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Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

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Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#291

Post by simonbarker87 »

ramblerman wrote: post #100
simonbarker87 wrote: post #3

This is why managers need a high level of emotional intelligence, the ability to empathize and quickly place themselves in the position of others. Without those three qualities management is ill equipped to handle these kinds of things sensibly. Sadly the above traits are more deemed leadership qualities rather than management qualities and so often missing in management. Leadership skills are far harder to teach tha…

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.

Not really, during my military training a there was a focus on management vs leadership and how the two intertwine.

Great leaders can be terrible managers if they don’t want to do the associated admin, fortunately management skills are much easier to teach than leadership skills. Generally the latter (such as officer training) is cultivated in people that show requisite qualities (hence the UK cultivating potential military officers from 16 like the program I was in).

Neither is a given for success but the most successful people in management structure have a good mix of both to navigate. Also, I think n being empathetic doesn’t always mean being nice, it just means seeing other view points and making decisions with that extra insight.

It’s a fascinating topic I think.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#292

Post by watwut »

wegs wrote: post #166
watwut wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fo…

I'm pretty sure that, if a software engineer, you were to pick up and conform to executive social and cultural norms, and did the work required to be able to manage people, raise money, and so on, your salary COULD go up 3-4x. Clothing is but one tiny piece of that. You'd also need to learn a new communication style, learn to code-switch ethics/values, and so on. People who can bridge technical, business, marketing,…

I think that comment was not about people who manage people or raise money. It was not about those who can bridge technical, business, marketing either.

It was about finance people who could easily do their jobs from home.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#293

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

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…

Who authorized you to push OS conributions on company time?

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#294

Post by Kinrany »

grogenaut wrote: post #285
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…

This is literally my job. Amazon calls it Dive Deep/Earn Trust. I get called in constantly to "Remove Blockers". Part of it is just understanding why the policy exists and then getting a policy modification. While it's definitely an art, it's not as hard as a lot of people think, but you can't be afraid to escalate.

This sounds like an awesome job. Literally paid to fix frustrating bureacratic processes.

Like a professional user advocate paid to convince developers that the users do have a point and the request is not impossible.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#295

Post by OkGoDoIt »

anticensor wrote: post #57
zeepzeep wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That said.. why would a person use the corporate computer for their (allow me the use of the word) 'hobby'? Because my work computer is around 100 times faster than my personal one.

I have the opposite situation: My personal computer is faster .

My work computer would be substantially faster than my personal computer if it wasn’t bogged down by so much IT crap. In practice my personal computer substantially faster to get anything done because I have to fight it so much less.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#296

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

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.

Walk away from these idiots secure in the knowledge that you dodged a bullet. They're doing you a favor by demonstrating how broken their organization is.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#297

Post by waheoo »

grogenaut wrote: post #285
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…

This is literally my job. Amazon calls it Dive Deep/Earn Trust. I get called in constantly to "Remove Blockers". Part of it is just understanding why the policy exists and then getting a policy modification. While it's definitely an art, it's not as hard as a lot of people think, but you can't be afraid to escalate.

More people need to read "the goal."

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#298

Post by clairity »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #291
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.

Not really, during my military training a there was a focus on management vs leadership and how the two intertwine. Great leaders can be terrible managers if they don’t want to do the associated admin, fortunately management skills are much easier to teach than leadership skills. Generally the latter (such as officer training) is cultivated in people that show requisite qualities (hence the UK cultivating potential m…

yes, the leader/manager dichotomy is covered in mba school too, but the core curriculum usually doesn't cover it at a level of detail to be truly actionable. you have to take elective courses for that, and most students don't. the knowledge is offered, but not emphasized, unfortunately.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#299

Post by BeetleB »

corty wrote: post #240
colejohnson66 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it’s incorrect when dividing by 0, yes. But when you do the limit as the bottom factor approaches 0, it makes sense. So, below, the first one is defined, while the second one isn’t. lim_{x->0+} 1/x == +Infinity 1/0 != (anything)

Yes, but thats only a small part of the story, your limit only works if the numerator is constant, positive and > 0. Actually, the correct answer for lim{x->0} a/x is really "anything" and "strongly depends on a and da/dx"... So in general, assuming anything like \infty for a division by zero is wrong wrong wrong.

IEEE 754 handles all the cases you mentioned - it doesn't always prescribe Inf.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#300

Post by jimmaswell »

robbyking wrote: post #263
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 had the opposite experience once: at my previous company we were all issued mid-tier ThinkPads. Completely out of the blue we all received an email saying we'd be given a set budget and would be able to choose any machine we wanted. We went from 100% Windows to about 80% OS X within a week. They ended up giving the old ThinkPads away. (I put Ubuntu on one and gave it to my mom.) This was in 2012 or so, and because…

That many people willingly moved to OSX? Why? Was it a graphics company?
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