.

I’m not kidding i just had a fucking heart attack guys!

Everytime someone launches a VR headset, people are talking about being able to watch movies in their "personal theater" and I'm here hoping there will be a desktop mirroring or something like a vnc client compatible with the headset so that I can have *infinite* monitors and code more efficiently. I might look stupid swiveling on a chair wearing a headset but hey.. I'll enjoy it!

Imagine.. 32 monitors, a nice piece of noise-cancelling headphones, a swivel chair with keyboard attached ergonomically, backrest bent to near 40degrees..

Just got my wireless, noise cancelling headphones for Christmas! Open floor plan, be damned!

Thank goodness noise cancelling headphones exist. I have a coworker who loves running a white noise machine at his desk all day. 😒

But now I don't have to listen to it 🙉

Best purchase I have made all year.

Finally, got this piece of beauty and badass combined, just to get some peace at work...

Now, dare those noisy neighbors, who doesn't silence their mobile and laptops, making loud chimes in IM, playing music on speakers and knocking at my desk when I'm on headphones and clearly don't want to be disturbed...

Get the best noise cancelling headphones, and a long playlist of favourite musics

!rant:

Today I lent a noise canceling headphone for a call at the office. After using it for the first time I see myself using it more often in our open office - even without sound on 😅

What do you guys think about noise canceling? I was blown away by it

Sort of a meeting, sort of an informal interview, I've dialled in from the home office and my audio setup includes a standalone mic and some noise cancelling headphones. It's going really really well when all of a sudden I see something in the preview window of my webcam feed.
Behind me, looking very concerned and confused is my 73 year old Nanna who'd decided to pop in and see me as she was passing by.
It's common for me to keep the front door locked, but my Nanna has an emergency key and knows I don't always hear a knock at the door, so let herself in.
So she's now in the house, calling out to me and she can hear me talking, so follows the sound of my voice thinking maybe I'm on the phone. Walks right into the office, where the door is behind me, eventually puts two and two together to work out that I can't hear her and finally sees herself on my monitor. She panics and goes to hide in the corner of my office, almost underneath my workbench because she's old and doesn't know where she would or wouldn't be visible from.
The rest of the meeting went really well, but overran by at least half an hour. Meanwhile I can see my poor Nanna hiding away in my peripheral vision.

I'm on my way to work and I forgot my headphones at home. It's horrible. I can hear people talk and stuff.

Luckily I got my trusty noise cancelling pair at work.

I thought noise cancelling headphones were a universal sign and courteous way of saying "I'm busy, fuck off" but apparently that doesn't seem to translate to my team. Every time I put these things on people start trying to talk over/through them.

How else do I let my team know to fuck off?

I get it some people need music to work or do whatever. But I don't want to freaking listen to your music. Lower your volume what are your expensive (noise cancelling and all that shit) headphones for ? Hope they explode.

I tend to load up Spotify put on my noise cancelling headphones and zone out and become one with the code.
Super deep.
Like deeper than neo.
Also have to have my hands on my mechanical keyboard at home.

Work won't buy me noise-cancelling headphones T_T it gets so fucking loud here in this open floor plan

Fuck this shit! Roommate just barged in at 3:30AM, his gf in tow. They went to bed like I am not here and he is snoring like a chainsaw. I never understood how can she sleep next to him while he snores like that. I have earplugs and active noise cancelling headphones on. I can still hear that motherfucker loud and clear. How the fuck is she not awake?!

But more importantly, 50% of this fucking room is mine, what makes him think he can just have his girlfriend over while I am here is beyond me. Like, sure, if I am not here go ahead but when I am here I would like some privacy, I guess the plank wall that I made in the middle of the room is not an obvious enough clue that I want privacy and I don't want to be disturbed :-/

Can't wait to have enough proof of his bullshit to get the block manager to throw him out.

Edit: To add to the snoring problem: I had a girlfriend who would snore, less than my roommate but still loud enough that I was awake the whole night when I went to sleep at her place... I HATE SNORING ... And when I went home for some holidays and my brother snored even for a second I kicked him off of his bed (because why not, he is an asshole to me like 99% of the time - and so am I to him :D //sibling love//)

I have noticed I have had great success using another co-worker as a metaphorical rubber duck (sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally). It improves my productivity vastly. However, I know that it probably distracts others when I am using them in that way.

That's why I want to buy a literal rubber duck and talk to it. I could do it very quietly and most of my close co-workers use noise-cancelling headphones 80% of time while sitting at their desks. My only concern is other people passing by my desk would think that I am weird. My desk is in an open space and several people pass by it every hour. (however on my floor besides developers we have HR, marketing and people from high up who might be unfamiliar with the rubber duck method).

