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Mandatory vacation. This is something that the finance industry has used for a long time to guard against fraud -- it's hard to cover up something if someone e

Mandatory vacation. This is something that the finance industry has used for a long time to guard against fraud -- it's hard to cover up something if someone else has to do your job for two weeks straight at some point -- but it also serves as a mechanism for requiring you to cross-train people. Two weeks of paid vacation where the company isn't allowed to email them or call them for help: I guarantee that documentation practices will increase substantially.

pyuser583 7y ago
Some of the most “innovative” times are when someone is on parental leave. And by innovative I mean “we have no idea how anything works - let’s fix it.”
- kevsim 7y ago
  Totally agree. Especially here in Scandinavia where people disappear for 6-12 months at time, their co-workers need to step up.
dontreact 7y ago
Just like dropout in a neural network. What is the equivalent of weight decay?
- Trias11 7y ago
  +1 throwing off 75% of knowledge increases generalization capabilities (actual experience detecting real criminal behaviors within financial claims)
jrockway 7y ago
I worked in the finance industry and took the mandatory 2 week vacation and dealt with my coworkers taking the mandatory 2 week vacation. We didn't write any documentation or have any internal wiki or anything like that, and everything seemed fine. I also find it pretty questionable that someone couldn't write a computer program that can embezzle unattended for two weeks. You don't use your own credentials, you stick it in some other program and have it use the logged-in user's credentials. Are you auditing your HR system before you log in, and are you sure that the "ls" you're invoking is the same "ls" that actually came from Debian? No? Then it all seems very pointless to me.
- umvi 7y ago
  Has that ever happened? Seems like the stars would have to align for that kind of white collar crime to happen (financial employee who is also a highly experienced programmer who is also highly unethical)
  - bl0b 7y ago
    I mean, 2/3 of those come together par for the course, right?
  - alexis2b 7y ago
    A famous example is the (in)famous trader Jérôme Kerviel who was deemed responsible for a 4.9 billions euro loss at Société Générale. Having worked in Middle Office before being promoted to the Front, he had a really good knowledge of how operations and risk management worked in the bank (plus some still working write accesses to specific systems) which allowed him to mask his very large positions with fake opposite trades that he was putting in every day before the nightly risk snapshot and cancelling before they could be confirmed. The guy basically did not take any holidays in two years - otherwise his large positions would have appeared on Risk radar pretty quickly... If you are into those stories and want much more details than my poor summary I really recommend reading the SocGen post-mortem investigation. Disclaimer: I worked at Société Générale during the Kerviel era - also there is a lot of controversy in France about how much the bank knew and let things happen (Kerviel was making a lot of profits - until he wasn’t) and if that was used to cover subprime related loss - this post does not represent an opinion on this case!
  - asdff 7y ago
    I feel like the stars would have to align for that kind of crime to even be found. I think it's a guarantee that it's already happening in a lot of companies. So many companies have the most sloppy book work, and regulatory bodies are stretched too thin to catch everything. If you are a sociopath who knows programming (more and more people in finance do every year) and is in finance (two fields with more sociopaths than some, perhaps), then why would you leave money on the table? You are already morally bankrupt and know how you would get caught, and therefore how to not be caught, and know that this money is going to you with zero issue.
rb808 7y ago
I'd extend this to regular vacations too. I've worked a lot in both Europe and the USA. In Europe everyone had to know other people's knowledge as people were regularly out of the office. In the US it was easier to rely on someone as people rarely were out for a week and if they were they usually were local and on call.
seanmcdirmid 7y ago
That works for ops but not really for R&D. Your code will wait for 2 weeks, only running systems won’t.
woutr_be 7y ago
I work as a software engineer in finance and have to take two weeks of mandatory vacation, but this doesn't deter our team from not writing proper documentation, or writing down domain specific knowledge. When someone is on leave who has specific knowledge, this is just planned into the sprint. As in "xxx knows most about this feature, so let's wait for him to return". Even when we do write documentation it just gets lost, or developers don't bother looking anything up.
- luckydata 7y ago
  It just means people leaving are not that critical. If they were, you would have that documentation or you would be SOL pretty often.
  - woutr_be 7y ago
    I don't think it "just" means that people are not that critical, it's a much deeper issue. All the way from individual engineers to managers to product owners to the company in general. At least in my team, is see: - Managers allowing people to only take on specific work, therefore people are becoming highly specialised - Individual developers don't push others to write documentation, instead they wait until somehow they have to do a task, spend 2 weeks to figure it out, and then write some documentation around it - Individual developers who force themselves to only work on specific pieces. (I think mostly to fuel their ego so they're needed) - The company not encouraging knowledge sharing, or simply not providing good tools for it - Product owners who don't really care about the product
  - kortilla 7y ago
    No, you can still be critical and not have it hurt the company with just a two week absence. Say a product like Uber ceases new development because of a critical developer leaving who knows how to fix the home grown CI. The company isn’t going to go under in two weeks but it doesn’t mean the dev isn’t critical.
- aganame 7y ago
  What is mandatory vacatio n?

pyuser583 7y ago

Some of the most “innovative” times are when someone is on parental leave. And by innovative I mean “we have no idea how anything works - let’s fix it.”

kevsim 7y ago
Totally agree. Especially here in Scandinavia where people disappear for 6-12 months at time, their co-workers need to step up.

dontreact 7y ago

Just like dropout in a neural network. What is the equivalent of weight decay?

