Crowdsourced Wisdom On How To Survive Open Plan Office and Deal With Interruptions

For example:

• “The foosball table is right next to my desk in our office. Like, 10 meters away. I feel like I’m slowly going crazy.”
• “My desk happens to be about 5 meters from the entrance to the men’s restroom… The noises I hear all day…”
• “I actually had a manager tell me that I wear my headphones far too much.”
• “I worked at a place where one guy would shoot nerf darts at the interns all day.”
• “When will it be done by?’ this question triggers me.”
• “Headphones give me a headache. Earplugs disorient me. Office noise—especially scrum meetings or half a dozen people on the phone at the same time—make it difficult for me to think. Interruptions kill my productivity because it can take me 10-15 minutes to get back to same mental state in the code that I had before the interruption.”