Is it unprofessional to talk to a rubber duck at the office?

After working for 3 years as a dev , last month I bought my first Noise Cancelling Headphones (Sony xm3). Best decision in my life .
It blocks all the chatter/noise from open office and lets you focus. Now I can get shit done in the office itself with all the mfking monkeys (my esteemed colleagues) chirping around .

Best decision of my life 😅

Noise cancelling headphones with brown noise.

Lots of electronic music, noise cancelling headphones and around 10 mugs of coffee a day

I work in an office building which are blocks of cubicle farms. Each cubicle farm has about 50 seats. The cubicle farm I work in

1) People don’t step out to take personal calls. They talk on their phone for a good 30 minutes loudly and multiple people do this at the same time sometimes.

2) people chit chat and make noise and have more conversations than do actual work and it is noisy as fuck. People who do not have work go around chatting up people and it is loud and again noisy and distracting

3) people take calls via Skype or whatever and they’re loud too most of the time.

When I walk into work it feels like a fucking market and I think am gonna lose my mind soon. I just cannot concentrate at all.

Before anyone recommends noise cancelling headphones or anything, I really can’t because I have to constantly help out people and am being asked questions frequently and noise cancelling headphones don’t really do much for voices.

I’m pissed as fuck and really upset I can’t work because of these shitheads. I’m not sure who do I give the D to.

I've seen some posts on remote work. I believe all companies should permanently implement remote work if they cannot arrange a proper office.
I have been working for a company where programmers and project managers work in the same room, and sometimes I was trying to understand some problem in code when managers were screaming next to me at other developers or on the phone, because they couldn't hear themselves.
This happend so often that I would literally go home burned out.
Also there were people coming in the room to talk to the managers or just passing next to my screen every couple of minutes which was extremely distracting.
I bought a pair of over ear noise cancelling headphones and on top of that used ear plugs, but eventually I developed a very strange stress condition over the course of a year. Also listening to music while trying to focus for 8 hours a day while at work is very tiresome.
Also couldn't quit because it was my first job.

Does anyone have any good recommendations for Bluetooth, noise cancelling (over ear) headphones, with good build and sound quality?

Busta Rhymes, Diet Coke, and noise cancelling headphones.

We have company wide communications such as Skype and WebEx, so why the fuck do people feel the need to hold an ad hoc meeting right behind my desk? Thank God for NC headphones.

Not really a dev rant, more of a "home tech support" kind of rant but I guess a lot of devs will relate...

So I was looking at building myself a little storage server, mostly for backups and stuff. This led to the fail of this rant: I thought it would be a good idea to convince my father to switch from using a ton of USB HDDs to get himself a NAS.

This is where I didn't think things through...

The only place he was able to set up the NAS is in the living room. Now I have to use my noise cancelling headphones all day just to not have to hear those HDDs rumbling around in there🤦

(also, I specifically got some super quiet fans for my gaming PC in the living room, but now I realize I could have saved some money and gotten some louder ones, since that NAS is so much louder...)

I am looking at replacing my Dell XPS 15 from 2019, but because I work 100% remote I am considering building a desktop developer rig instead of getting a new laptop. I have only had laptops since early 2000s, but thought it would be fun building something from scratch again. The problem is I have fallen tragically behind on everything hardware, and therefore looking for some pointers.

I don't want an RGB rainbow unit with 6 loud fans requiring a noise cancelling headset to work on. I want a top spec, stealthy thing that has all the goodies but also runs quiet. A decent graphics card that can run the latest games at a decent frame rate, but not the top of the line either.

Any tips on cases, motherboards, RAM, drives, fans and grahpics cards appreciated. The budget is roomy, comparable to a top spec Dell XPS 15 or ThinkPad X1 Extreme.

Noise cancelling headphones and strong coffee

Just bought a BEST BUDDY for a programmer ---- a very good noise cancelling HEADPHONES...🎧🎧

My ANC headphones have clearly lost most of their noise cancelling effect, and now I can hear all the talk in the room and can't focus on any work. Makes me want to yell, SHUT UP EVERYONE! This sucks :(

I just found out my headphones become noise cancelling if I gently push them a bit through my ears. I can finally focus with noise around me, yay!

This is not an euphemism for sticking something up my butt.
I'm compensating for @rutee_07 absence, is this good enough @oreru?

Going back to coding with earbuds in reminds me why I got noise cancelling over ear headphones in the first place.

