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Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

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Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#151

Post by thecupisblue »

trabant00 wrote: post #133
thecupisblue wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 beca…

Who gets to decide who is worthy of bypassing the bureaucracy and on what basis? Answer: the higher on the hierarchy you are the less the rules apply to you. I suspect this answer is not satisfactory to you, in which case offer an alternative.

>Answer: the higher on the hierarchy you are the less the rules apply to you.

Yes and + the more you break/ignore the rules successfully, the less they apply to you.

But who gets to decide and on what basis is an organisation-specific question. Trying to answer it for "everyone" also gets you into lowest common denominator bucket where you can only give an answer that covers all cases. That is why a huge chunk of organisational/managerial advice is just a "how not to shoot yourself with that gun in your hand for idiots" guide.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#152

Post by corty »

astura wrote: post #144
corty wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone greatly overestimates ROI in their own area of expertise and greatly underestimates costs in the rest. You might be right in some special instance, but generally you are not. One example: Sending files via Email is a security problem. So you prohibit this via settings, virus scanners, appliances, etc. Now you've solved the emailed worm problem. However, you've just created a "how do we move files/data/screen…

Doesn't SharePoint trivially solve all this?

For external people likely not, usually Sharepoint would be behind some VPN and Firewall. Some cloud service like Dropbox might work if allowed (which it often isn't). And then there will often be the resulting sprawl of various services: this for secret internal stuff, that for external people, yet another thing for marketing, etc.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#153

Post by michaelcampbell »

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…

> In BigCorps, if there's a stupid requirement, there's usually a reason for the stupid requirement to be there in the first place

Sometimes, this is to be able to hire the exactly one person they want to hire, but HR policies or some law requires it be an "open bid" system. So the tailor the requirements such that only the one person can qualify, and they can justify the hiring and the letter of the law.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#154

Post by fallingfrog »

Sometimes they are not just there out of fear, but also not for your benefit. For instance at one corporation I worked for they made a policy against communicating with other departments outside of jira tickets, in order to clamp down on any union organizing that might take place. And also to prevent us from spreading rumors about an imminent wave of layoffs. Of course they said it was for “security reasons”.

So I would assume malice rather than just fear of risk for any seemingly strange policy measures. The management is not your friend.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#155

Post by corty »

Joeri wrote: post #84
corty wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It isn't "big picture" rational, but it is rational in a myopic way. Most managers in a company are only responsible for their own little kingdom and will care little about the rest or any overall whole-company picture. Only the highest-ups are responsible, accountable and incentivized to care about the whole.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#156

Post by wdb »

HenryBemis wrote: post #40
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…

I love these requirements at work! Yes, I need to buy my own computer, but now I can leave my work laptop in the office.

Which helps avoiding working late as partner expects you to be on time for dinner, and as you don’t need the work laptop at home as it’s not shared also as a personal laptop :)

I swear that’s main reason employers allow you to use your work laptop for personal use too. As you will have your work laptop with you at home so they can let you easier work weekends etc

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#157

Post by julianlam »

OP would be better off sprinkling the occasional comma in their sentences. It is necessary in order to avoid confusion:

> Every time someone in the management chain has axed the proposal with some variation of ...

A comma is better used after "every time"

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#158

Post by iso1631 »

corty wrote: post #55
DEADBEEFC0FFEE wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who has spent a bit of time trying to calculate the lost productivity caused just the meetings needed to discuss breaches (internal, accidental), knows it's great ROI.

Everyone greatly overestimates ROI in their own area of expertise and greatly underestimates costs in the rest. You might be right in some special instance, but generally you are not. One example: Sending files via Email is a security problem. So you prohibit this via settings, virus scanners, appliances, etc. Now you've solved the emailed worm problem. However, you've just created a "how do we move files/data/screen…

And you end up creating far more security holes as people work around it.

Shadow IT is great, it makes companies actually work rather than go bust.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#159

Post by Aeolun »

trabant00 wrote: post #51
Aeolun wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only people were willing to place all responsibility with me. I’d happily take it if we don’t have to deal with all the senseless policies/teams any more. The bureaucracy stops idiots from being idiots. The logical solution is to not hire (or retain) idiots, not to add more bureaucracy.

From your post I think you are quite young and inexperienced. There's not enough non-idiots to run companies. Having to deal with them is a fact of business, you can't simply isolate from the world. The fact that nobody is willing to place responsibility with you should tell the same thing. To sum it up: try to talk about what you already did. So from experience, not what you would do in your ideal world.

Considering I have worked with extremely talented and extremely stupid people I believe I know what I’m talking about (within the limits of my experience).

There seems to be absolutely zero correlation between organisational role/level and ability, instead using years of service as a proxy.

I don’t really know how to fix this.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#160

Post by aliswe »

qznc wrote: post #138
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…

An example, I'm unable to resolve so far: ISO 26262 includes the requirement to prevent “implausible values, execution errors, division by zero, and errors in data flow and control flow” (8.4.4). I'm confident the division by zero aims at integer division because the result is undefined. For floating point, division-by-zero is perfectly fine and well defined by IEEE 754. Nevertheless, our safety folks require us to e…

Mandatory additional detailed info: Division by zero in floating point equals to Infinity because in a floating point data structure there is space to represent such a value. For integers, there is no such information and therefore an exception should be thrown.

For a 32-bit float, the following are true:

    Positive infinity: 011111111(and then 23 zeroes)
    Negative infinity: 111111111(and then 23 zeroes)
    NaN:               x11111111(and then anything except all zeroes)
    ... x being either 0 or 1.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_754-1985#Positive_and_neg...
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