Comment by adriand | Hacker News Reader

Comment by adriand | Hacker News Reader

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I think it’s important to understand the context you’re operating in. Universities are highly bureaucratic organizations. This is not an entirely bad thing; we don’t actually want them to operate like startups (for instance we expect them to prioritize longevity over risk-taking: we expect them to preserve capital, etc). It doesn’t mean you did a bad thing - perhaps you were correct, although it’s also possible that what seems unnecessary to you is necessary for some other reason you’re not aware of.

What concerns me is that everyone got angry including you. I might suggest reflecting on that a little bit. Is there a path where you didn’t get your way but you also didn’t get upset? And where you didn’t upset anyone else? If not, then accepting you work for a bureaucracy is one possibility, and if you dislike that, you could work for a nimble startup instead. The tradeoff is you won’t have a pension. ;)

> what seems unnecessary to you is necessary for some other reason you’re not aware of.

In this case this was more-or-less true. As my counterpart in HR explained, there are federal government rules mandating this bit of bureaucracy. Of course, one can presumably get away with ignoring them... but, as it turns out, the rules weren't something she made up.

> Is there a path where you didn’t get your way but you also didn’t get upset? And where you didn’t upset anyone else?

If her response was "Sorry, I realize this is annoying, but [explanation]", then certainly."

Given the tone of her response, then in principle still yes, but it seems to require a lot of mental fortitude. Kind of like how a skilled boxer can take a punch in the ring and remain basically unfazed.

"we don’t actually want them to operate like startups (for instance we expect them to prioritize longevity over risk-taking: we expect them to preserve capital, etc)".

I'm not sure you need bureaucracy to do this? It is just the easiest and laziest way to do it. Adding processes that are by design wasteful as an attempt to slow down change is perhaps the most inefficient way of getting to that goal. It would be much more efficient to just have far far far less people with far more responsibility and work to do. That combination would be equally slow at less cost.

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