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It seems like lots of the payroll was being carried out by humans in local units. Humans are very good at holding lots of exceptions in our heads and, in the a
by x0x0 9y ago
It seems like lots of the payroll was being carried out by humans in local units. Humans are very good at holding lots of exceptions in our heads and, in the absence of clear rules, doing reasonable things. Computers are shit at both of the above.
So things like Bob negotiated with his boss to leave early on Thursday to cover childcare and, in exchange, is coming in early on Tuesdays... but got asked to come in Saturday and now has overtime and what does he get paid based on province or local rules? Does OT end at midnight or not? Do employees get paid non-required OT as a courtesy? And frankly, lots of payroll probably sometimes violates the rules in minor ways, but as long as the employee is happy and the org is happy no-one is upset. Computers are not good at letting small things like that go. And that's a pretty trivial case.
What about eg janitorial that is paid by multiple government orgs on some cost sharing arrangement because the orgs share office space, but is covering an event for a 3rd org in the 2nd org's space? And that janitor is on a particular contract, one of perhaps 5 or 6? If that has to get encoded into a central system, have fun with that. God only knows how many exceptions there are across a quarter of a million employees.
- diggernet 9y ago> Humans are very good at holding lots of exceptions in our heads and, in the absence of clear rules, doing reasonable things. Computers are shit at both of the above. Which is a remarkably concise summary of my thoughts regarding self driving cars.
- lopmotr 9y agoWhen did you form those thoughts? The last 10 years has had pretty monotonic progress in the opposite direction. It seems unlikely for the technology to suddenly stop and certainly not go backwards.
- diggernet 9y agoIt's that 80/20 rule... I'm sure Canada saw monotonic progress in their payroll system over the last 10 years, too. But with cars, the 20 can kill, not just screw up paychecks.
- simonw 9y agoThanks for this, this is an excellent set of examples.
- aero142 9y agoThe fundamental problem is when people want software to prevent people from ever messing up instead of simply enabling people to do their jobs better. I heard someone say the other day that they wouldn’t use a simple workflow tool becuase it didn’t provide read only access for other company employees. Look, other people could walk over to your desk and throw all of your papers in the trash too. You still use paper. Why must software prevent malicious actions perfectly?
- slavik81 9y ago> does he get paid based on province or local rules? I believe the answer is "neither". Federal employees are exempted from both. That case would be decided based on federal law and the union contract. It's made more complex by the fact that the union contract is often applied retroactively to events several years in the past due to how long negotiations take.