My question isn't necessarily specific to Google, but is it frowned upon if you bring noise-cancelling headphones?
I am a weirdly fluctuating person and some days I work best in total seclusion. Others I need to sit in the middle of a cafe and have the noise and people around me.
So my goal is to be as adaptive as possible without harming the day-to-day work life.
"but is it frowned upon if you bring noise-cancelling headphones"
Yes, at (former, thankfully) employer its the border between actionable offense (being written up) and merely being viciously trashed at review time. Management made the explicit decision to enforce collaboration (a 'la the whippings will continue until morale improves) and your actions are direct and intentional insubordination of that explicit formal requirement.
One person will get yelled at in front of everyone else (because its open office, duh) and nobody will dare to wear headphones again.
Its hard to find a more open and shut case description of intentional willful trivially documentable insubordination.
Noise cancelling doesn't work with speech that well. It's way better for steady background noise such as on a small plane if you're the pilot or on a large plane if you're a passenger.
I've tried one of those in the store once, they only work for constant background noise - fan hums, that kinda thing. For conversations they're ineffective, and regular in-ear things work better.
When we got moved into an open floorplan office, all engineers were issued Bose noise cancelling headphones. They're not perfect (you can still hear close conversations) but they're at least officially approved.
I am a weirdly fluctuating person and some days I work best in total seclusion. Others I need to sit in the middle of a cafe and have the noise and people around me.
So my goal is to be as adaptive as possible without harming the day-to-day work life.