
Bullshit Job Notes - luu
https://acesounderglass.com/2018/09/04/bullshit-job-notes/
======
duxup
A while back company I worked at was aquired and many months after the
acquisition someone from the new corporate office showed up and got a tour.

She repeatedly used the phrase "You let them have / do that?"

The response was to things she saw at people's cubes like:

* A mini fridge. * A blanket. * Some food at someone's desk. * A fan.

And some random stuff.

It didn't occur to anyone at that point that anyone had to "let" someone have
those things at their desk.

Eventually an email went out banning such things, no reason was given.

An annoyed co-worker asked why via email and they were told food at their desk
was "unnecessary" because there is a cafeteria.

The only cafeteria was on the other side of the country at the new HQ in San
Jose....they didn't respond to follow up emails.

It always struck me that this person who visited's entire role was to enforce
some arbitrary rules like they were our parents or something.

The rules were complied with for about a month and as soon as visits stopped,
everyone at our location just ignored them. Somehow nothing bad happened just
as nothing ever had before.

When visiting the HQ later I did eat something (breakfast bar) at my temporary
desk. My coworkers in San Jose we're quite shocked, I was amused by their
reaction. We all survived. Although security eventually caught me (came
running even) for not wearing my ID "visible enough" ;)

~~~
benatkin
I can see real problems with those things. Mini fridges can be noisy (for
real, I've often unplugged them for the night at hotels). Food can be messy.
Fans can be noisy, and one person's white noise can be another person's
irritating noise.

These often aren't just arbitrary rules.

Alcohol is another thing.

~~~
minikites
Not to mention electrical safety issues (daisy chaining loaded power strips
and/or insufficiently rated extension cords) or fire issues (space heaters).

~~~
geomark
Some years ago at a big tech company a CAD software development group was
folded into the department I was managing. I took a walk around. We had hard
wall offices with 2 or 3 desks in each. In one office one of the SW devs had
set up a small camp under a table with a sleeping bag, cooler, and night
light. I don't think she was homeless. In another office one of the devs had a
small cactus farm with grow lights on a timer. Nobody in the group could
understand why they shouldn't be allowed to keep this stuff.

~~~
lovich
Why shouldn't they be allowed to keep that stuff?

I'm not trying to be flippant. I have noticed that many managers say no to
anything they didn't think of first. Its made me usually default to thinking
the manager is wrong unless the employee is adversely affecting another
employee. If no one in the group could understand why they shouldn't keep
those things, then it sounds like they weren't adversely affecting anyone

Edit: I should add that when I say management I mean management that is more
than one level above the person who's behavior they are trying to change.
People do t have as strong connections once it starts being a chain of
relationships and you start losing the benefit of the doubt

~~~
roenxi
Well, the company might do something negligent and damage the employees stuff.
Then the company might incur some liability.

Or potentially someone could get injured through corporate negligence (eg, if
there is a fire and the software engineer sleeping under the desk gets burned;
power goes out for 12 hours and someone with a fridge gets food poisoning).

Focusing on GP's comment specifically, if the government (local or higher)
discovers that a premise is being used for habitation I imagine there are a
whole bunch of rules that kick in that the company does not want to be
involved with.

It is much cheaper, easier and more internally consistent to mandate that all
employees have a standardised work space. Then not only do you cut your risk
profile, you also might find opportunities for efficiencies elsewhere.

Compare personal risk profiles to a company. If I am a bit risk-prone maybe I
tolerate a lifestyle where there is a 1 in 200 chance of a near-fatal accident
each year each year (so I'm expecting to make it to old age with a near misses
or two in life - I've met people who I judge to live to this level of risk).
If you try that sort of approach with a company of 150 employees, in a given
year you now expect:

1) More likely than not to have a near fatal accident in the workspace

2) To be imprisoned or have your business ended by the government for being a
menace to your employees

Corporations can't tolerate risk at anywhere near the level individuals do;
because they have to scale everything up to their entire workforce.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
This sounds largely like strawman examples to justify being paternalistic. The
fridge in the break room has exactly the same risk as the one in your office;
injury to the employee is a far, far greater risk than busting somebody's
stapler; standardized workspace is one of those pointless conformity things
that deliberately ignore differences in job function, personal preference and
on and on.

