Another thing is consensus. If you can get buy-ins from a group of colleagues, preferably higher ranks, it'll be easier, as not a single person is to blame.
Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary
81–90 of 405 posts
Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary
#82The dynamics feel a bit like good cop / bad cop on an organisational level. "I'd personally love to let X occur .. but it's not allowed due to company policy. This is mandatory." I have always believed everything is negotiable in business. As people, we're subject to the rule of law, and obviously our businesses need to operate accordingly. However, the policies that a company uses are really just a snapshot of curre…
"and thinking obviously changes" Sometimes it doesn't - sometimes people vehemently insist on application of policies even though what they produce is ridiculous. At a former employer I was quoted £70K (yes seventy thousand) for internal hosting of a not particularly business critical single static HTML page that would be accessed by maybe 100 people. I actually got a breakdown and it all made sense if you applied th…
What does one have to do to get to such crazy numbers for a task so simple?
Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary
#83I had this experience with some companies I was interviewing with. They would force me to submit my most recent payslip from my previous employer. I gave up after some protest, coz they could not have proceeded with my interviews without it.
Illegal in many other parts of the world (e.g. in Europe).
Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
That doesn’t seem very rational. The goal of all managers should be to maximize productivity per dollar spent. Motivated contractors who are well integrated in teams, don’t need to be replaced often, and generally kept happy are far more productive, hence the bottom line of the company benefits by it.
Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary
#85In 1605 there was an attempt to blow up the British Parliament during the state opening by placing explosives in the cellars. 415 years later they still search the cellars for barrels of explosives, using oil lanterns and armed with swords. I feel that so many organisations are doing the same thing, maintaining an old solution for a problem that no longer exists. So I think it's just as, or more, important to apply t…
I think this is more typical in public administration. Employees just follow the existing rules/laws because it’s not their job challenging them, and decision makers are mostly concerned on shifting away blame from them. Nobody wants to be that guy that ordered to stop searching for a bomb, the day that a new bomb will be placed. The only reason why one should stop doing it is to gain efficiency (= be more productive but doing less useless things), but the efficiency metric is non existent in public administrations.
Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary
#86My reason for this rule would be: if you allow consultanta to work from home, how do you make sure they are not double- selling their workhours? Like they bill you 8h, but only work 4h on your project.
What stops your employees doing the same thing?
Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
right, pushing github passwords leads to GDPR breach in end - anything preventing GDPR breach in the end is probably a great ROI.
Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I actually think this whole one person doing one stupid thing per year argument is grossly underestimating the amount of stupid available.
Stupidity is one of humanity's greatest renewable resources.
Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary
#89Story colleagues told me once: requirements for a car's rear wind shield was that is had to withstand air pressures of 120km/h. But the car could not go in reverse that fast, so the requirement did not make sense and was loosened.
On delivery of the produced cars, many rear wind shields were broken. Turns out they were transported from the factory on a train, faced backwards so they could fit more cars on the train.
(no idea if this really happened, but it's a nice little story)
Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary
#90I had this experience with some companies I was interviewing with. They would force me to submit my most recent payslip from my previous employer. I gave up after some protest, coz they could not have proceeded with my interviews without it.
Well, you could … not have proceeded with the interviews? I'm sorry to state this to you without knowing your personal situation, but in general such shitty employer behavior is only possible because we employees bend to company pressure. Every clause in your work contract you just accept because it is a "standard clause we write in every contract" is a loss for our combined bargaining power.