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Ask HN: What is the biggest bullshit you have encountered at your workplace?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest bullshit you have encountered at your workplace?

#11

Post by fold_left »

cercatrova wrote: post #9
fold_left wrote: post #6

A product owner that asked that the content of our poker site be impossible to copy, incase someone should try to copy it. We explained that this wasn't a thing - even newspapers, whose product is the written word, publish each day's paper online and don't apply these measures. Reluctantly they withdrew the request but made it clear they didn't agree. Later, that same product owner was asked to organise for content t…

The owner brought up functionality to disable copying because they themselves were doing it and didn't want others to do the same; otherwise they would not have thought of such a detail. It only seems a bizarre request because we lack their thought processes to arrive to their conclusion that they should disable copying.

Would it be unreasonable to consider the owner to be a hypocrite?

Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest bullshit you have encountered at your workplace?

#12

Post by jaredsohn »

fold_left wrote: post #11
cercatrova wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The owner brought up functionality to disable copying because they themselves were doing it and didn't want others to do the same; otherwise they would not have thought of such a detail. It only seems a bizarre request because we lack their thought processes to arrive to their conclusion that they should disable copying.

Would it be unreasonable to consider the owner to be a hypocrite?

Based on this, yes. They would be a hypocrite if they made a moral argument. But they made a selfish one of "I'm going to copy and nobody should be able to copy us" which is not hypocritical.

Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest bullshit you have encountered at your workplace?

#13

Post by bananapear »

Hotdesking, to provide a “variety of activity-based work settings” (i.e. a few sofas and stools in offices, mainly to make them too uncomfortable to sit in there all day) and to “facilitate diversity and inclusion goals”.

In reality it’s hard to find coworkers, people spend more time emailing instead of talking, and everyone is angry that they no longer have a personal space.

Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest bullshit you have encountered at your workplace?

#17

Post by eanthy »

jaredsohn wrote: post #12
fold_left wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it be unreasonable to consider the owner to be a hypocrite?

Based on this, yes. They would be a hypocrite if they made a moral argument. But they made a selfish one of "I'm going to copy and nobody should be able to copy us" which is not hypocritical.

classic po

Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest bullshit you have encountered at your workplace?

#18

Post by alexfromapex »

A new exec joined our team and threatened, in a very careful way as to not technically sound like a threat, to fire anyone that didn’t memorize the company mission statement in order to be able to publicly recite it at our team meetings. This same terrible exec fired 3 people in our department within a period of 6 months and hired two of his personal friends into management positions they were ostensibly qualified for and wanted everyone to track their tasks in Microsoft Excel documents instead of JIRA because he used it to create dashboards for himself.

Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest bullshit you have encountered at your workplace?

#19

Post by vanusa »

Off the top of my head:

* Overtly lying, in black and white, on a performance review.

* Me: "So you said [at a meeting] that you 'know that X [what another team is working on] won't scale.' Can you explain how it works and why it won't scale?" They: mutter incoherently for a half a minute, then find an excuse to bolt the scene

* Finding out later that this person was promoted to "senior" management

* Reporting that so-and-so left "for health reasons" when everyone in direct contact with the person knows it was due to a lack of trust and confidence in the very person saying that. And the non-stop bullshit that day-to-day life seems to run on in that environment, generally.

* "There's no bullshit here", said by the same person (one of the co-founders).

Really, they're all my favorites. But it's not about any particular incident. It's just the way a lot of these people are.

Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest bullshit you have encountered at your workplace?

#20

Post by vanusa »

fold_left wrote: post #6

A product owner that asked that the content of our poker site be impossible to copy, incase someone should try to copy it. We explained that this wasn't a thing - even newspapers, whose product is the written word, publish each day's paper online and don't apply these measures. Reluctantly they withdrew the request but made it clear they didn't agree. Later, that same product owner was asked to organise for content t…

A product owner that asked that the content of our poker site be impossible to copy, incase someone should try to copy it.

This isn't bullshit, so much as naivete. And it isn't even that naive, really. Most major news site (the ones that have paywalls at least) do invest a significant amount of resources in making it difficult to (wholesale) pilfer their content -- even though they know it won't be "impossible". Any more than it one could, say, design a security system for a store or a warehouse that would be "impossible" to break into.

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