7 ms·

You can end up with insane rules that ultimately benefit no one. An old boss of mine told me about a time he was working for a big auto manufacturer. They were

You can end up with insane rules that ultimately benefit no one. An old boss of mine told me about a time he was working for a big auto manufacturer. They were rolling an update to a major system. It looked like everything went well, so people started to go home. Pretty soon though, the team started to see issues with the update, up to and including a major LoB system going down. They immediately rolled back the update but found they had a problem- they needed some servers restarted to pick up the update, and the sole person who by union rules could restart the server had left for the day and wasn't picking up the phone. Now there were people who technically had permissions to restart the server, but they couldn't cross the union rules. They spent over an hour (with the major LoB, business critical system down) trying to get in touch with the people who were allowed to restart the server until they finally convinced the physically datacenter ops people (who were still on duty) go physically unplug and replug the servers in question. He couldn't disclose the total cost of the outage, but I was lead to believe it was in the millions of dollars. A functioning owner/management/worker relationship might fight over how the earnings of a company might be split, and even how or what to invest in, but they should all be working to making a company successful as a whole. An adversarial relationship prevents the sort of cooperation and good-faith assumptions that allow the different parties to collaborate and work to everyone's benefit. That being said, that non-adversarial relationship is a two way street, and ownership+management need to be participating in good-faith as well.

