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

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#251

Post by majewsky » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 3:33 PM UTC

giovannibajo1 wrote: post #85

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 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…

I don't see what's different between public administrations and large corporations here. You say that the efficiency metric is non-existent in public administration, but it's mostly the same for many organizations within large corporations as well. Efficiency metrics may not be entirely non-existent, but they're incredibly opaque or difficult to measure. (For instance, R&D efficiency is usually difficult to measure because of the inevitable time delay between successful R&D efforts and market success.)

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#252

Post by AndrewKemendo » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 3:34 PM UTC

It's all imaginary. It's just that people are in different stages of enlightenment:

These rules/laws are Real

Wait, these rules/laws are made up/flawed

The whole thing is made up

Nothing is real

Lets make up our own rules/laws

These rules/laws have a functional place

We should build process around these rules

Every Generation washes rinses repeats forever. It doesn't matter if it's a corporate "requirement," government involvement or a scientific law, it's the same pattern.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#253

Post by majewsky » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 3:37 PM UTC

rgblambda wrote: post #109

tialaramex wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Aren't all rules imaginary? No. The Laws of Football and the Laws of Australia are imaginary in the sense you mean, but the Law of Gravity isn't. Mother Nature's rules are different than ours, stubborn far beyond all reason and not recorded anywhere for our inspection. Video games are interesting because we make them, yet for the most part some of their rules are like Ma's rules not ours. Watching Mario Maker 2 tro…

> No. The Laws of Football and the Laws of Australia are imaginary in the sense you mean, but the Law of Gravity isn't. I'm not a scientist but should the law of gravity not be seen as a human understanding of what gravity is rather than the handed down from God definition of gravity? I get the point you're making though.

The laws of physics are the human interpretation of God's definition of the world. And the corporate policies are the human interpretation of the CEO's definition of the world. It all makes sense! \o/

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#254

Post by elwell » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 3:41 PM UTC

Everyone has their Labor Laws poster printed out and hanging beside their home office desk, right?

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#255

Post by VHRanger » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 3:43 PM UTC

Bootwizard wrote: post #239

rvense wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 did almost exactly the same thing at my last job. I'm a game dev and they provided us all with woefully underpowered MacBooks that didn't even have a dedicated GPU. The game engine was constantly crashing while working and making it very difficult to get anything done. I recorded the amount of time wasted on these crashes over the course of a week. I then proved to management that there was about 5 hours a week bei…

Why would anyone ever do game development on Apple hardware?

You're making iOS games?

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#256

Post by ramblerman » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 3:44 PM UTC

majewsky wrote: post #248

ramblerman wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but this just feels like you are projecting some vague management 101 platitudes that could be applicable to any organizational problem. I mean you're not wrong, but it's akin to saying if we all loved each other there would be no war. I've seen plenty of great emphatic leaders get bogged down in large corps.

FYI, you probably meant "empathetic", not "emphatic".

you're right, thanks!

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#257

Post by HelloNurse » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 3:45 PM UTC

dougmwne wrote: post #249

caymanjim wrote: post #237

The best way to deal with stupid corporate policies is to ignore them. Working remote when you're not "allowed to" is a big one to ignore, and if you don't have the access credentials you need, it might not even be possible. There are other policies that are much easier to ignore, though. Don't like the dress code? Dress however you want. Don't think the status meeting requires your attendance? Don't go. Mandatory of…

Protip: don't follow this advice. Your coworkers will resent you and you'll have a bad time. Corporate rules can be broken, but it should always been done in a savvy way instead of a brazen way. In most orgs, your performance is less important than people's perception and opinion of you. Find a way to show them the respect and deference they crave, even if you break their rules anyway.

Being annoying and arrogant is bad performance in itself: you are producing irritation and resentment (e.g. giving the impression that rules apply to everyone else).

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#258

Post by mfenniak » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 3:50 PM UTC

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…

> For instance, there's a restriction at my workplace (not a software company, a regular old industry fortune 500) which prevents git installs from pushing to any non corporate GitHub repo from our work machines.

Oh my! As I have struggled with security incidents caused by people either accidentally publishing GitHub repos that are "public" rather than "private", or pushing corporate code to their own repos (that are... you guessed it, "public"), I have long looked for another IT department that has grappled with this problem. GitHub Support hasn't helped, appealing to public forums hasn't helped. But here, a sign that my problem isn't unique!

Of course, the solution sucks. sigh

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#259

Post by sidcool » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 3:52 PM UTC

Chris2048 wrote: post #206

sidcool wrote: post #63

I 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.

Had you already told them your previous salary?

Yes, that happened a few years ago

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#260

Post by hinkley » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 3:52 PM 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"…

Goal and value statements are a hallmark of effective leadership, and even people who don’t know this seem to know it on an unconscious level. It can make some people who don’t have “it” very defensive if you try to address the elephant in the room.

I’m not going to tell you how to accomplish the goal, but I’m going to tell you what we are trying to do and the manner in which we want to get there.