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Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

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Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#221

Post by whatshisface »

ardy42 wrote: post #217
whatshisface wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, a reason can convince people, while a policy can be avoided, worked around or ignored while creating zero feelings of guilt.

> On the other hand, a reason can convince people, while a policy can be avoided, worked around or ignored while creating zero feelings of guilt. Though, I'd imagine that, in many cases, adding reasons would turn a policy pamphlet into a textbook. This seems like one of those areas where there are unavoidable tradeoffs: * clear, concise, and rigid policies are easy to communicate and enforce, but frustrate people wit…

You could have one pamphlet with the policy, and a separate book with the reasoning, and instruct people to check the book when proposing a change or exception. Then all of the lazy compliant people could have their brevity, and the crackpots and geniuses would both get the explanatory text they needed.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#222

Post by ISL »

twhitmore wrote: post #46
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…

Management works by creating processes and systems. There are always inaccuracies and imperfections in how these are targeted, and inefficiencies resulting. Yet creating processes and systems is the expected task of management -- it's a key way to scale. I'm fairly much averse to process myself, but have been occasionally involved.

The critical bit is to continuously evaluate whether or not the processes and systems are achieving the mission of the organization.

In my, academic, world, the core problem is that there is no overarching mission against which the process/system can be evaluated. We have 5-10 important goals of the institution/system and multiple sub-organizations with wildly different emphasis on each goal.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#223

Post by beervirus »

The fact that requirements change when circumstances change DRASTICALLY doesn't mean that they were imaginary. It just means that they were based on a situation that no longer exists.

The company reacted to changing circumstances. This is how things are supposed to work.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#224

Post by JTbane »

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…

>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.

It's pretty dumb to block gitlab when you employee can just... copy the codebase to an external drive?

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#225

Post by makecheck »

I feel like I can deal with most things but “mandatory training” drives me nuts. At one company after another these are always over-produced things that impose way more distraction and time than they need to (all video/audio with little to no text transcript, stupid things like the inability to even click “next” until the unnecessary narrator finishes reading you some slide, etc.). And then they have serious technical lackings like only working in certain browsers or (my favorite) having assessment tests so broken that you literally have to be careful how you type something to avoid correct answers being deemed “incorrect”. It’s always a waste of money and time, at each job I always sent survey feedback telling them this, and no company has ever changed how they do it.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#226

Post by brianmcc »

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…

It's "cool" to move fast, break things. It's less cool to tread carefully and do due diligence.

People love to use folksy stories to justify the former (the one about the monkeys for example - https://workingoutloud.com/blog/the-five-monkeys-experiment-...).

I really like Chesterton's Fence as a counter-story to it, not to stop meaningful change from actually happening but to neutralize decision-by-best-folksy-story from over-ruling other options unchallenged, and allowing case-by-case thinking to prevail.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#227

Post by simonebrunozzi »

rvense wrote: post #211
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…

About five years ago, a place I was working at was selecting a new laptop for all employees. Mine was up for replacement, so I was interested in what they were picking. They'd arrived at some god-awful Lenovo gamer model. It fit the performance and price point they'd decided they needed. I said I'd prefer to have something smaller with less Christmas lights. "Policy is everyone has to have the same laptop, and some p…

I can only imagine the grin on your face :)

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#228

Post by the8472 »

PeterisP wrote: post #193
the8472 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multi-national corporation. The auditing department and the ones writing the policy aren't even on the same continent. So it is all internal and "our own policy" in a sense, but so far removed that I might as well be talking to an external bureaucracy. By coincidence we later learned about the contact person within our own sub-org who would be responsible for forwarding change requests on those policies. The auditors…

It's definitely not the responsibility of auditors even if you explicitly ask them to do so. In essence, the auditors are there to evaluate whether certain assertions are true. E.g. the company is asserting that they are doing X because they have a policy that X must be done. If it turns out that the internal communication within the company is screwed up and some teams are following the policy and some are not, then…

Compliance serves a purpose and is not an end unto itself. So if you only enforce the rules even when they achieve the opposite of the underlying goal then you are goodhart's law personified. So even assuming for the moment that it's not the auditor's job to evaluate the rules themselves then at the very least they should escalate all the way back to those who write the rules if an inconsistency between rule and underlying goal is found. There's no point of having a separate channel for such communication because a particular issue for which it is relevant cannot be resolved (without missing the underlying goal) until the rule is clarified.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#229

Post by wonderlg »

Playing devil’s advocate: Is it possible that, yes, of course you can work from home, and you must do that during lockdown, but is it as efficient as working in the office?

I think that’s why many don’t like remote: They can’t see you working and they’re not as comfortable video-chatting.

I’m a remote-only developer, but if I could, at any time, turn to my coworker and ask about something, I’d be more efficient.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#230

Post by zucker42 »

mylinkedlist wrote: post #215

Exact same story happened to me. I am an Indian contractor working for a US client in US. I asked for work from home in India. Customer manager said security council didn't approve it. He said something like their policy is 'don't take anything to China that you are not ok with loosing, India is one level below it, safeguard everything'. Now Corona happened and the entire team in India has been working from home for…

> He said something like their policy is 'don't take anything to China that you are not ok with loosing, India is one level below it, safeguard everything'.

I can't imagine someone hiring a person they have such disdain for. That's a pretty sad attitude on the manager's part.

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