~~~
roenxi
No, I've been tangentially involved in this sort of decision from the
management side in Serious Industry. The break room fridge is "known to the
corporation" in some sense and can be assigned an inspection or even
maintenance schedule if you have the expertise. Has more eyes on it for
trouble in any case.

We had problems with people bringing knives in to de-core their apples. Every
year there'd a nasty hand injury or two, and we were under pressure from upper
management to keep our injury statistics low. Since hand injuries were one of
our major problems; knife ban! :D

It was as effective as it was unpopular.

~~~
linza
So because of management's lack of imagination (or caring) a solution was
chosen unilaterally for the convenience of the party in power and for the
inconvenience if the masses to protect them sheeps from themselves.

------
treelovinhippie
My first "real job" (31, had two, fired from both) was in a small web dev shop
of about 15 people. One morning I walk into the office and there was a giant
wet puddle on the carpet in the middle of the open office. The roof had leaked
in the office building and gone through a few floors. The air was damp and all
the windows covered in condensation. Clearly a safety and health issue.

I lived about a 10min walk away, so figured I'd just work at home and
announced that's what I'd be doing.

Everyone wanted to work elsewhere or from home. However the boss decided that
he'd cram everyone into the boardroom for the day.

I was the only one who stood my ground and told the boss I was going home
despite his bullshit about not being a "team player". Wage slavery is a
dangerous mindset.

~~~
monochromatic
Was this the episode that got you fired?

~~~
paulie_a
Years ago I had a meeting with my boss about an "incident" and flat out said I
told a coworker to go fuck themself, twice and I wouldn't apologize for it.
And then asked for a 20 percent raise. It was completely justified and my boss
knew it. I also got the raise.

Gp is right about wage slavery, sometimes people actually need to stand up for
themselves.

------
dsr_
"I think a thing that’s going on with the notes is that gatekeeping makes
sense in some circumstances (such as the company buying a braille keyboard for
a blind programmer)"

... No. Your employee who uses a computer shows up and says they are blind and
need Braille accomodations? You don't wait for a doctor's note, that is
explicitly unreasonable.

Gatekeeping is appropriate, if at all, where an accommodation is nice for lots
of people who will somehow cost the company a lot of money if they receive it
_and_ it is difficult to determine the reasonability of the request on an
individual basis without invading their privacy - so you ask a doctor to stand
in as a firewalling proxy that tells you whether it is reasonable in this case
without telling you the underlying cause.

~~~
buckminster
Except the doctor doesn't do that. The doctor says "patient reports x". Which
you already know.

The point is to create inconvenience for any employee who claims x. You might
as well ask the employee to fetch a stone from the top of the nearest
mountain.

~~~
wtracy
I don't think you're wrong, but I want to mention another possibility.

It might just a CYA move on the part of an individual actor in middle
management. The manager doesn't want to risk getting penalized for handing out
"random perks", but also doesn't want to get in trouble for ignoring a
"medically necessary" request.

Put another way: That seemingly arbitrary behavior might make more sense if
you assume that it's intended to protect an individual, rather than to protect
the corporation.

~~~
Rjevski
Why is "random perks" bad? Isn't the best interest of the company being making
the employees happy so they are more productive?

The negativity around giving "random perks" makes it feel like you're running
a prison, where the point is to punish people instead of a workplace.

------
bambax
Bureaucracies love papers.

Two years ago I took an international flight with no checked luggage and had a
bottle of mouthwash in my bag. (I'm used to this brand of mouthwash and
apparently it's not available outside my own country).

The security guy found it and said it was forbidden aboard the plane for
security reasons, except if I had a prescription.

I didn't have a prescription. So he threw it away. I thought "next time I
will".

Now before taking a flight I just print a "prescription" with a random doctor
name, saying in so many words that his patient (me) needs this mouthwash to
travel, and sign it myself with a big, illegible signature.

I have used this meaningless piece of paper all over Europe, the US, Africa
and it never failed to work.

Let's just hope the bad guys don't have access to a printer.

~~~
fastbeef
Uuuuuuh, so you really want to take (albeit small) risk of commiting fraud and
getting on the bad side of a organization able to detain you for hours/days to
prove a point over freaking mouth wash?

I sure as hell value my time and sanity higher than that.

~~~
enriquto
You are all a bunch of ridiculous cowards. The mouthwash anecdote is funny and
refreshing. I will do that next time I fly.

