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Supervisors often prefer rule breakers, up to a point

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21–30 of 168 posts

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

#21

Hard to see the negatives. Rule breakers allow you to reap the rewards while removing liability.

Every supervisor ever: Look my team is just an awesome team that achieves all goals by breaking rules. I was the fearless leader to lead them. Same supervisor when caught breaking rules: Rogue employee. Nothing to do with me. Will fire them.

Good point. Though if they change the rules after breaking them, will history remember?

Looking at uber, any number of social media companies, etc., having some good lobbyists works wonders.

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

#22

This study is about the NHL, hardly applicable to other contexts.

Next time you get too many story points assigned on a sprint, cross-check your manager.

I’ve kinda done this at different points. Sometimes people need a good stern talking to out of band.

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

#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 behaviour" space.

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

#24
post #17
post #12

A more palatable phrasing, "supervisors prefer people that engage with the rules with purpose." That is, choosing to break a rule because you are making a cost call based on what you were able to achieve is not, necessarily, a bad thing. The "point" where this fails, of course, is where the "cost" call above is such that the supervisor can't agree.

You sound like a supervisor there ;) “They didn’t break the rule! They engaged in the rules with purpose unlike those rule followers.” Though I’m not advocating your approach is incorrect.

Worse, I'm a parent! :D

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

#25
post #15

So I'm fascinated with military culture and how systems work on this scale (ie millions of employees). And one interesting aspect is the E4 Mafia [1]. For those that don't know, you're generally either a commissioned officer (with ranks from 0-1 and up) or enlisted (E-1 to E-9). Some branches have warrant officers too but let's ignore that. So if you join as an enlisted you start off as a private in the Army (it's ca…

In the US Army an E-4 is a specialist or a corporal. Most E-4s are specialists. The E-4 is the pay grade, and the specialist or corporal designation is the rank. A corporal is a type of lateral promotion from specialist and as a corporal the soldier is then considered a non-commissioned officer. One thing I think would've been helpful for the article to address are operational and or program leaders that strive to ge…

It’s one of the reasons why organizations that are run by lawyers or accountants almost always suck and often perform poorly. They tend to go back to their roots when uncertain and focus on chickenshit.

The exceptions are usually lawyers who discovered that they despise lawyering.

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

#26
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Sports does not occur in the real world" That's a new one for me today.

Rule breaking is part of the game in sports. Players will, for example, take a penalty if it is worth it. Hockey has fights, basketball has fouls as a resource that gets expended over the course of the game.

Are you saying irl people don’t break the law or go against other conventions when they think it’s worth it?

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

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rule breaking is part of the game in sports. Players will, for example, take a penalty if it is worth it. Hockey has fights, basketball has fouls as a resource that gets expended over the course of the game.

Are you saying irl people don’t break the law or go against other conventions when they think it’s worth it?

It’s just a game, so there’s no real moral component and the stakes are much lower generally.

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

#28
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…

Example?

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

#29
post #28
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…

Example?

Not the poster, but some examples;

- emotional support animals - take a penny, leave a penny - ‘discretion’ and speed limits - qualified immunity

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

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying irl people don’t break the law or go against other conventions when they think it’s worth it?

It’s just a game, so there’s no real moral component and the stakes are much lower generally.

I can easily make a case that professional sports at the highest level (NHL, NBA, PL, etc) are much higher stakes than most peoples' jobs at least in $ dimension
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