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

91–100 of 168 posts

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

#91

Post by mschuster91 »

alienthrowaway wrote: post #62
randomNumber7 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> In which country? Even for the US I don't believe the law system is that crappy. There's video from a few years back that shows very American cops standing outside a burning house at night, knowing there was a young child still in it. A passing pizza delivery dude[1] rescued the 6-year old, handed her to cop, and ended up requiring hospitalization. In the online discussion, everyone called the rescuer a hero, but I…

The problem is, as always, insurance. Entering an unsafe building in an employment context without adequate PPE will kill off any claims for workplace injury. The pizza driver however will most likely be covered by some kind of government scheme, because him getting injured is not tied to his employment.

It's the same why store clerks are explicitly banned from intervening with thefts or fights among unruly customers. When they get injured because they willfully entered a fight, they have zero claims to make (other than trying to sue a piss poor drug addict, which is pointless) - only a security guard is insured against that.

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

#92

Post by smeej »

I can't work under more than three layers of management, largely because I've found that to be the practical maximum of managers who will care more about my results than whether I'm following the inefficient set of rules laid down when the target results were different.

I don't think this is a problem, exactly. It just means I'm the kind of person who works much better in startups than mega corps. I can't not notice all the ways poorly made rules get in the way of getting things done, but once we hit the fourth layer of management, at least one of them WILL be the kind of manager who has gotten ahead in their career by writing and enforcing rules.

All that means is that the company has grown to the point that it's time for me to move on to the next project.

(And before anybody asks, of course there are some rules that are incredibly important. Many of them are codified as laws. Most of the rest would bring down the company. If I'm not willing to work within those rules, the company is the wrong fit for me from the start, regardless of size.)

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

#94

Post by AllegedAlec »

David Snowden does/did a lot of talks about these, how hard rules break catastrophically and you need systems of constraints with flexible rules which have rules baked in about when and how you can break the rules.

Worth looking up the talks they have on youtube. Just be prepared to hear the same few anecdotes 50 times.

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

#95

Post by [deleted] »

brabel wrote: post #59
randomNumber7 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

[deleted]

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

#96

Post by Artoooooor »

I hate when I rely on others following the rules and they screw me over by breaking them. We had "focus hours" at work. They would have been amazing if not for some special individuals that decide it's OK to waste my 15 minutes to save their 10. Now we don't have focus hours. Or we should document everything on wiki. But why do it when better "documentation" is "ask A". And A is on vacation. That's why I despise rule breakers, they almost always make someone's life worse. And that someone else follows the rules. Rules should be for everybody or nobody.

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

#97

Post by banannaise »

Artoooooor wrote: post #96

I hate when I rely on others following the rules and they screw me over by breaking them. We had "focus hours" at work. They would have been amazing if not for some special individuals that decide it's OK to waste my 15 minutes to save their 10. Now we don't have focus hours. Or we should document everything on wiki. But why do it when better "documentation" is "ask A". And A is on vacation. That's why I despise rule…

When someone tries to schedule a meeting during my focus hours, I decline it.

When someone DMs me about an issue they should post in the support channel, I link them to the support channel. If they insist, I link them to it again, and I inform my team not to respond to DMs from that person.

Do not engage with people who think their time is more important than yours; if you do, insist on wasting their time in equal amounts.

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

#98

Post by jalict »

darkwater wrote: post #72
kqr wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> You never need permission to do a good job. If you don't mind, I will steal this one.

Love the irony of this post.

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

#99

Post by Enginerrrd »

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.

Post reply on HN