Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Supervisors often prefer rule breakers, up to a point

journals.aom.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 168 posts

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

#51

Post by achierius »

nearting wrote: post #47
seeknotfind wrote: post #38

Here's the dangerous way I put it that I only tell senior people: understand why rules were made and make sure the people who made them would be happy.

> Here's the dangerous way I put it that I only tell senior people: understand why rules were made and make sure the people who made them would be happy. If you aren't absolutely sure those senior people know what they're doing, the this is a great way to end up with originalism.

Frankly, most corporations do not last long enough for this to be a problem. Governments are their own issue, but without the political inertia and staying power of a nation-state, your organization will likely be long dead (or at least irrelevant and dying) before interpretations will drift that far. Most of the time, for most engineers, at least some of the people who made these rules in the first place are still around -- which helps ensure that nothing drifts too too far.

Of course there are exceptions, probably even upwards of 20% of the time, but we're talking generalities.

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

#52

Post by chias »

seeknotfind wrote: post #38

Here's the dangerous way I put it that I only tell senior people: understand why rules were made and make sure the people who made them would be happy.

I saw this put really, really well not too long ago:

> A lot of us got the message earlier in life that we had to wait for other's permission or encouragement to do things, when in fact, all you need is the ability to understand the situation and deal with the consequences

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

#53

Post by yi_xuan »

The key is understanding the purpose of the rules, its pros and cons, and recognizing the impact of your behavior, both its benefits and harm, considering the feelings of others at the same time. That's essential and most challenging part - the part that requires wisdom.

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

#54

Post by terramars »

"We found that when people broke the rules, teams were less likely to win games."

This seems like a prima facie bad conclusion to their hockey study, considering that the Panthers won the cup while being effectively tied for the lead in penalty minutes, with #3 not being particularly close. Yes there's a weak correlation between penalties and losing, but considering that the absolute best teams usually have a high rat index, there's a big lost opportunity to go into the rat factor in hockey and how it translates to the corporate world!

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

#55

Post by pdpi »

efavdb wrote: post #28
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…

Example?

A classical example of legal bad behaviour is that of patent trolls.

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

#56

Post by randomNumber7 »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #46
efavdb wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Example?

For which side? Most examples boil down to common sense. Nobody is going to arrest a 14 year old for driving their dying parent to the hospital. Similarly, it is reprehensible but legal to pull up a chair and watch a child drown in a pool. There is a difference between law and morality, and humans will use the second to selectively enforce the former.

> Similarly, it is reprehensible but legal to pull up a chair and watch a child drown in a pool.

In which country? Even for the US I don't believe the law system is that crappy.

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

#58

Post by tdeck »

randomNumber7 wrote: post #56
s1artibartfast wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For which side? Most examples boil down to common sense. Nobody is going to arrest a 14 year old for driving their dying parent to the hospital. Similarly, it is reprehensible but legal to pull up a chair and watch a child drown in a pool. There is a difference between law and morality, and humans will use the second to selectively enforce the former.

> Similarly, it is reprehensible but legal to pull up a chair and watch a child drown in a pool. In which country? Even for the US I don't believe the law system is that crappy.

I suppose it would depend a lot on the specifics of the situation, but there's less obligation to help others than I would have thought:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_to_rescue

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

#59

Post by brabel »

randomNumber7 wrote: post #56
s1artibartfast wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For which side? Most examples boil down to common sense. Nobody is going to arrest a 14 year old for driving their dying parent to the hospital. Similarly, it is reprehensible but legal to pull up a chair and watch a child drown in a pool. There is a difference between law and morality, and humans will use the second to selectively enforce the former.

> Similarly, it is reprehensible but legal to pull up a chair and watch a child drown in a pool. In which country? Even for the US I don't believe the law system is that crappy.

I think you'll never find a case where someone got in trouble for not being a hero. I've recently found myself in a somewhat related situation where a guy turned violent in a pub... first I tried to calm him down and almost got hit... he then turned to other guys who were nearby, and one of them got punched in the face and fell unconscious. My family was with me and told me to stay the hell out of it, but I thought that would be extremely cowardly so I jumped at the guy to try to keep him down, but he was strong and I got a punch in the eye which cost me a week with a black eye, but could've easily turned out much worse for me. If I had just stayed quiet, would I be "negligent"?? The police told me what I did was good as I was trying to help someone, but I didn't have any obligation to do it.

In the case of a child in a pool, the difference is a matter of degree. What if I am terrified of water myself? Does that justify my inaction? What if I just "froze", which is common in stressful situations. Does anything justify not doing something?

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

#60

Post by kqr »

chias wrote: post #52
seeknotfind wrote: post #38

Here's the dangerous way I put it that I only tell senior people: understand why rules were made and make sure the people who made them would be happy.

I saw this put really, really well not too long ago: > A lot of us got the message earlier in life that we had to wait for other's permission or encouragement to do things, when in fact, all you need is the ability to understand the situation and deal with the consequences

So fun to see other variations of this. I have for a while said

> You never need permission to do a good job.

But of course, it takes the experience to understand the nuances of what a good job is in the domain at hand, in the organisation and society at hand.

Post reply on HN