The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner • Hacker News Board

Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

#491

Post by p_l » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 9:59 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #475

p_l wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The process described is literally an attempt at canceling benefits in "frog boiling" method. If Tories went straight to canceling benefits, they would end up in trouble, by making worst possible process they could put it in terms of "verifying eligibility and that benefit funds are not scammed out". Similar approaches are utilized in other areas of british government, unfortunately.

We seem to have the same in Poland, given that I occasionally hear about people being upset they have to re-prove to ZUS or NFZ they have a missing limb or other such (still) permanent disability. > Similar approaches are utilized in other areas of british government, unfortunately. Look, I'm as cynical as they get, but where you see an attempt at "boiling the frog", and the author sees a personal insult, I see a sim…

The reason I'm seeing "boiling the frog" is that tories did bunch of reforms, and were literally caught red handed with stuff like ordering a software vendor ensure the software would mistakenly bar people from getting services they are entitled for.

Our ZUS is broken because someone let basic anti-fraud checks go out of hand without review, Tories got caught literally redesigning entire benefit system with goal of slowly dismantling it (curiously after their redistricting of NHS the system suffered massive loss in efficiency and capability)

Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

#492

Post by Barbing » Sun, Mar 29, 2026, 5:21 AM UTC

jerf wrote: post #157

tyingq wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. He's real. ̶̶̶ ̶T̶h̶e̶ ̶s̶t̶o̶r̶y̶ ̶t̶h̶o̶u̶g̶h̶:̶ "Robert Kingett is a Blind, and gay, obscure writer. He writes fiction where Disabled heroes get their happy ending..." Edit: Yep, appears I have it wrong. Thanks for the pointers. The non-fiction tag missed my eye.

I don't have a word for this, but this falls under the class of things where even if the author who wrote this is did not personally do this and is making it up, it has absolutely 100% happened somewhere, many times over. For example, it's the same for the DailyWTF... I remember how that would be posted here or on a programming reddit and half the comments would be about how it hadn't happened, and you know, maybe wh…

Representative? Believe that or “representation” is used in marketing, like for renders.

This cannot be the best word…

Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

#493

Post by rekabis » Sun, Mar 29, 2026, 6:41 AM UTC

One of the biggest problems with this story is Karen phoning back and asking him to stop the fax.

Sorry, but faxes don’t work like this.

A fax takes in the entire transmission over the phone line, ends the call, and then - IF it has been set up to do so, instead of just storing the fax - it prints it out.

Which means that Karen had every ability to tell her fax to stop the print job herself. A fax is not like a printer, where the sender has the ability to tell the printer to pause or cancel the job. Once the fax starts printing, that original communication - the phone call with the fax transmission - has long since ended.

And if this fax machine can retrieve faxes from a fax server elsewhere on the network or on the Internet, that communications disconnect is even more severe.

Which makes me very suspicious of the entire story.

Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

#494

Post by ykonstant » Sun, Mar 29, 2026, 11:32 AM UTC

jiggawatts wrote: post #452

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“ It reads like an indictment of the government employee personally” As a government employee: it often is the employee personally. Not always, but surprisingly often. There is a type of mid-level bureaucrat who just can’t be bothered to make anyone else’s life easier, even if they can. It’s just easier not to, and over time that becomes its own form of malice. The tales I could tell you about security officers basic…

Many large organisations put people into a position where there is zero personal upside to action, but some non-zero upside to inaction. Risk avoidance, less work, lower stress, no need to learn anything new, etc. Government bureaucracies do this most often, but you also see it in thankless software maintenance where the people empowered to merge PRs simply… don’t. It’s easier to do nothing. I also notice this behavi…

I have often heard this story. To my ears, inexperienced in the tech industry, but experienced in others, it sounds absurd. If a modification improves performance even in the slightest perceptible way (of course it needs to be perceptible by the user), it is the job of the sales team to hype it up to the heavens.

To me, these stories sound like a ridiculous failure of the sales team or of the executive team to communicate the change to the sales team.

Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

#495

Post by jiggawatts » Sun, Mar 29, 2026, 11:44 AM UTC

ykonstant wrote: post #494

jiggawatts wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many large organisations put people into a position where there is zero personal upside to action, but some non-zero upside to inaction. Risk avoidance, less work, lower stress, no need to learn anything new, etc. Government bureaucracies do this most often, but you also see it in thankless software maintenance where the people empowered to merge PRs simply… don’t. It’s easier to do nothing. I also notice this behavi…

I have often heard this story. To my ears, inexperienced in the tech industry, but experienced in others, it sounds absurd. If a modification improves performance even in the slightest perceptible way (of course it needs to be perceptible by the user), it is the job of the sales team to hype it up to the heavens. To me, these stories sound like a ridiculous failure of the sales team or of the executive team to commun…

The incentives don't align.

If this was a self-funded startup where performance directly translates to less of an impact on the hip pocket of the founder, then yes, absolutely, you'll traction with even the smallest improvement.

Similarly, I love watching CppCon talks by Andrei Alexandrescu where he describes a 1-2% improvement across a huge fleet of servers that probably got him a nice bonus and/or a promotion. That's because he directly reduced the costs to the corporation itself, making his manager look good, or his manager's manager, or whatever.

Nobody gives the slightest f%&# about their customer's experience. They really don't.

I say this with confidence because I just looked up Andrei's video on YouTube and the page froze for a solid 30 seconds while it loaded 200 bytes of text and a few thumbnails.

Google doesn't care in the slightest what my experience is.

Nobody does!

That's because in any larger organisation, only your superior's opinion matters. Customers are not superiors.

Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

#496

Post by gravypod » Sun, Mar 29, 2026, 11:53 AM UTC

metalliqaz wrote: post #483

gravypod wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> government employees work for elected officials This is not correct and we have recent examples to counter this claim: 1. There are government employees directly employed by various branches of the government (ex: USDS was under the executive allowing them to be retasked by EO into DOGE) 2. There are government employees appointed into office who cannot fired after appointment (ex: Fed Reserve Chair) 3. There are a…

Do you think the President isn't an elected official? the fact that the public is stupid does not mean there is no feedback

Sorry, my comment was not clearly phrased looking back. #1 is an example of an elected official who can hire/fire. #2/#3 are not. These are all from recent litigation (in the court room and within public discourse) during the Trump presidency.

Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

#497

Post by austhrow743 » Sun, Mar 29, 2026, 1:29 PM UTC

ykonstant wrote: post #494

jiggawatts wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many large organisations put people into a position where there is zero personal upside to action, but some non-zero upside to inaction. Risk avoidance, less work, lower stress, no need to learn anything new, etc. Government bureaucracies do this most often, but you also see it in thankless software maintenance where the people empowered to merge PRs simply… don’t. It’s easier to do nothing. I also notice this behavi…

I have often heard this story. To my ears, inexperienced in the tech industry, but experienced in others, it sounds absurd. If a modification improves performance even in the slightest perceptible way (of course it needs to be perceptible by the user), it is the job of the sales team to hype it up to the heavens. To me, these stories sound like a ridiculous failure of the sales team or of the executive team to commun…

If you spend your time hyping performance instead of the things your prospects care about then you will get less sales.

Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

#498

Post by lormayna » Sun, Mar 29, 2026, 1:29 PM UTC

In Italy, in the past people starts paying tickets that they think unfair completely in coins. The government had to introduce a maximum amount that you can pay in coins to protect the employees that otherwise will spend day on counting cents.

Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

#499

Post by mrgoldenbrown » Sun, Mar 29, 2026, 7:32 PM UTC

egorfine wrote: post #345

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this anger is entirely misplaced. I don't think this woman is happy to have to enforce this idiotic law and listen to angry people all day long. It's the politicians that people like us elected because they promised to cut wasteful spending, so now blind people have to prove they're still blind once a year. We did that to them.

> I don't think this woman is happy to have to enforce this idiotic law But this is exactly what she chooses to do every morning.

Needing a job to survive in our money based society is not the same as being happy about that job.

Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

#500

Post by mrgoldenbrown » Sun, Mar 29, 2026, 7:38 PM UTC

croemer wrote: post #306

bitwank wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. It’s like thinking you can overthrow the government by littering. It’s just being lame. If you’re going to be lame to other people, don’t gloat about your lameness online. “If everybody littered, they’d have to do something about it!”

It's not littering. It shows why fax is stupid and they should accept email. Littering has no such benefit.

The employee probably already knows fax is stupid, and was probably looking forward to the proposed new secured document portal, but the legislature voted down the funding again this year so they could claim to be fiscally responsible. (Don't know the author but I do know govt workers who have expressed this kind of frustration ) Blind author needs to piss off their legislator, not a cog in the machine.