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Supervisors often prefer rule breakers, up to a point

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Re: Supervisors often prefer rule breakers, up to a point

#151

Post by [deleted] »

mikepurvis wrote: post #111
bmacho wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A burning house is not "a pool". In my country you can't watch a kid drowning in a pool* but you are not obligated to help anyone in a burning house, since that would put you in danger too. I assume it is the same ~everywhere in the world, including the US. * assume rescuing would be fairly safe, you are a good swimmer, you have lifeguard education, the weather is nice and the kid is small. AFAIK rescuing drowning pe…

A drowning child is of fairly limited threat to an even halfway competent adult swimmer. Even at maximum panic/flailing, they just don't have the mass or strength to prevent you from at least treading water.

[deleted]

Re: Supervisors often prefer rule breakers, up to a point

#152

Post by anthomtb »

"If you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin'"

Reminds me of an incident early in my career. I was developing embedded software and needed an expensive, specialized signal analyzer. Management refused to purchase or assign one to me. I was stuck sharing with my lead, which was highly inconvenient for both of us.

Well, turns out one of those analyzers was assigned to a guy (Dave) about to retire. I wandered over to Dave's cube the day after he left and sure enough, there is my much-needed analyzer. It is poorly locked to a table leg by a rather long cable. So I tilted up the table, slid the cable off the bottom of the leg, lugged the analyzer to my office and enjoyed an relaxing afternoon of debug.

I got a nice talking-to from management once they realized what happened. And most importantly, became the new assignee of Dave's analyzer.

Re: Supervisors often prefer rule breakers, up to a point

#154

Post by [deleted] »

mcny wrote: post #86
rendall wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It sounds like an end run to get to negligence charges. It's not anything nefarious like that. US citizens and US law enforcement tend to have an adversarial relationship, unfortunately. Finns generally do not. That law is an expression of expectation for behavior in a civilized society, not an opportunity for prosecutorial promotion, as it might be in the US. One must take reasonable steps to save a drowning child…

> Honestly, who doesn't think that a person shouldn't be in jail who would prefer to film and giggle while a child was drowning? A person like that needs a timeout at least. The difference is that jail in the US is not "timeout". Prisoners may be required to work against their will, which is the carve out in the fourteenth amendment which abolished slavery. People openly joke about sexual assault in prison with derog…

[deleted]

Re: Supervisors often prefer rule breakers, up to a point

#156

Post by thatguy0900 »

dtech wrote: post #90
efavdb wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Example?

Making food in public for homeless people runs afoul of food safety laws

Or, further, taking waste food to distribute to homeless is also against the rules. I used to work at a pizza hut express, we would have small personal pan pizzas in a ready to go area for like 15-20 min then throw them away if they were unsold. At the end of the day you'd have a trash can full of personal pan pizzas that were honestly fine to eat. You'd get fired for doing anything with them though.

Re: Supervisors often prefer rule breakers, up to a point

#157

Post by akshaybhalotia »

Enginerrrd wrote: post #99
pdpi wrote: post #23

Fundamentally, rules almost always come with compromises — for the sake of making rules understandable by humans, they have to be relatively simple. Simple rules for complex situations will always forbid some amount of good behaviour, and allow some bad behaviour. Many of society's parasites live in the space of "allowable bad behaviour", but there is a lot of value to knowing how to exploit the "forbidden good behav…

The worst of all worlds is when a blind application of the rules results in bad behavior. This situation seems to come up frequently, and I'm very often appalled at how readily otherwise normal people will "follow the rules" even when it's clearly and objectively bad, and there may even be existing pathways to seek exceptions.

AKA "perverse incentive"[0]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive

Re: Supervisors often prefer rule breakers, up to a point

#158

Post by sdwr »

akshaybhalotia wrote: post #157
Enginerrrd wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst of all worlds is when a blind application of the rules results in bad behavior. This situation seems to come up frequently, and I'm very often appalled at how readily otherwise normal people will "follow the rules" even when it's clearly and objectively bad, and there may even be existing pathways to seek exceptions.

AKA "perverse incentive"[0] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive

A perverse incentive implies following the letter of the law, but cheating the spirit of the law.

GP is just talking about inefficient rules

Re: Supervisors often prefer rule breakers, up to a point

#159

Post by DaSHacka »

harrall wrote: post #119
Enginerrrd wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst of all worlds is when a blind application of the rules results in bad behavior. This situation seems to come up frequently, and I'm very often appalled at how readily otherwise normal people will "follow the rules" even when it's clearly and objectively bad, and there may even be existing pathways to seek exceptions.

Some types of people are “rule followers” are can’t fathom breaking any rules. There are also “rule breakers” who can’t fathom being told what to do. Both types of people are insufferable.

> There are also “rule breakers” who can’t fathom being told what to do.

> Both types of people are insufferable.

He says, on "Hacker" News

Re: Supervisors often prefer rule breakers, up to a point

#160

Post by rlpb »

harrall wrote: post #120
efavdb wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Example?

Going 10mph over the speed limit on a highway, especially because you’re a little late, isn’t a big deal. Going 5mph UNDER in a neighborhood with kids playing around on the street is too fast.

This example does not illustrate what do you think it does.

The first is technically illegal. The second is not only within the law, it's required by the law. The speed limit isn't a limit and in most jurisdictions, the law requires you to reduce to a safe speed when the conditions require it. The speed limit is not the only law that dictates a legal speed.

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