------
msadowski
The most bullshit thing I've experienced in my engineering career so far was
making "business cases".

I was to make a business case for getting me a decent PC that would allow me
to perform simulations that would allow me to test some concepts without
risking damage to hardware.

Another business case I had to make was when I proposed we give give out one
unit of our product (valued at 400-1000 eur) for Google Summer of Code
developer working on a library that we supported and it easily generated
around half of the product sales.

In the same company I had to get out of my way to make them buy heaters in
winter and fans in the summer because the building was a badly insulated
warehouse made of metal.

This experience made me highly allergic to bullshit rules and being cheap. My
philosophy now is that is you can't afford a reasonable working conditions and
hardware then I can't afford working for you.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Yeah I needed more RAM to load humongous log files and filter them. Submit the
business case - avoid 20 minute waits to do a search, save hours each day and
finish the project faster.

So, of course the RAM showed up 2 weeks after the project was over.

~~~
bklaasen
I've simply ponied up for the extra RAM myself and neither asked for
permission nor forgiveness. The €70-odd it cost was worth it to me. I left the
RAM in place as a nice surprise for whoever inherited the laptop after me.

~~~
wil421
I did the same at my last company and used some old RAM from a laptop that
broke. Just switched jobs recently and now I’m realizing I forgot to take it
out before I turned in my laptop.

Luckily my new company provides spec-ed out laptops with more RAM for software
engineers. It’s also easier to get more RAM at my new company as long as your
job code is engineering.

------
petermcneeley
"This was a problem because what I really wanted was control over my
environment, and that was the exact thing they didn’t want to give me." This
is simply about power. At best case its paternalism and at worst case its
calculated oppression. If you want to know where you stand in an org just
observe how preferred your environment is to others.

~~~
monochromatic
> At best case its paternalism and at worst case its calculated oppression.

Neither one of those makes sense from a profit/loss standpoint.

~~~
maxxxxx
There are only a few people in a company that really care about profit/loss
and have influence on it. Most just try to survive in the political
environment and some of them get a power trip on the way.

------
ballenf
In the US, and perhaps other common law jurisdictions, there is an exception
to the hearsay evidence rule for medical records. [1]

This reflects or is a result of the same root cause as the issue discussed
here: there is an almost mystical air surrounding items written by a medical
doctor, even if what's written is just parroting the patient.

Or maybe the two things aren't related, but they're both weird in the day and
age where TV commercials urge us to prod our doctor into prescribing the
latest drug.

[1]
[https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/fre/rule_803](https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/fre/rule_803)

~~~
dannyw
There's nothing strange about that. Read further and "Records of a Regularly
Conducted Activity" is also excepted, and so is absense of records.

It's almost like a timestamp tool. "One year ago I suffered from XYZ" has
little value. But a piece of paper, written by a doctor, that confirms one
year ago you said you suffered from XYZ, is worth more. Doesn't mean XYZ is
true, but it means you said that one year in advance.

------
neilwilson
Peopleware - Part II

Particularly the 'bring back the door' chapter.

[https://amzn.to/2xbNtRx](https://amzn.to/2xbNtRx)

Then realise this book was first written 30 years ago based upon research done
in the late 1970s.

Tech may change rapidly but, unfortunately, people don't.

~~~
eafkuor
Can’t recommend that book enough! The third edition is out, IIRC

------
d-sc
In my working experience, mainly with small companies: if you consistently
deliver good value, management and other employees shield you from most of the
BS out there. If you don’t provide as much value you get to deal with the
unpleasantries of this world.

~~~
john_moscow
There's a catch though: you won't get a chance of a raise because you are
needed to just keep on delivering the value while others get promoted behind
your back for selling it internally.

~~~
nstart
A peculiarity exists here in the political world. If you do your work in a way
that saves your manager's bacon, do it well enough that there's no question of
your abilities, and you show no threat at all to your manager, there's a very
high chance that a manager will treat you very well. They know a winning horse
when they see one and will do what it takes to protect it.

Of course this doesn't mean they'll freely drop a raise on your table. You go
ask for it. The difference is you'll rarely if ever get assigned any bs
targets assigned because the manager knows they don't have the control over
you. You could walk out and they'll lose and you'll still likely win a job.
It's lose lose for them.