dls2016 5y ago
Sounds like management dropped the ball of having the appropriate number of trained people in that position.
- jhelphenstine 5y ago
  Alternately: sounds like the point about adversarial relations stands; a more collaborative culture prioritizing the success of the business (the collective interest) might have yielded a less expensive reboot.
  - lovich 5y ago
    If American businesses wanted a collaborative culture then they would share the rewards. As it stands for most work in the US you make the same amount of money whether or not you make the company succeed. The businesses could easily rectify this by including stock as part of compensation so that incentives have aligned. Tech has realized this and as an industry hands out a good amount of shares of the business to employees. I can’t really empathize with businesses who cry for the need for labor to care about the success of the business but refuse to hand out anything but the minimum of rewards
- vdqtp3 5y ago
  Why is it appropriate for a union to determine who has the right to accomplish specific tasks (you can't restart the server, but you can unplug it or you can plug in a lamp but you can't change a light bulb)? That's not a management failure. Sounds like they had people who were trained and had the technical ability. It was bureaucracy that caused the problem.
  - lakecresva 5y ago
    > Why is it appropriate for a union to determine who has the right to accomplish specific tasks It's just an exclusivity clause. The employees and management willingly entered into a contractual agreement containing a provision that management ostensibly understood and then completely failed to account for. If I sign an employment contract that explicitly says "I will be your exclusive provider of X service, I am not available on weekends", the employer shouldn't be surprised when I refuse to come in on Saturday and Sunday or sue them for breach when they hire a second service provider.
    - MrStonedOne 5y ago
      and this would be the core of the "hostile unions are suboptimal" argument you are trying to sidestep.
      - pessimizer 5y ago
        If the core of your argument is that contracts are suboptimal for people who want more than what is in the contract, it's not hard to sidestep. It's also suboptimal for the employee not to get paid twice as much, or work half the hours.
  - lmm 5y ago
    > Why is it appropriate for a union to determine who has the right to accomplish specific tasks (you can't restart the server, but you can unplug it or you can plug in a lamp but you can't change a light bulb)? That's not a management failure. On the contrary, that's a two-sided negotiation and if management have failed to protect their interests then that's on them. I've heard plenty of stories like this where it turned out the real reason was that management's own rule was that anyone who touched that server without that certification became personally liable for damages, and management had been warned about their lack of certified people but refused to send more people on the xyz server training course, and or something on those lines.
lakecresva 5y ago
This sounds more like someone who just wants to blame a series of poor management decisions on those damn unions. It's management's responsibility to make sure they have the right people on hand when they roll out an update to a major system. It's also their responsibility to come out of union negotiations with the right contracts, which would have at the very least included some sort of force majeure clause to account for technical disasters.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- RHSeeger 5y ago
  It is impossible to account for every edge case without infinite resources. Being flexible is very important when resolving things that you didn't consider.
ashtonkem 5y ago
It’s not really clear to me why all the blame for the adversarial nature of American unions is placed on the unions themselves. Shouldn’t some of the blame be also blamed on American businesses too? It does after all take two to tango.
- aaron-santos 5y ago
  If businesses simply acquiesce to employee demands unions would not be necessary. However and instead, the moment organized employees submit their demands, they are met with resistance so both sides have to engage mono a mono until the entirely unnecessary conflict is resolved.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    I mean, bosses literally hired armed thugs to shoot labor organizers. There’s a damn good reason why labor activists don’t trust the bosses; they shouldn’t.
    - edmundsauto 5y ago
      By this logic, the average person shouldn't trust union bosses, as there are incidents where union bosses commit violence to achieve their ends (the mob/racketeering history).
      - ashtonkem 5y ago
        If you can prove that violence among labor organizers was more prevalent than violence by bosses towards workers, I’d like to see it. I personally am quite dubious.
mission_failed 5y ago
Sounds like the business wasn't willing to pay vital staff to be on call, so why should the worker have their life outside work be impacted without suitable compensation? Having 24hr operations without adequate technical support is 100% the fault of management. This is why on call exists. What if their worker had been drinking, or awake for 36 hours, but decided to head into the office to help out the team? There is plenty of caselaw on this very circumstance when people are killed or get arrested.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
smogcutter 5y ago
> but they should all be working to making a company successful as a whole. Unless workers own equity this is not at all as much of a truism as it sounds. Could be rephrased as “but they should all be working to enrich their bosses”.
- RHSeeger 5y ago
  Alternatively, it could be rephrased as "if the company pays its workers an amount they [the workers] are happy with, then working to keep the company successful is in the the workers best interest, because they are likely to continue to be payed well". Alternatively, "If a company is paying you well and help cause it to fail, you are sabotaging yourself".
rapind 5y ago
Say I enter into a contract with a hosting provider who only offers support between 6am and 10pm. There's an issue with one of my servers at 3am and I'm pretty sure it just needs a physical reboot. No chance they'll let me into their data centre to fix it myself. Even though in this specific scenario I might be able to solve the problem with no cost to them. I can also think of a lot of reasons why I wouldn't want just anyone to be able to restart my servers. Sure this sucks, but maybe I accepted the terms of the agreement because I figured there was a low chance of having the issue and I wanted to save a few bucks.

dls2016 5y ago

Sounds like management dropped the ball of having the appropriate number of trained people in that position.

jhelphenstine 5y ago
Alternately: sounds like the point about adversarial relations stands; a more collaborative culture prioritizing the success of the business (the collective interest) might have yielded a less expensive reboot.
- lovich 5y ago
  If American businesses wanted a collaborative culture then they would share the rewards. As it stands for most work in the US you make the same amount of money whether or not you make the company succeed. The businesses could easily rectify this by including stock as part of compensation so that incentives have aligned. Tech has realized this and as an industry hands out a good amount of shares of the business to employees. I can’t really empathize with businesses who cry for the need for labor to care about the success of the business but refuse to hand out anything but the minimum of rewards
vdqtp3 5y ago
Why is it appropriate for a union to determine who has the right to accomplish specific tasks (you can't restart the server, but you can unplug it or you can plug in a lamp but you can't change a light bulb)? That's not a management failure. Sounds like they had people who were trained and had the technical ability. It was bureaucracy that caused the problem.
- lakecresva 5y ago
  > Why is it appropriate for a union to determine who has the right to accomplish specific tasks It's just an exclusivity clause. The employees and management willingly entered into a contractual agreement containing a provision that management ostensibly understood and then completely failed to account for. If I sign an employment contract that explicitly says "I will be your exclusive provider of X service, I am not available on weekends", the employer shouldn't be surprised when I refuse to come in on Saturday and Sunday or sue them for breach when they hire a second service provider.
  - MrStonedOne 5y ago
    and this would be the core of the "hostile unions are suboptimal" argument you are trying to sidestep.
    - pessimizer 5y ago
      If the core of your argument is that contracts are suboptimal for people who want more than what is in the contract, it's not hard to sidestep. It's also suboptimal for the employee not to get paid twice as much, or work half the hours.
- lmm 5y ago
  > Why is it appropriate for a union to determine who has the right to accomplish specific tasks (you can't restart the server, but you can unplug it or you can plug in a lamp but you can't change a light bulb)? That's not a management failure. On the contrary, that's a two-sided negotiation and if management have failed to protect their interests then that's on them. I've heard plenty of stories like this where it turned out the real reason was that management's own rule was that anyone who touched that server without that certification became personally liable for damages, and management had been warned about their lack of certified people but refused to send more people on the xyz server training course, and or something on those lines.

