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Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

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Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#31

Post by avh02 »

wyclif wrote: post #21

To state a corollary of this: most "mandatory experience" on tech job requirements are imaginary. Therefore, if you're a job seeker, and especially if you're a woman or a minority, you shouldn't let not having any of these imaginary requirements stop you from applying for whatever job you want, especially if it's a junior role.

I got my first junior role by applying for a senior role. Granted, I was definitely lucky they had one, but I got my foot through the senior screening tests and then realised I was in over my head.

HR was kind enough to redirect me to a newly opened junior position in another part of the company. Been with that company (directly or indirectly) for a total of 5 years now.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#32

Post by corty »

tokai wrote: post #22
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #18

Aren't all rules imaginary? > Every time someone in the management chain has axed the proposal with some variation of "this policy can not be changed because this is our policy and thus can not be changed", possibly with a "due to security reasons" thrown in there somewhere. That's circular, no doubt there. We've decided this rule must remain in place, because it's a rule . This decision-making process doesn't make a…

The management could be keeping the real reason from the contracters. It's not good for moral to say "No - cause we don't trust you".

That is usually true, hidden agendas play a big role here. In Germany similar rules about contractors are often in place to prevent outsourcing. Contractors shouldn't be too comfortable and cheap, so the workers council and union enforce such rules so their established clientele still has some advantages over the external people.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#33

Post by Aeolun »

sfifs wrote: post #25

In BigCorps, if there's a stupid requirement, there's usually a reason for the stupid requirement to be there in the first place but getting to the reason might require un-peeling a few org layers to since the people enforcing the policy will not be the people who wrote the policy. A more productive use of time would be to understand the reason for the policy, document out why it doesn't apply to your case and then a…

I think the problem with this logic is it hinders a hundred people on a daily basis to prevent one person from doing something stupid once a year.

That’s just not great ROI.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#34

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

Aeolun wrote: post #33
sfifs wrote: post #25

In BigCorps, if there's a stupid requirement, there's usually a reason for the stupid requirement to be there in the first place but getting to the reason might require un-peeling a few org layers to since the people enforcing the policy will not be the people who wrote the policy. A more productive use of time would be to understand the reason for the policy, document out why it doesn't apply to your case and then a…

I think the problem with this logic is it hinders a hundred people on a daily basis to prevent one person from doing something stupid once a year. That’s just not great ROI.

Never underestimate the damage one person doing something stupid once can do.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#35

Post by [deleted] »

geoffwa wrote: post #5

I feel that as organization size increases, individual responsibility decreases. At some point there’s a limit where individuals become responsible for nothing and everything is a policy or process. It would be interesting to try to study or quantify this with different orgs and roles.

[deleted]

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#36

Post by taneq »

Aeolun wrote: post #33
sfifs wrote: post #25

In BigCorps, if there's a stupid requirement, there's usually a reason for the stupid requirement to be there in the first place but getting to the reason might require un-peeling a few org layers to since the people enforcing the policy will not be the people who wrote the policy. A more productive use of time would be to understand the reason for the policy, document out why it doesn't apply to your case and then a…

I think the problem with this logic is it hinders a hundred people on a daily basis to prevent one person from doing something stupid once a year. That’s just not great ROI.

It's a great ROI if that one stupid thing a year is someone pushing your company's codebase and all your trade secrets to a public repo.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#37

Post by notimetorelax »

Aeolun wrote: post #33
sfifs wrote: post #25

In BigCorps, if there's a stupid requirement, there's usually a reason for the stupid requirement to be there in the first place but getting to the reason might require un-peeling a few org layers to since the people enforcing the policy will not be the people who wrote the policy. A more productive use of time would be to understand the reason for the policy, document out why it doesn't apply to your case and then a…

I think the problem with this logic is it hinders a hundred people on a daily basis to prevent one person from doing something stupid once a year. That’s just not great ROI.

Depends on the impact of a single erroneous action. I’ve seen cases when folks would push to GitHub passwords (that should be kept in git to start with).

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#38

Post by corty »

bartvk wrote: post #24
Gieskanne wrote: post #6

If i pay an external $1000 per day and that price doesn't change when they are in my office or at home, i would put them in my office for obvious security risks. If corona means i can't get my work done, i have a new risk. Security risk for external consultants having full access at their home vs. no one can work -> i might choose the externals giving access. Its not imaginary.

But shouldn't you have to weigh this against the fact that a bit more freedom makes people happy?

No, because keeping external consultants happy is not the job of the company. They only have to keep their own employees happy, external consultants are seen as temporary, cheap, illoyal and taking away normal employees' jobs. Most parts of the hierarchy (except the very top) will try to inconvenience them if possible.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#39

Post by nisse72 »

Related, after telling us for years how dangerous it would be if people flew with more than 100 ml of liquid, it's now allowed (i.e. no longer dangerous?) to carry a larger quantity of hand sanitizer because of coronavirus:

https://www.tsa.gov/news/press/releases/2020/04/15/tsas-tips...

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#40

Post by HenryBemis »

sfifs wrote: post #25

In BigCorps, if there's a stupid requirement, there's usually a reason for the stupid requirement to be there in the first place but getting to the reason might require un-peeling a few org layers to since the people enforcing the policy will not be the people who wrote the policy. A more productive use of time would be to understand the reason for the policy, document out why it doesn't apply to your case and then a…

I believe it's all about Security (C-I-A).

To mitigate this issue, on paper, an (usually) HR policy writes "do not do non-work related stuff with your work computer". And since many people ignore this rule, because "why have a second laptop?", the next best thing is to route all traffic from your laptop through the company, and weed out the GigHubs and GitLabs of this world (in the same manner that they block all sex-drugs-rocknroll stuff).

You can't blame a company for wanted to protect itself against a disgruntled employee that wants to push the (example - not applicable to your company) ebanking software code out in the open.

That said.. why would a person use the corporate computer for their (allow me the use of the word) 'hobby'? Unless it's for charity work, most companies don't appreciate spending resources (time, money, equipment) on other things.

Re: Chesterton's Fence - didn't know it had a name, thank you for this!

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