I started my career in India. It was unusual to listening to music and work at the same time wherever I worked. I noticed a change when I landed myself in Malaysia. We had a good stereo player in the office – everyday we listened to our favorite station Soft & Easy. When the entire marketing professional gets together at the end of the day, normally after 6:00 PM, we played some variety music like soft rock. I haven’t seen anyone changing the channel to Malay which is the local language channel.
The American cooperate culture is little different than what I saw in India or Malaysia. It was very difficult for me to accept the culture in the first few weeks, as I felt I’m reserved towards work rather than relax and work. The different software companies I worked for, I had colleagues who listen to the music or their favorite radio station at work. I’m a huge music listener – still it was difficult for me to practice it. Blame it on my mother, who was a teacher, never allowed to listen to music and study at the same time. My brother regularly received scolding for the mischief he did. He had his stereo on most of the time.
My opinion on listening to music at work is positive. It can improve the productivity especially for the programmers.
These are some tips to consider:
1. Look at your company policy, whether or not listening to music is permitted. Companies don’t like to waste the Internet bandwidth for its employees to listen to music unless they are big.
2. Get a head phone. Don’t blast music in a speaker at work.
3. Keep the volume to low, so that you can listen to your phone ringing – or listen to somebody who’s calling you from the other cube.
4. Keep your favorite list of songs on your computer hard disk, or player and never share. This will put the company you work for copyright violations.