You Suck Because of the Music You Prefer
Music and workplace can’t be separated։ They’re so united, there’s not a single day without it, when you sit around your desk and put on the headphones, and it does not matter whether you are a designer, recruiter or a marketing specialist, you always dive deep in to the beautiful world of sounds that hug your ears.
Eh;
Away from romantics;
I’m in front of my laptop in a cafe where everything is terrible; I don’t know why I come to this place. I don’t remember other waiters in this town. I’m just too attached to the one that always asks “again the same?” and never communicates with me until it comes to an end when you have to pay;
“for your sins in front of the almighty.”
More romanticism
I create a small list of music genres/artists and send them to my friends and network to collect some data. What are they listening to at their workplace, who’s their favorite artist, etc.?
A lot of terrible taste comes up.
How do you even listen to this? I get deeper into the answers, and for the next few hours, I listen to different kinds of terrible music (and some good pieces/tracks too) starting from the most mainstream.
I’m a messy person, it’s hard for me to concentrate and go with the predicted flow, so I find myself violently shaking my head under Lifelover’s song called “Lethargy.” I feel a couple of heavy eyes on my shoulders then see some girls giggling from the other table.
They think I’m crazy, and I think they can eat less of those cheesecakes, but “who are we to judge, only the almighty…” More religious jokes, please.
Inner Dialogues
“Yeah, now we have the data Ghukas, let’s categorize them into…”
“Wait a minute. You should not categorize people because every individual is beautiful, and every soul is….”
“Can you just stop philosophizing?” “You don’t even the right way of writing that word; you autocorrect using piece of sh…”
My inner dialogue goes on forever, and I can’t concentrate on many numbers, and I can’t group them.
I back off from the desk, throw a glance at the TV hanging from the wall of the cafe. Some weird cartoons on it. There are things you see and automatically start thinking, “damn, people who made this are definitely on drugs.”
This kind of cartoons.
Finally, I give up for that day and write to my friend Anna for help. That’s what friends are for. You remember them when you need something and disappear when they need you. Let’s hope they won’t stab us in the back (like start working with our enemies or something).
I see a cup slowly sliding on my desk with my peripheral vision. They brought my check, so the cafe is closing. I don’t look at the girl; I nod while my lips try to keep the “thank you” inside my mouth.
*unexplainable bull noises*
Early morning
I don’t know how this last fly survived. It’s too cold for flies already.
Two voices in my room. My snore and that terrible fly. A couple of seconds after, there’s only one left, cause I’m awake and all I want is to kill.
I find my laptop and start going through the answers that my friends and the network provided. The deeper I dive, the more I understand that this can’t be something objective, we won’t have scientifically proven results, and working this hard for assumptions is a terrible idea.
I read a lot of articles about music and its influence, and after each piece, I can say “no, you’re wrong” and be right from my perspective, no matter how much data they provide.
You love your favorite song because it’s associated with an intense emotional experience in your life.
NOPE: It just sounds good, not a single emotional experience is attached to it.
I go out for a walk, try to find the inspiration outside, try to look at people’s faces. They’re so busy. Especially I love people who are walking while typing when they reach to a small ladder. They stop for 25 seconds while looking at their phone, then go on.
I like the idea, but it’s not formulating, and I start thinking again that I’m so good at winning battles that I forget that you don’t win a war with just one campaign.
“I’m a dull commander of an army in the middle ages who gets too drunk after a victorious battle and freezes to death the same night.”
I come up with these lines that I hopelessly try to fit into the context of this article. It does not work. “It doesn’t make any sense,” says Anna, and when she says something about the content, you have to listen.
I just put that as my bio in my Medium account. Checkmate haters!
711 responses
Let’s start with the guys who have titles Founder/CEO/Co-Founder.
26 of 36 mentioned “Rock” as their favorite genre (72%)
The most popular choices were Rammstein, Opeth, Pink Floyd, Queen, Deep Purple
Their second favorite was Classical music 18 of 36 (50%)
Bach, Chopin, Brahms, Beethoven made it to the list, interestingly no Mozart.
Requiem Mass in D Minor intensifies in the background. Slowly zoom into the face of the composer.
8 of 36 chose Jazz (22%). Nina Simone was popular among the answers.
We are getting back to “regular people,” who don’t walk around the office with wireless headphones and talk about the prices of stocks.
People with “Engineer, Software engineer, Developer, QA titles, 117 respondents.”
61% mentioned rock in their top 3 (Popular answers include Muse, SOAD, Royal Blood, Tool, Guns N’ Roses, Led Zeppelin)
30% included rap in their top 3. 2pac and Eminem crushed it, almost every second respondent mentioned them. Kendrick Lamar was also a popular answer.
Some guys (3 of them chose Basta), haha, who?
BTW, here’s the dude
30% surprisingly chose metal (Slayer, Slipknot, Korn, Iron Maiden made to the top list)
Marketing people, 126, positions vary. A lot of marketing specialists, managers, executives, digital marketing/AdWords specialists, etc. Interestingly, electronic music crushes it among these people.
42,8% chose Techno, House or Electro
42 chose techno
42 chose techno
42 chose techno techno
Somebody, please add some beats to these lyrics
35% mentioned rock (I included indie and alternative genres in this)
21% went up with hip hop
More Facts!
People in the finance sector (analysts, controllers, consultants) shared 50/50 between rock and folk music.
People with managerial titles (Business development manager, customer care, product manager, project manager) chose Pop, Rock, Blues as their favorite genres.
Among the favorite artists were Michael Jackson, Maroon 5, Dua Lipa, Eric Clapton, Jamiroquai, and Basta (Who? God, really?)
100% of people (17) with pending or active Ph.D. degree included rock in their top 3.
It was an exciting start, but I realize that there’s a lot of subjectivity here. I decided to conduct the same research with more specific questions inside a few tech companies and then compare the test results with their HR scorecard quarterly data to see whether the people who prefer a particular kind/type of music perform better than the others.
