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Open plan offices for any kind of knowledge work should be made illegal since they are a health hazard. Private offices should be the norm.

This would benefit everyone as open plans destroy productivity. The "free market" (oligopoly) has obviously failed here so the state needs to step in.

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I know most people here would find this drastic, but I agree with you. We already have things like OSHA to regulate workplace safety procedures. We legislate things about break times, overtime, etc.

I think creating a specification that office workers must be given a certain measurable protection against general workplace noise and a certain minimum of private floorspace in which to work, would be quite reasonable.

I wonder if a change.org petition or something would be worthwhile.

I tried making a poll to gauge interest in the possibility of a petition or general support for disallowing open-plan offices, but it quickly dropped out of the first page of “new” posts...

< https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17558732 >

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