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Does anyone have any links to studies that show how noise affects the productivity of programmers? Specifically I would like to see how/if productivity rises when noise levels decrease.

As pointed in comments, the nature of the programming workflow is such that you go in and out of focus all the time -- so it's likely to be affected by noise differently than other lines of work.

The reason I think that this is programmer specific is that I am also interested in mathematics. In a noisy place, if I start thinking about maths, the noise goes away and I find myself lost in a world of pictures. In fact my favourite place to do maths was always The Copper Kettle cafe, a busy tourist place.

For programming it's completely different. While programming I'm usually thinking verbally, and any talking whatsoever destroys my train of thought. I'm literally incapable of programming anywhere where there is audible conversation.

I've talked to other programmers who don't even notice noise that disables me, and they say that they think mainly in pictures. Which is why I'm wondering whether there are any actual academic studies into whether programming is particularly noise-affected compared to say maths or lawyering.

Community
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John Lawrence Aspden
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    Why close this question? – Rei Miyasaka Feb 02 '12 at 11:05
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    I have no idea. It seems that at least 3 people think it's offtopic –  Feb 02 '12 at 11:12
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    @Pierre303 Most likely those people think that it's off-topic because it's a question that applies to all lines of work and not just to programming. To which I'd disagree, because the nature of the programming workflow is such that you go in and out of focus all the time -- so it's likely to be affected by noise differently than others, and so warrants its own research. – Rei Miyasaka Feb 02 '12 at 11:18
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    Not sure when the votes were cast, but as the question was originally written, it was pretty bad. – Kevin D Feb 02 '12 at 11:18
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    @ReiMiyasaka you should edit that into the question just to make it clear that we're after how this uniquely affects software developers. – ChrisF Feb 02 '12 at 11:34
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    @ChrisF done in rev 4 – gnat Feb 02 '12 at 12:27
  • @gnat Thanks, I was feeling a bit shy about making a significant edit to another person's question :) – Rei Miyasaka Feb 02 '12 at 12:27
  • @ReiMiyasaka you're welcome. As for edit being significant I felt pretty safe in this case, following the FAQ and advice from moderator :) – gnat Feb 02 '12 at 12:32
  • Related: http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7517/what-study-showed-that-using-headphones-to-drown-out-office-noise-is-detrimental – CodesInChaos Feb 02 '12 at 14:47
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    @ReiMiyasaka The rewording doesn't really make this question any better. How is this question unique? The same could be asked about physicists, mathematicians, accountants, lawyers, philosophers, and really anyone trying to solve a problem entirely in their heads. And as per the FAQ, how is this question on topic? Unless there are actually people here who can give an informed answer based on their expertise, I don't see how this question can be adequately answered as per the charter outlined in the FAQ. – S.Robins Feb 03 '12 at 09:51
  • @S.Robins Programming is in a way a very socially interactive trade. You will almost always have to rely on other people on a nearly daily basis, either in person or on the Internet. There is so much esoteric information that you need in order to accomplish anything that you simply can't work alone. Social interactions are asynchronous, so distractions in programming are frequent. In math, philosophy or physics, you catch up on the state of the art by reading a journal once a month or so, and then return to your own work, either in your head, on paper, or on a DSL computer program like Matlab. – Rei Miyasaka Feb 03 '12 at 12:41
  • @S.Robins That said, I don't know if distractions that the programmer himself initiates, usually by opening a browser, necessarily counts as a distraction. Ideally if the programmer is disciplined, it wouldn't -- but that's uncertain. I also don't know if constant necessary distraction means that you would build up a tolerance to noise, or if you would be even more prone to being carried away by it, or if it wouldn't affect you any differently. These uncertainties are the reason that this is a good question that is reasonably, if not perfectly, unique to programming. – Rei Miyasaka Feb 03 '12 at 12:46
  • @ReiMiyasaka I don't think it's a good idea for us to carry on an extended debate here in the comments. I'm happy to carry on what I am sure will turn out to be a very interesting discussion via a chat area that I created for just this sort of discussion! ;-) – S.Robins Feb 03 '12 at 14:38
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    Based on the answers, this apparently has nothing to do with programmers specifically, but everything to do with a general workplace. It would likely be on-topic on the forthcoming site, The Workplace. –  Feb 04 '12 at 10:43
  • The question is closed because it it is a request for a link to a resource. This is kind of request is off-topic for this forum, as per the guidelines. – JacquesB Feb 13 '18 at 18:52

2 Answers2

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The book Peopleware has several chapters that cover the subject. You can read a decent summary here.

Studies led by Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister showed statistically significant results about the correlation between noise and defects.

Here is an interesting part of the summary:

Workplace Quality and Product Quality - Companies that provide small and noisy workplaces explain away complaints as workers campaigning for the added status of bigger, more private space. To determine whether noise level had any correlation to work, we divided our sample into those who found the workplace acceptably quiet and those who didn't. Then, looking at workers within each group who completed the entire exercise without a single defect:

> Workers who reported that their workplace was acceptably quiet before
the exercise were 1/3 more likely to deliver zero-defect work.