Noise cancelling headphones, 0.5 liter thermos mug constantly filled with coffee by the project manager and lock on the office door.

Off to meet one of our customers next week. Requires my first long haul flight ever! 22hrs on a plane (with a wee stop in the middle!) Planning to buy a new set of noise cancelling headphones in the airport before I go! Duty Free Electronics FTW!!

See you down under!!

Our NOC engineer is a CLi nuthead. I send him a link to cmder on Githib.... Might be interesting. Here is the conversation that followed :

Him: it's just cmd with colours. Why do you send me shit?
Me:
Him: You mean I have to install it to use it?
Me:
Him: I see zero benifits. Pretty useless
Me: Well... 10k people think otherwise
Him: I don't understand this Githib anyway. Don't see why we should deploy this everywhere
Me: *Put my noise cancelling headphones back on*

Invest in a good pair of noise cancelling headphones.

Ancillary: Have an "emergency" pair that you leave at your work desk for those times you forget your good headphones.

With Nootropics. (And the usual caffeine, noise cancelling headphones and Spotify)

So I got a mice, and arm for it and etc.

Figured out how to do some noise cancelling.

All good for some voice overs!

ON the downside I didn't realize how much smacking and noise I make just opening my mouth ... I'm like some sort of uncouth barbarian via audio.... not just video.

I don't know who it was that invented noise cancelling headphones but the person deserves to be a proclaimed as a saviour of humankind...

... or at least this open space. And I don't even have to be jailed, which is a plus.

I recently moved to a house where my gf and me each have our separate office space. However, i’m sitting with my back to the door so whenever i’m in the zone with noise cancelling on and my gf walks in i don’t hear her. Resulting in me having a couple of almost heart attacks lately.

I have ideas about mirrors or sensors but since i’m working of three screens i din’t think it will do. The second option is ofcourse to move the desk to the other side of the room so that i’m facing the door more. But there are no power plugs.

My gf basically locks her door by sitting in front of it. Also she doesnt have a noise cancelling head set.

A question, since I've seen a lot of you guys use noise-canceling headphones... Any recommendations what to buy?

Atm I have Sony's xb950n1 and I really hate them. Thinking of getting Bose QC35 II.

Need some suggestions for wireless noise canceling headphones

I can work productively and for very long hours with a lot of stuff which many dev considers productivity hurdles:

- single small monitor? No problem (in fact in one occasion in which my roommate accidentally broke my laptop charghing port and I couldn't get a spare I worked on an iPad connected trough SSH to a Linux machine completing one of the hardest tasks I ever did without significant loss of productivity)
- old machine? That's ok as long as I can run a minimal Linux and not struggle with Windows
- noise and chatter around me? A 10€ pair of earbuds are enough for me, no noise cancelling needed
- "legacy" stack/programming language? I'd rather spend my days coding in Swift or Rust but in the end I believe which is the dev and its skill which gets the job done not fancy language features so Java 8 will be fine
- no JetBrains or other fancy IDE? Altough some refactoring and code generation stuff is amazing Neovim or VS Code, maybe with the help of some UNIX CLI tools here and there are more than enough

despite this I found out there is a single thing which is like kryptonite for my productivity bringing it from above average* to dangerously low and it's the lack of a quick feedback loop.
For programming tasks that's not a problem because it doesn't matter the language there's always a compiler/interpreter I can use to quickly check what I did and this helps to get quickly in a good work flow but since I went to work with a customer which wants everything deployed on a lazily put together "private cloud" which needs configurations in non-standard and badly documented file formats, has a lot of stuff which instead of being automated gets done trough slowly processed tickets, sometimes things breaks and may take MONTHS to see them fixed... my productivity took a big hit since while I'm still quick at the dev stuff (if I'm able to put together a decent local environment and I don't depend on the cloud of nightmares, something which isn't always warranted) my productivity plummets when I have to integrate what I did or what someone else did in this "cloud" since lacking decent documentation everything has do be done trough a lot of manual tasks and most importantly slow iterations of trial and error. When I have to do that kind stuff (sadly quite often) my brain feels like stuck on "1st gear": I get slow, quickly tired and often I procrastinate a lot even if I force myself out of non work related internet stuff.

*I don't want this to sound braggy but being a passionate developer which breathes computers since childhood and dedicating part of my freetime on continuously improving my skill I have an edge over who do this without much passion or even reluctantly and I say this without wanting to be an èlitist gatekeeper, everyone has to work and tot everybody as the privilege of being passionate in a skill which nowadays has so much market