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Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

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Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#381

Post by m463 »

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.

> it's not as hard as a lot of people think

It never is after you've done it once.

It's hard for people to scope an unknown task - especially dealing with bureaucracy. Is it going to be easy peasy, or will the rabbit hole just keep getting deeper.

Additionally, the ROI for an employee to investigate things like this is not very high, or could be negative. Imagine a poor H1B person - whose life and future depends on a company - trying to chase little things like this down. ("it's ok, I don't need " an ssd; an ergonomic chair; a 17" monitor is fine; etc...)

you're doing good work.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#382

Post by brokenmachine »

Kinrany wrote: post #294
grogenaut wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd rather poke both my eyes out than do that awesome job.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#383

Post by [deleted] »

scarface74 wrote: post #208
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.

Then buy a faster personal computer? The resources I have freely available at work are infinitely more than I have at home, but that doesn’t mean I can set up my own Netflix competitor on it.

[deleted]

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#384

Post by perlgeek »

tintor wrote: post #351
mobjack wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, traveling with a baby makes you much less likely to attack a plane. This exception makes the TSA's policy more pragmatic and reasonable. The harm of denying a baby milk or formula is worse than the risk of terrorism in this case. Not to mention is that it lowers the incidence of crying babies on flight. The same logic could be applied to hand sanitizer restrictions in a global pandemic. Allowing people to…

"traveling with a baby makes you much less likely to attack a plane" Why would that be the case?

Statistically speaking, most people who travel with babies travel with their own babies, and strong parental instincts prevents most humans from putting their babies into mortal danger. So, traveling with a baby and attacking the plane you're on is very low probability.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#385

Post by brokenmachine »

watwut wrote: post #43
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…

> 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 attempt to get approval. My experiences with big organizations is that the above is complete absolute waste of time, unless you are in some kind of high level position already.

100%.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#386

Post by brokenmachine »

mylinkedlist wrote: post #363
lioeters wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ..you can see the window maximize/minimize in slow motion Oof, that's painful to imagine the daily frustration. There must be a better technical solution - but, as long as the current setup is working (and generating value), probably no one with decision-making power has an incentive to improve anything. They can ignore the cost, the wasted time, effort, stress and loss of morale.

Its incredibly stressful on some days, especially when I am dealing with a production issue or a deadline. This is one of the main reasons I will be soon looking for a new job. One of the questions I would ask the interviewer would be to find out if I will I be working on a AWS workspace/Citrix VDI/something similar or will I get a dedicated hardware. I tried to bring this issue up a couple of times, but got turned d…

I would try keeping a log of when it happens and how long it takes. Presenting a logbook of wasted time makes it their responsibility, not yours.

And try not to worry about it. One trick that I use is trying to think if such frustrations will be important 2 hours, 2 days, 2 weeks or 2 months from now. Usually they won't.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#387

Post by jiggawatts »

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…

Or just in IT in general. E.g.: "We have to have a D:\ drive for applications!"

That's a rule that last made sense some time in the 90s, when it was feasible to format the system drive, reinstall windows, and then applications on a secondary drive letter would work as-is without any further steps.

In the era of 10 GB application installs that deploy several hundred system-shared components, this is a hilariously out-dated mandatory process.

Yet.

Everywhere I go. There it is: The D:\ drive with "Apps" as the volume name.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#388

Post by pyrale »

grogenaut wrote: post #364
pyrale wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is also _much_ easier when you're called in for that purpose. Someone who didn't get that mandate on hire will be considered troublesome and overstepping, while someone roped in for that reason will be innovative and an enabler.

I actually grew into this position. And like 60% of the time people don't ask me to show up, I just do. Or someone points me at an issue.

Sounds like some companies got it right, then. I wwould advise figuring out which company one is in before agitating for policy change though.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#389

Post by closeparen »

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…

Tech workers live and breathe the space between mechanism and intent. Policies that are inconsistent with their stated goals offend exactly the same mental hardware that finds bugs.

There's nothing inherently wrong with heavyweight bureaucracy. Roles, ceremonies, witnesses, signatures, tamper-evident seals, 2-man rules, split-knowledge safe combinations... the community loves this stuff. But we don't respect it because it's policy. We respect it because we were following along, trying to break it, trying to do better, and we couldn't.

Re: Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary

#390

Post by wayanon »

grogenaut wrote: post #366
Kinrany wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you like firefighting and having uncomfortable conversations with people all the time.

Is this basically a Business Analyst?
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