Trias11 7y ago
+1 throwing off 75% of knowledge increases generalization capabilities (actual experience detecting real criminal behaviors within financial claims)

jrockway 7y ago

I worked in the finance industry and took the mandatory 2 week vacation and dealt with my coworkers taking the mandatory 2 week vacation. We didn't write any documentation or have any internal wiki or anything like that, and everything seemed fine. I also find it pretty questionable that someone couldn't write a computer program that can embezzle unattended for two weeks. You don't use your own credentials, you stick it in some other program and have it use the logged-in user's credentials. Are you auditing your HR system before you log in, and are you sure that the "ls" you're invoking is the same "ls" that actually came from Debian? No? Then it all seems very pointless to me.

umvi 7y ago
Has that ever happened? Seems like the stars would have to align for that kind of white collar crime to happen (financial employee who is also a highly experienced programmer who is also highly unethical)
- bl0b 7y ago
  I mean, 2/3 of those come together par for the course, right?
- alexis2b 7y ago
  A famous example is the (in)famous trader Jérôme Kerviel who was deemed responsible for a 4.9 billions euro loss at Société Générale. Having worked in Middle Office before being promoted to the Front, he had a really good knowledge of how operations and risk management worked in the bank (plus some still working write accesses to specific systems) which allowed him to mask his very large positions with fake opposite trades that he was putting in every day before the nightly risk snapshot and cancelling before they could be confirmed. The guy basically did not take any holidays in two years - otherwise his large positions would have appeared on Risk radar pretty quickly... If you are into those stories and want much more details than my poor summary I really recommend reading the SocGen post-mortem investigation. Disclaimer: I worked at Société Générale during the Kerviel era - also there is a lot of controversy in France about how much the bank knew and let things happen (Kerviel was making a lot of profits - until he wasn’t) and if that was used to cover subprime related loss - this post does not represent an opinion on this case!
- asdff 7y ago
  I feel like the stars would have to align for that kind of crime to even be found. I think it's a guarantee that it's already happening in a lot of companies. So many companies have the most sloppy book work, and regulatory bodies are stretched too thin to catch everything. If you are a sociopath who knows programming (more and more people in finance do every year) and is in finance (two fields with more sociopaths than some, perhaps), then why would you leave money on the table? You are already morally bankrupt and know how you would get caught, and therefore how to not be caught, and know that this money is going to you with zero issue.

rb808 7y ago

I'd extend this to regular vacations too. I've worked a lot in both Europe and the USA. In Europe everyone had to know other people's knowledge as people were regularly out of the office. In the US it was easier to rely on someone as people rarely were out for a week and if they were they usually were local and on call.

seanmcdirmid 7y ago

That works for ops but not really for R&D. Your code will wait for 2 weeks, only running systems won’t.

woutr_be 7y ago

I work as a software engineer in finance and have to take two weeks of mandatory vacation, but this doesn't deter our team from not writing proper documentation, or writing down domain specific knowledge. When someone is on leave who has specific knowledge, this is just planned into the sprint. As in "xxx knows most about this feature, so let's wait for him to return". Even when we do write documentation it just gets lost, or developers don't bother looking anything up.

luckydata 7y ago
It just means people leaving are not that critical. If they were, you would have that documentation or you would be SOL pretty often.
- woutr_be 7y ago
  I don't think it "just" means that people are not that critical, it's a much deeper issue. All the way from individual engineers to managers to product owners to the company in general. At least in my team, is see: - Managers allowing people to only take on specific work, therefore people are becoming highly specialised - Individual developers don't push others to write documentation, instead they wait until somehow they have to do a task, spend 2 weeks to figure it out, and then write some documentation around it - Individual developers who force themselves to only work on specific pieces. (I think mostly to fuel their ego so they're needed) - The company not encouraging knowledge sharing, or simply not providing good tools for it - Product owners who don't really care about the product
- kortilla 7y ago
  No, you can still be critical and not have it hurt the company with just a two week absence. Say a product like Uber ceases new development because of a critical developer leaving who knows how to fix the home grown CI. The company isn’t going to go under in two weeks but it doesn’t mean the dev isn’t critical.
aganame 7y ago
What is mandatory vacatio n?