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Comment by RhodesianHunter | Hacker News Reader

A few years ago at a small company after a round of golf with some other shmuck, our CEO told us we needed SSO via OAuth, because that's how we can convince people we're secure. How soon could we get it developed? Spare no expense!

We had a single website with an already written to OWASP standards login, no external API or plans for any.

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What always drives me crazy about instances like this, is that managers and the c-level seem to be much more willing to listen to some "random" guy or blog over their own people. People they hired, people that have a much better understanding of the issue, the processes and so on.

This effect is by no means limited to tech. And engineers, regardless of type, are by no means immune to that as soon as they reach higher management positions. I have yet to figure this one out. Which drives me crazy sometimes, because my gut tells me that as soon as I did most "problems" I have regarding managment would be solvable instantly.

They're just seeking some outside the box solutions. If you don't course correct, how do you know/show that you're driving?

In my case, the business guy stubborn and think he know best, many times.

Every times, I told him it wasn’t what he think. For a few times, I let it go, part to let he learn about the reality. I thought he would change the evaluation process. But no, he still stubborn.

I remember at Microsoft, people would need to win an argument with Bill Gate to get their idea approved. Sometimes, it was a really hear arguments. Maybe some people get inspired by this story too much.

Plus, how else would you create all that synergy.

At my last job, about a month or six weeks after starting, the CTO would meet with new devs and ask them if they thought we were doing anything wrong. He was clear “I have to ask you now because in a month it’s gonna seem perfectly normal to you.”

I recall telling him they were doing builds like no one I had ever seen (“Yes we have a plan to change it.”) and and asking why do you use R as the main language for the ETL pipeline (“It makes it easier for data science and we can run it in Spark.”)

I think a big worry for any C-levels is "what if my employees are wrong". And there is good reason to hedge against this, because insiders have clear interests in defending past mistakes.

And if you hired your people yourself, you probably know you skipped over some qualified people who were to expensive, and weeded out some overconfident people who turned out not to be all that. In the end, you wonder what those expensive smart people would have said, and you wonder if your confident sounding employees are just overconfident incapables that you failed to weed out.

Hence, getting an outside perspective from someone you trust has a lot of attraction. However, getting that outsider person to be knowledgeable enough, and getting them the right information, is a tough task.

When I was 17 I worked [production] in a sofa factory that made huge profit. They hired every highly specialized consultant available. I asked one of the consultants and some office folk for an explanation (I was paid 3 guilders or so per hours ($1.5)) To my surprise both the consultant and the office folk thought it was a fascinating question and explained elaborately how [to them] it was worth every penny to have written proof for every business process. Investors could point at anything and get a pile of reports explaining exactly why the chosen method was the right one.

(When I left they continued to pay me for months. It struck me just now that cheap employees probably looked great on paper.)

Which question?

Why they paid me roughly 1.5 USD and the consultants several thousands per hour.

My bad, I originally wrote " They hired every highly specialized consultant available for .... guilders each" but I only hear the price of one and I failed to remember if it was 5000 or 20 000 for a 2 hour chat.

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