lakecresva 5y ago

This sounds more like someone who just wants to blame a series of poor management decisions on those damn unions. It's management's responsibility to make sure they have the right people on hand when they roll out an update to a major system. It's also their responsibility to come out of union negotiations with the right contracts, which would have at the very least included some sort of force majeure clause to account for technical disasters.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
RHSeeger 5y ago
It is impossible to account for every edge case without infinite resources. Being flexible is very important when resolving things that you didn't consider.

ashtonkem 5y ago

It’s not really clear to me why all the blame for the adversarial nature of American unions is placed on the unions themselves. Shouldn’t some of the blame be also blamed on American businesses too? It does after all take two to tango.

aaron-santos 5y ago
If businesses simply acquiesce to employee demands unions would not be necessary. However and instead, the moment organized employees submit their demands, they are met with resistance so both sides have to engage mono a mono until the entirely unnecessary conflict is resolved.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  I mean, bosses literally hired armed thugs to shoot labor organizers. There’s a damn good reason why labor activists don’t trust the bosses; they shouldn’t.
  - edmundsauto 5y ago
    By this logic, the average person shouldn't trust union bosses, as there are incidents where union bosses commit violence to achieve their ends (the mob/racketeering history).
    - ashtonkem 5y ago
      If you can prove that violence among labor organizers was more prevalent than violence by bosses towards workers, I’d like to see it. I personally am quite dubious.

mission_failed 5y ago

Sounds like the business wasn't willing to pay vital staff to be on call, so why should the worker have their life outside work be impacted without suitable compensation? Having 24hr operations without adequate technical support is 100% the fault of management. This is why on call exists. What if their worker had been drinking, or awake for 36 hours, but decided to head into the office to help out the team? There is plenty of caselaw on this very circumstance when people are killed or get arrested.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

smogcutter 5y ago

> but they should all be working to making a company successful as a whole. Unless workers own equity this is not at all as much of a truism as it sounds. Could be rephrased as “but they should all be working to enrich their bosses”.

RHSeeger 5y ago
Alternatively, it could be rephrased as "if the company pays its workers an amount they [the workers] are happy with, then working to keep the company successful is in the the workers best interest, because they are likely to continue to be payed well". Alternatively, "If a company is paying you well and help cause it to fail, you are sabotaging yourself".

rapind 5y ago

Say I enter into a contract with a hosting provider who only offers support between 6am and 10pm. There's an issue with one of my servers at 3am and I'm pretty sure it just needs a physical reboot. No chance they'll let me into their data centre to fix it myself. Even though in this specific scenario I might be able to solve the problem with no cost to them. I can also think of a lot of reasons why I wouldn't want just anyone to be able to restart my servers. Sure this sucks, but maybe I accepted the terms of the agreement because I figured there was a low chance of having the issue and I wanted to save a few bucks.