Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary • Hacker News Board

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#111

Post by mehrdadn » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 11:24 AM UTC

yodelshady wrote: post #106

mehrdadn wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Chesterton's fence Is there a "reverse" version of this where you do understand the reasoning, explain clearly why it doesn't apply anymore, but the other side just refuses to think for themselves and just sticks with the status quo because it must've been done with good reason and they don't want to second-guess it?

I believe the phrase is "jobsworth", as in "more than my". The point of the article is that's kind of correct - the cost (risk) of deregulating is concentrated, but the benefit is distributed. There needs to be some way to capture the value-add of removing a rule. But if you do that the easiest way - turning the global metric of productivity into a target - then managers will asset strip, fire security (ahem, Mozilla…

Learned a new (British?) word today, thanks!

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#112

Post by DaiPlusPlus » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 11:25 AM UTC

altacc wrote: post #75

In 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 searching government property for explosives and terroristic threats is a reasonable precaution to make. The fact that they were able to discover the explosives in the first place back then without Parliament exploding shows the value in preventative measures.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#113

Post by watwut » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 11:25 AM UTC

J-dawg wrote: post #91

It's interesting that in tech there is this expectation that every available thing should be done to make the employee as happy and relaxed as possible. If an employer refuses to do these things it's met with "does not compute", as in this example. Granted, it does seem to make sense that your employees are as happy and relaxed as possible, but this attitude doesn't seem to exist in other industries to the same degre…

I am 100% sure that if we all decided that formal clothes every day are way to go, our salaries NOT would go up 3-4 times. Those two things are not directly related.

The salary is market thing, to large extend.

The cloth and home office do have more to do with cultural background of people who run and join both institutions. It has also to do with value systems - higher preference for hierarchy, higher expectation for conformity because people judge each other by different signals in financial institution. Financial institutions are among the most conservative institutions there are. The need for tie is all about that.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#114

Post by aWidebrant » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 11:31 AM UTC

tialaramex wrote: post #30

You see this in a lot of security pushback. "I want to do X" / "I am too lazy to do Y instead" becomes "We can't do Y, it's a mandatory requirement to do X" Very high on your response agenda should always be to ask for details. Who mandated this and how? If there's a regulation, cite the exact text of the regulation. There's a good chance the person telling you it's mandatory either knows it isn't or has never actual…

ECDO sounds cooler.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#115

Post by blackboxlogic » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 11:31 AM UTC

swiley wrote: post #96

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…

This shouldn’t need to be enforced by software. You really don’t have any business accessing a personal git repo from a coorperate machine; you’re spending time twice (stealing) and it’s a good way to lose ownership of IP. Furthermore this probably makes officially allowed open source contributions much more difficult.

We depend on some open source tools. When my project is blocked by a bug in one of them, it absolutely is my job to fix it.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#116

Post by edoloughlin » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 11:32 AM UTC

the8472 wrote: post #108

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…

> 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. The issue is that all the policy documents often only contain the One True Way to achieve their goals, while the goals remain unstated. The documents should always come with a rationale. And appending "exceptions may be granted for equivalent or better processes"…

several levels of auditors were effectively asking us to downgrade to comply with their policy without even understanding the difference

The auditors' policy? Are you sure? An auditor's job is to check if you're doing what you say you should be doing. If you're arguing with an auditor then you're essentially arguing with your own organisation without any hope winning the argument.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#117

Post by thecupisblue » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 11:33 AM UTC

trabant00 wrote: post #23

I find these types of articles to be truisms. We have some imperfect system. Everybody knows about the problems it has. Somebody writes an article about how stupid and wrong those problems are. How does that help anybody? The real question is how you fix those problems without introducing others. Passed a certain age and work experience you start to notice that the bureaucracy that stops you from doing quick smart fi…

> you start to notice that the bureaucracy that stops you from doing quick smart fixes also stops a lot of people from doing serious damage to the company.

That is the problem - we treat everyone as equals, trying to put rules that work for everyone, so the lowest common denominator is who the rules are made for. So someone who can leverage their knowledge for the good of the company gets ducktaped with red tape because someone else is prone to fucking up.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#118

Post by moritonal » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 11:33 AM UTC

serioussecurity wrote: post #52

Aeolun wrote: post #33

Earlier 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.

I've seen individual engineers make a mistake that caused 100 engineer's salary worth of damage.

"Unfortunately, one of the inputs to the command was entered incorrectly and a larger set of servers was removed than intended. The servers that were inadvertently removed supported two other S3 subsystems." [1]

1. https://aws.amazon.com/message/41926/?ascsubtag=e7c5af5933bd...

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#119

Post by trabant00 » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 11:34 AM UTC

raxxorrax wrote: post #107

trabant00 wrote: post #23

I find these types of articles to be truisms. We have some imperfect system. Everybody knows about the problems it has. Somebody writes an article about how stupid and wrong those problems are. How does that help anybody? The real question is how you fix those problems without introducing others. Passed a certain age and work experience you start to notice that the bureaucracy that stops you from doing quick smart fi…

> How does that help anybody? Maybe it could stimulate reflection? Granted, my hopes are dampened too. > Passed a certain age and work experience you start to notice that the bureaucracy that stops you from [...] doing serious damage to the company. If you get even older, people might even stop you from running around without supervision to stop you from doing damage to yourself. Doesn't mean it should always be the…

> There will hopefully always be forces the evaluate practices.

And there are. The article itself contains such an example. On the other hand they ask why was it necessary for coronavirus to do so. The answer is in the question: there was no need to evaluate the practice until it was.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#120

Post by prepend » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 11:36 AM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #99

J-dawg wrote: post #91

It's interesting that in tech there is this expectation that every available thing should be done to make the employee as happy and relaxed as possible. If an employer refuses to do these things it's met with "does not compute", as in this example. Granted, it does seem to make sense that your employees are as happy and relaxed as possible, but this attitude doesn't seem to exist in other industries to the same degre…

Yes there's a current trend of thinking that work should be as near play as possible. There are entire classes of work, like digging ditches and driving equipment, that can be sweaty and rote. Not designed to be fun, but to get something done. For pay. This is becoming regarded as mentally or physically abusive. It helps to consider the pay as recompense for whatever hardship you endure to deliver value to the employ…

> This is becoming regarded as mentally or physically abusive.

An acquaintance of mine working in academia told me that her boss was being bullying and abusive. I was really concerned and asked what was happening. She told me that her boss and department were making her come into the office (pre-covid) at 9am despite that she assured them she could do all her research remotely. When she would not come in or come in late, her boss was verbally reprimanding her.

This scenario is certainly bureaucratic and not the funnest, but it’s funny to me that bullying is considered making people come into work at an established time.