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Ask HN: What manual processes would you automate in your company?

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Re: Ask HN: What manual processes would you automate in your company?

#121

Post by 0xdeadbeefbabe »

beachstartup wrote: post #60
BjoernKW wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you tell what the reason behind that policy is? Whenever I hear something like this I like to challenge it by the following: Working remotely should be the default, not the outlier. If your organisation requires personal presence something in your organisation is broken (management processes, the way people interact, obsolete tools etc.). Fix that instead of patching what's broken by mandating personal presence.…

> Can you tell what the reason behind that policy is? there is no reasoning behind these policies. it's just someone's decision. you'd be surprised at how much business 'logic' is really just arbitrary choices. the way to fix it is to quit and work for someone/some place that has a sane policy. these social shifts take decades to fully manifest because old rich people don't like changing their way. because they're ol…

The really old thing is thinking that you have somehow escaped the human predicament when you really haven't. It's a time honored tradition repeated by fools in each generation.

Re: Ask HN: What manual processes would you automate in your company?

#122

Post by sharmanaetor »

MooBah wrote: post #105

Interviewing and hiring interaction for seasonal workers. We hire tons and tons of IC's two times per year. We run into bottlenecks due to time on the phone during interviews. If there way a consistent way to screen talent it would save us a ton of time.

What is the skill set you are hiring for? Where do you get most of your good hires?

Re: Ask HN: What manual processes would you automate in your company?

#123

Post by ajford »

michael_michael wrote: post #119

Domestic freight, specifically rate quoting and booking. I sell large equipment to the food & spirits industry. It often has to be shipped on pallets. Before a customer decides to order something from us they generally want to know the freight shipping cost. Rates vary daily, so our salesperson has to stop the sales process to get a freight quotation. 3PL companies already exist, and are supposed to exist to get a be…

So what you're saying is you need a Third Party 3PL Logistics company :)

Re: Ask HN: What manual processes would you automate in your company?

#125

Post by lightedman »

BjoernKW wrote: post #45
Johnny555 wrote: post #18

I'd get rid of the manual process of driving to the office every day and replace it with collaboration tools to let people telecommute full time. We actually use such tools, but have a "no remote workers" policy. Occasional work from home is fine, just not full time.

Can you tell what the reason behind that policy is? Whenever I hear something like this I like to challenge it by the following: Working remotely should be the default, not the outlier. If your organisation requires personal presence something in your organisation is broken (management processes, the way people interact, obsolete tools etc.). Fix that instead of patching what's broken by mandating personal presence.…

"If your organisation requires personal presence something in your organisation is broken"

Pretty hard to run a repair center for physical items without people physically present to do the work.

Re: Ask HN: What manual processes would you automate in your company?

#126

Post by konradb »

digitalsushi wrote: post #115
skyyler wrote: post #9

I'd love to take the time to change the way our IT department functions. They don't automate anything. They don't virtualize. They don't believe in rack mounted servers. We have 30 tower servers sitting on a specially built shelf, taking up most of a room. It's absurd but I have so much other shit to do that I can't justify completely disrupting their entire workflow

I left a place a year ago where I ran the lab. I remember the satisfaction of my replacement converting all the VMs into "real computers", and then triplicating the VLAN network I had with layer 1 replacements. I'm pretty sure if he could have unspooled cat5 to everyone's home, he would have gotten rid of the VPN server.

Wow. Did they have a rationale behind this? On the face of it, it sounds like they didn't understand VM's.

Re: Ask HN: What manual processes would you automate in your company?

#127

Post by ajford »

digitalsushi wrote: post #115
skyyler wrote: post #9

I'd love to take the time to change the way our IT department functions. They don't automate anything. They don't virtualize. They don't believe in rack mounted servers. We have 30 tower servers sitting on a specially built shelf, taking up most of a room. It's absurd but I have so much other shit to do that I can't justify completely disrupting their entire workflow

I left a place a year ago where I ran the lab. I remember the satisfaction of my replacement converting all the VMs into "real computers", and then triplicating the VLAN network I had with layer 1 replacements. I'm pretty sure if he could have unspooled cat5 to everyone's home, he would have gotten rid of the VPN server.

So what's the benefit of VMs? I mean, I understand the underlying benefits of isolation and such, but for things that easily fit on small servers (i.e. single/double core small procs with I've gone both ways before, but I seem to be on the other end of the spectrum and prefer small cheap hardware over VMs when possible.

Not trying to argue or anything, just curious for someone else's point of view.

Re: Ask HN: What manual processes would you automate in your company?

#130

Post by Fnoord »

Our password policy is pretty terrible. We don't even have our own user profiles. Whenever I'm on a different desk than my own, I get to experience a completely different desktop. With completely different applications installed, settings, etc. I work part-time hence my desk isn't the same permanent spot, so this does occur regularly. So apart from a security hazard, this is also a productivity loss.

I'd also swap everything to Linux (my preference is macOS, but I can see how that'd increase cost). For the kind of development we do, Linux is just as good as the other two.

I honestly don't know how to solve the issue for me easily. Perhaps just install all applications and settings on a thumb drive?

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