Don't do this

Hah! I can program only in complete silence. I can listen to music or radio while designing a circuit or routing a PCB etc., but I don't even try it when coding, discovered that many years ago. I also can't do it in someone elses presence in the room, I need to feel isolated.

Dimiter

------------------------------------------------------ Dimiter Popoff, TGI

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You guys are touching the tip of the iceberg. There are fashionable and hip engineering outfits in my city that attract people with ping-pong, foosball, beer, etc. I don't see how people can function productively in those kinds of environments. I don't believe they can. I think that people that say it's a work environment conducive to high quality output are in denial. Now wonder there are so many bugs in SW.

Where I work, we are provided daily catered lunches. It's surprising how much return on this investment can be. The result is engineers are able to put in at least an hour or two extra work on site daily. We also have an air hockey, foosball, and billiards. Thankfully, I've never heard or seen anybody play air hockey and foosball. Billiards get used maybe once per week late in the day. The unspoken consensus is there is no time for these kinds of diversions. The productivity expectations are too high to allow it.

JJS

I think it differs. Some people are able to tune out distractions.... I'm not. If I'm working on something that requires thinking, I need total isolation if possible. But the other side of the coin is the inability to be satisfied with total isolation for protracted periods. I like some amount of social interaction during the day. This alone makes it hard to work for myself sometimes, no small part of why I'm here.

I have worked in a similar environment. No free lunch, but a relaxed atmosphere and a ping-pong table in the lab. We used it from time to time. It helps to build a team that works together and just gives you a break from the monotony of work. Taking a 15 minute break during the day is a good thing really. Combining it with something that gets your juices flowing helps a lot I think.

Everyone is different.

I need to take frequent breaks when I'm coding or doing algorithm design. When I worked for the man these breaks would often be in the form of wandering over to the cubicles of those colleagues of mine who wouldn't snarl at me, and hashing out details of what I was working on (and they'd often return the favor). For the guys like you, I'd leave them alone.

Now that I'm a lone wolf the breaks are often in the form of switching gears: I'll stop coding and go work on a circuit design, or I'll do a bit of work in the model airplane shop or the garden, or whatever.

Sitting in total silence staring at a computer screen isn't the environment that's least conducive to getting work done, but it's certainly lower on the list than having the radio on. I think that listening to interesting science shows while trying to work is lower than total silence, however.