As the noise level gets worse, this trend gets stronger:

  • Zero-defect workers: => 66% reported noise level OK
  • 1-or-more-defect workers: => 8% reported noise level OK

A Discovery of Nobel Prize Significance - On February 3, 1984, in a study of 32,346 companies worldwide, the authors confirmed a virtually perfect inverse relationship between people density and dedicated floor space per person. If you're having trouble seeing why this matters, you're not thinking about noise. Noise is directly proportional to density, so halving the allotment of space per person can be expected to double the noise. Even if you managed to prove conclusively that a programmer could work in 30 sq. ft. without being hopelessly space-bound, you still wouldn't be able to conclude that 30 sq. ft. is adequate space. The noise in a 30 sq. ft matrix is more than triple the noise in a 100 sq. ft. matrix, which could make the difference between a plague of product defects and none at all.

Check the summary, really, noise is one of the recurring subject in Peopleware.

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    I suspect it is so noisy where you are that you forgot to finish your last sentence! – jk. Feb 02 '12 at 11:06
  • Is there any information on what kind of noise this is? White? Pink? Music? Environmental? Chatter? – Rei Miyasaka Feb 02 '12 at 11:06
  • @jk: Sorry for that, it was a copy/paste ;) –  Feb 02 '12 at 11:09
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    @Rei Miyasaka: in the book, he talks at least about three annoyances including phone, chatting & spoken information (in speakers) –  Feb 02 '12 at 11:10
  • @Pierre303 Ahh, cool. – Rei Miyasaka Feb 02 '12 at 11:15
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    is this some sort of joke? --- the authors confirmed a virtually perfect inverse relationship between people density and dedicated floor space per person – John Lawrence Aspden Feb 02 '12 at 16:46
  • I've read Peopleware and it rings true for me. But if their conclusions were true, why has nobody revisited the subject in 28 years? – John Lawrence Aspden Feb 02 '12 at 16:48
  • @JohnLawrenceAspden: you know what is a negative correlation right? –  Feb 02 '12 at 19:24
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    @Pierre303 I guess John thinks it's a joke because 'people density' is (Number of people)/(Total floor space) and 'floor space per person' is (Total floor space)/(Number of people) so of course there's a perfect inverse relationship between them - they're defined to be the inverse of one another. I don't understand that sentence at all. – Chris Taylor Feb 03 '12 at 12:21
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    @ChrisTaylor: Oh I didn't see that coming ;) I just verified in the book itself, and that was some sarcastic demonstration of the noise vs people density problem. More density = more noise annoyance since more people ;) So yes, it was some kind of joke to demonstrate the absurdity of reduction of square per person –  Feb 03 '12 at 12:42
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    That doesn't really sound like a correlation between noise and defects. It sounds like a correlation between how acceptable each developer finds noise, and the defects they produce. It's an assumption that the noise level is actually changing between those two cases. – recursive Feb 03 '12 at 14:44
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    The nature of a correlation is that it shows a "link" between two variables, not causality. Also the link has a "level" that can be very strong to very weak. Here the correlation is strong. –  Feb 03 '12 at 14:57
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    @recursive That distinction doesn't change our response as programmers and managers of programmers, to wit, "make sure each of your developers is working in a space that they feel is quiet enough to work". – Dave Feb 03 '12 at 15:15
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    @recursive You're right though--your point adds a degree of nuance that the authors' "more space good" doesn't have. I know that some developers need a cave whereas others do fine in more social environments. – Dave Feb 03 '12 at 15:26
  • I know a couple of (really) great developer that increase their performance by listening hard trance music in headphones ;) But they are statistical exceptions. I believe the vast majority of the people a negatively affected by any source of noise. –  Feb 03 '12 at 15:28
  • @Dave: I understand that the response is the same, but this question is literally about the effect of noise on programmers, and whether productivity changes when noise levels change. It's not hard for me to imagine that some developers almost always feel there is too much noise. And I know, from personal experience that there are some that are virtually impossible to bother with noise. So it's not clear that this is actually addressing the original question. – recursive Feb 03 '12 at 15:47
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    @Pierre303 I would expect, from personal experience, that self-chosen noise is distinct from uncontrolled noise. Lyric-free music often also acts as white noise for me, drowning out others' conversations. – Dave Feb 03 '12 at 16:18
  • @Pierre303, noise generally refers to unwanted sound. Self selected music typically wouldn't fall into that category. – CaffGeek Feb 03 '12 at 18:15
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The typical response to noisy conditions is to listen to music with headphones.

However, one of the really interesting studies quoted in Peopleware is the experiment done at Cornell -- they gave two groups a complicated task involving a long string of calculations. One group listened to music while performing the task, and one group had silence.

What they didn't tell either group is that the complicated string of calculations always returned the original number.

It turned out that not everyone figured this out, but of the people who did, a large majority came from the group that did not listen to music.

The theory apparently being is that listening to music is somehow engaging the part of the brain involved in creative thought, keeping it "busy" enough not to be able to look at the big picture of the task being performed.

Something to keep in mind the next time you plug in.

Look in the index under "Cornell" to find the reference.

Bill Torpey
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    That test probably needed a 3rd group in order to be representative of real life. A silent group with occasional random noises/sounds occurring. That's the problem with silence. It is all good and well except that any unexpected sound at all is a major distraction. With background noise (ie. music/tv) those random sounds aren't as big of an issue. Although, I would agree that total silence is best for concentration. From my experience, when I come in on a Sunday and nobody is around, I get a weeks worth of work done in that one day. – Dunk Feb 03 '12 at 18:05
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    or to use noise-blocking/cancelling head-phones to lessen the external noises. –  Apr 04 '12 at 08:34