Delicate balances exist here such as how much you get paid Vs the manager and
what not. Also, this does depend on your manager not being self destructive.

Generally though I dont say this as something to subscribe to. And I'm glad I
no longer deal with this. Good managers are good at coaching and leading.
They'll do what it takes to make a team that's happy and does the work as
needed as opposed to creating a single star.

But something I learnt as I gave up some of my youthful idealisms is that
everywhere there are differing flavours of politics. As long as it's not
identity based discrimination or anything else illegal:

Don't fight against it. The company doesn't need revolutionaries no matter how
much better you think it'll make the company.

Don't fight in it. Most people get busy trying to play the system and get
played instead.

Work with the currents. Take what you need. Call it a day. It's less
"fulfilling" but at the same time it's always less draining and you get to be
at peace with things eventually.

~~~
Nasrudith
There is one alternative that can work with decent management - make a case to
them that they value. The approach varies person to person. Some are refreshed
by nonsense attitudes others find it abhorrent. While some places may find
saying "the current dongle system is bullshit it costs us hundreds per product
for something already freely crackable by a google search and a download just
drop it or at very least roll our own easily crackable but only if you know
enough programming solution" others may value frankness or realize
implications and agree while others find admission of flaws abhorrent. If they
think it is a good idea and you want it done there is no harm in your idea
being stolen and getting them to start not being as cheap if they realize and
take to heart that human labor is the expensive part not office supplies.

Like making a point with math for ram upgrades showing an estimate of salary
costs discussing it alone vs just getting a new one. Or pointing out how say
cost savings via getting rid of free drinks negate themselves with one
additional turnover from interviewing time costs alone.

------
darkerside
No, your company is not evil. You are being a pain in the ass, ergo they are
treating you like one.

Just because your coworker didn't cop to complaining doesn't mean he didn't
make it known he didn't appreciate sitting in the dark. Did you ask him first?

> [Patient] reports back pain that would be improved by a chair they have
> chosen. Doctor writes a semantically ambiguous note. Reasonable to assume
> medical professional is not playing word games.

~~~
jay_kyburz
The guy gets headaches under the lights. I believe it. Are you are accusing
him of being liar? Perhaps you are discriminating against him for what is
essentially a disability.

You -> "Guy in the wheelchair is a real pain in the ass because he wants a
ramp."

Also, It's not really his job to tease out his co-workers thoughts and
feelings, he said its fine so its fine.

~~~
timv
The article was updated. It now says > _he told me it was fine_

It used to say > _he told me he didn 't complain_

They're different. The original article definitely read like

 _I decide to turn the lights off in a shared office without checking with
anyone else, but my office-mate assures me that he wasn 't the one who ratted
me out_

~~~
wincy
I was really annoyed by my coworkers turning off the lights. It was dark and
it made me sleepy. Eventually we just pulled out half the light bulbs which
everyone seemed happy with.

~~~
bradknowles
Years ago, I shared an office with a guy when I was working at UT Austin in
the Communication Center (COM) building.

He liked to have the overhead fluorescent lights turned off, and use natural
light coming in through the tiny window at the end of the room. I liked to
have more light on for the room.

We compromised on the rule that whoever got to the office first would get to
set the light switch policy for the day. It worked for us. No one needed to
complain to HR or our manager.

Sometimes, if we are civil human beings to each other, we can work out
solutions to problems that may not be ideal for everyone, but at least aren’t
as bad as the other alternatives.

Of course, some businesses are too big to let that kind of thing happen, and
some people are incapable of treating others like human beings or
compromising.

And then there are cases where it simply isn’t possible to compromise.

I wish everyone good luck on this subject, and hopefully you won’t have too
many of those bad situations in your life.

------
da_murvel
I have worked for three companies, two medium sized and one quite large (in
Europe), and I've never experienced this. If anything, the culture feels
rather the opposite. "Whatever you want you can have, within a reasonable
budget". For example, I wanted a smaller screen as I got neck pains having to
turn my head to reach the edges of the screen I was using. Sure my boss
chuckled a bit when I traded a 32" Samsung for a 17" HP screen, but there was
never any debate and definitely no doctor's note ... I don't get why companies
would prioritize office facism over letting their employees be happy by being
pain free, eating breakfast at their desks, using a blanket etc.

