Should music be played at a software development company? [closed]

Question

I am working at a software development company. At my workplace above my desk, there is speaker in the ceiling. After every 2 desks there is a speaker.

As from my desk, almost every second face is listening to music using headphones.

There is so many cons of listening to music using headphone:

• Sometimes employees waste his/her time in music selection
• Sometimes employee workstation PCs have no right to access music sites
• Headphones can damage your hearing
• Music downloads can be a reason for slow internet (mainly for India)

So at the end I would like to ask the question:

Should software development companies play music in development rooms, so that employees don’t need to listen to music on headphones?

*(Of course soft music at low volume.)

Answer 1

No. I listen to music at work for a number of reasons:

• My music hides the noise of the radio played by the support staff (which I hate with a passion). It is incredibly annoying and distracting to have music/radio that you hate forced upon you.
• Music can add white-noise, thus reducing the distraction of other people's conversations. My workplace can get very noisy.
• Music can help me with boring work. A productive person knows what to listen to and when. Sometimes I'll listen to some metal, sometimes some folk music - whatever works with my brain best at the time.

A happy workplace is a productive one.

Answer 2

No, the software development company should not play music in the development room. It is difficult to account for different tastes in music, and unwanted music is an intrusion that can negatively impact the concentration of the developers. You say that half of the developers have headphones on, which you assume to mean that they are listening to music. That means that half of them are choosing not to listen to music.

For developers, I don't worry about time that is wasted on something as trivial as selecting music to listen to. Development is an activity which requires a lot of thinking and analysis. The brain needs the opportunity to rest and not actively think about a problem, which makes it able to better and more quickly solve problems. The time that a developer is selecting music, unless it is extremely excessive, is an activity that lets the brain rest.

If your bandwidth is limited, and if usage of online music services is high, then that can be handled via a new policy that is communicated to the employees, and the online music service is then blocked by your servers. This is trivial to implement. Alternately, you could simply get better bandwidth.

If an employee is breaking the law by pirating music, then that is a matter to discuss with them (and, as above, block the site), and to consider whether to involve management, Human Relations, or someone else official to deal with the problem.

I'm unsure what you mean by "hearing power". If you mean that the employee won't overhear other conversations, then this might be exactly what the employee is trying to accomplish. They want to focus on their work, and conversations from others interrupt their concentration, so they wear headphones (which might or might not actually have music playing). If you are unable to get someone's attention when you need it, this can be alleviated by using other methods to get their attention, such as waving a hand in their field of vision. If you are concerned with your employees' hearing, that's really their concern and not yours.

Most importantly, consider the impact of such a change on your developers. If you are going to force them to stop wearing headphones while they are working, what impact will that have on their morale?

What is your goal in forcing employees to remove their headphones? If you want more control over how they are spending their time, you need to consider whether you are actually having issues with their output or whether you simply think that they could do more if they weren't wearing headphones. You should also consider why the employees are wearing headphones. If the work environment is distracting, headphones might be the employees' way of ensuring that they can focus.

Answer 3

One of the most frustrating and stressful things for human beings is to have no control over their environment.

People who wear headphones at work are often doing so in order to exert some control over their work environment, for example to shut out distracting conversations or other noises in an open-plan office (I know I do).

Playing even quiet, soft music would introduce another potentially unwanted thing into the environment. Even for people who do want to hear some music, different kinds of music are not fungible — one person’s glorious symphony is another person’s inoffensive background hum, and yet another person’s unbearable racket.

I suspect that more people would wear headphones, not less, in such an environment.

With regard to your list of headphone cons:

• You’re entirely right that there are potential problems with people accessing internet music, but they’re nothing to do with headphones — people can listen to music on headphones downloaded to a smartphone, an MP3 player, or even a CD player.

• Headphones only damage hearing if they’re used to play music too loudly. People are entirely capable of looking after their own ears.

• And as for this:

  Sometimes employees waste his/her time in music selection

  Mm. Sometimes employees “waste” their time deciding whether to have tea or coffee too, but it wouldn’t be a great idea to solve this by squirting tepid water directly into everyone’s mouth once an hour.

Answer 4

Should software development companies play music in development rooms, so that employees don’t need to listen to music on headphones?

Absolutely not.

Playing music over the speakers implies that someone decides what music is best for everyone. I cannot imagine a scenario where everyone would like all of the same music.

These days, knowledge workers are used to listening to whatever they like, or having the choice to concentrate on their work and not listen to music at all.

I used to work in a retail store. It played music all day long - bad music. And in the holiday season, it played holiday music - ugh! If I had been a knowledge worker at the time, it would have been extremely annoying. That's not something I would wish on anyone.

Answer 5

If you look at places where music is played, it's all places where the people playing the music want the listeners to forget about whatever they think about right now and think of something else. It's used with the intention to distract:

• The mall plays music to make your forget where you are. Don't think about what you do and that it will cost money, just put it in your basket.

• The dentist plays music. Don't think about where you are, just relax.

• In the elevator there is music, because thinking about being in an elevator is boring for 99% of people and frightening for the other 1%.

• People doing manual labor listen to music, because while doing the work is bad enough, nobody wants to think about doing the work at the same time. That would be even worse.

So to sum it up, you play music to make people think about something else and not be aware of their situation.

You do not want that as a default for workers that are supposed to regularly use their brain.

Some of them may use headphones, so they are not distracted. And that's ok. It's the second best thing compared to silence. But it's only a personal workaround to a problem, don't make it even worse by forcing it on all developers.

Answer 6

I have been a musician for 30 years and have taken an alternate route. Now if a company puts me on hold on the phone it just annoys me. It is my view that most modern music is a control mechanism. It promotes misery especially those so called love songs. My woman left me, she dies, she gone.... and others attempt to promote a positive attitude.

Music shuts off the rational thinking/analytical side of the brain (left) and awakens the creative/EMOTIONAL side. (right).

From my studies I have also learned that classical music especially Baroque type helps the student by opening the right brain whilst learning.

In short, music is a manipulative tool. It creates emotions good or bad, calm or nasty.

It encourages the individual to make emotional decisions and not rational ones. Thereby helping sales in such places as Malls. I couldnt think of anything worse to do in an hi-tech environment. Although baroque would be the most helpful