Hacker News Reader

Comment by codecutter | Hacker News Reader

I agree with your overall sentiment that fighting beurocracy by dumping more paperwork is a good strategy.

However, that should be last resort in my opinion. Based on my experience, people (especially IT staff) are reasonable if you explain the issue nicely. Remember, honey attracts more bees than vinegar.

View on HN

"The Practice of Systems and Networks Administration"-book has this somewhere:

There are basically two strategies for getting what you want from slow bureaucrats:

- either: be the one nice and polite person they meet during the day. Chances are you will stand out and you might get preferential treatment. After all bureaucrats are humans too and they (the ones at the edges of the system) can face a lot of abuse during a day.

- or: follow the rules to a t. Not necessarily malicious compliance, just don't care that you overload the system. At some point someone will sit down and look at it and corners will be cut.

- maximum asshole. If you are politically powerful, escalate immediately and intensely. Theatrically demand, via your boss, their boss and in the name of the CEO and quarterly profitability that your project must be bureaucratically unblocked.

(Not an endorsement)

Be wary that bureaucracies are filled with people that know those rules better than you.

See also:

If you don't know who the mark is, it's you.

I am glad that you added not an endorsement. This level of selfishness is the reason other people quit their jobs, and contributes to toxic workplaces. A really good book about dealing with assholes at work is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_No_Asshole_Rule, and I can't recommend it highly enough, as it has allowed me to deal with these kinds of people in the past (and sadly present as well).

Once you have a company with an inefficient bureaucracy there are no easy answers. I could take another look that was favorable to those who demand the bureaucracy be circumvented.

Is the participant who intentionally submits so many requests that they anticipate breaking the system a good moral actor? I’d say no. You shouldn’t do things that are going to force your coworkers to endure the “system collapses under its own weight.” You’re just moving the pain of the bureaucracy from you to someone else who is also powerless to defy it.

The maximum asshole(MA) speaks a truth — the system isn’t working and we need to smash it. MA also informs all senior personnel that the system which they are most responsible for isn’t working.

I had heard of that book, but didn’t know anything about it, so thanks for the recommendation.

> - or: follow the rules to a t. Not necessarily malicious compliance, just don't care that you overload the system. At some point someone will sit down and look at it and corners will be cut.

Also hope that you are not a corner. Because "someones" can decide that you are the problem not biurocracy.

If it’s always your last resort, then you’ll run out of political capital at work. IT staff are also generally not responsible for these policies in the first place—IT staff wouldn’t install an internet filter, for example. That’s something that a VP would ask for. Getting into fights with a VP over policy can end badly if you ignore office politics.

> IT staff wouldn’t install an internet filter, for example.

i guess it depends on the network and IT staff in question. having strong firewall rules & monitoring is something you want (need?) in many higher-security networks. of course most networks don't actually need that but it's not exactly useless either

In the era of rampant ransomware, it isn't unreasonable to have some level of filtering.

IT might not even have any real control over the situation and you could just be making their lives more miserable anyway. Or you might be helping them provide evidence that the policy is garbage, but you really need to actually talk to someone in the department to find that out.

Our company president has mandated and refused to budge on a wildly stupid policy regarding email. The users know it's stupid, we know it is stupid, but nobody can convince the guy who's name is on the building that it is stupid, so we have to deal with it. Our solution is to straight up tell new users how they can get around the policy on a technicality.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com