11–20 of 25 posts
I'm confused about why she stayed? It doesn't say she ever got any money back. I would be gone after the first 0$ check, why would you stay after that?
She was working for the Canadian government, not shady joe’s fix-it shop, and thus likely thought the issue would be resolved long term. Plus I’m guessing she was on a defined benefit pension, creating an incentive to stay.
Giant systems of immense complexity that nobody can understand, what could go wrong? And even if they’re a complete failure, they’ll never admit to it
I read one expert describe the Phoenix pay system as "garbage in, garbage out". The government signed hundreds of separate collective bargaining agreements with public sector unions, each with their own different rules for pay, overtime, etc, making the system highly complex. Because of this complexity, the software handling it is full of bugs. Arguably it's partially a failure on the government's part not to negotia…
Life is complex, technology should support that. We should not have to dumb life down to match.
I read one expert describe the Phoenix pay system as "garbage in, garbage out". The government signed hundreds of separate collective bargaining agreements with public sector unions, each with their own different rules for pay, overtime, etc, making the system highly complex. Because of this complexity, the software handling it is full of bugs. Arguably it's partially a failure on the government's part not to negotia…
Honestly, I doubt the fault lies with unions. Did their previous pay system handle this? Don't private sector companies handle lots of different union rules? Doesn't stuff like SAP handle far more complicated legal and accounting rules across many many nations?
My guess is what really happened is they cheaped out given their requirements and/or adopted too-aggressive deadlines, and the failure proceeded from there.
> Because of this complexity, the software handling it is full of bugs.
The world is complicated. It's hella backwards to expect it to twist to conform to what would be simple to implement in software.
I read one expert describe the Phoenix pay system as "garbage in, garbage out". The government signed hundreds of separate collective bargaining agreements with public sector unions, each with their own different rules for pay, overtime, etc, making the system highly complex. Because of this complexity, the software handling it is full of bugs. Arguably it's partially a failure on the government's part not to negotia…
However, that isn't an excuse for the "we need to be able to audit the system and explain where each cent in the deductions goes." For anything dealing with money, that is a fundamental and necessary requirement.
Bugs happen. Payroll is one of the the more complex systems. Payroll without auditing is something that is unforgivable.
I read one expert describe the Phoenix pay system as "garbage in, garbage out". The government signed hundreds of separate collective bargaining agreements with public sector unions, each with their own different rules for pay, overtime, etc, making the system highly complex. Because of this complexity, the software handling it is full of bugs. Arguably it's partially a failure on the government's part not to negotia…
Or, they could have built a system capable of having a bunch of different knobs and levers that each CBA represents. Life is complex, technology should support that. We should not have to dumb life down to match.
This sentence implies that the opposite of "complex" is "dumb", though.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or, they could have built a system capable of having a bunch of different knobs and levers that each CBA represents. Life is complex, technology should support that. We should not have to dumb life down to match.
> Life is complex, technology should support that. We should not have to dumb life down to match. This sentence implies that the opposite of "complex" is "dumb", though.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Life is complex, technology should support that. We should not have to dumb life down to match. This sentence implies that the opposite of "complex" is "dumb", though.
Ignoring that this is pointless pedantry, I don't really think so. I think it says that complex is on the high end of the scale, and dumbing something down slides it towards the low end of simple.