25 ms·

Hacking the bureaucracy to get stuff done (2020)

114 points by ZainRiz 4y ago

908B64B197 4y ago
> Ever tried dealing with a large company, only to get stonewalled? You're talking to a black box that repeats “Sorry, that’s against policy” or “I can’t do that” Unless you have equity in the company, why would you waste time doing that?
- elbigbad 4y ago
  A paycheck, meaningful work that aligns with your values or goals in life, getting experience in a more mature org before jumping to a startup, job stability of a large company, interesting work, off the top of my head.
- entropicdrifter 4y ago
  Sometimes you need to deal with a glitch on their end and end up stonewalled because nobody who you're allowed to talk to has the authority to fix your problem
- naet 4y ago
  I regularly have to interact with large companies I have no "direct" equity in, and I think it's fairly standard. Some are my clients, who may need my help BECAUSE their internal bureaucracy is causing them problems. One recent personal example: a company has a hiring freeze or other policy preventing them from hiring a new full time member, but they still require technical support, and have some budget for an "outside consultant" to get them through this period. I have no equity in this company, but I am still being paid by them and incentivized to work through their problem even when another internal department of theirs is blocking or otherwise complicating the process with bureaucracy. There have been times where I need to provision something for less than $20 dollars on a company card... and to justify that cost, I have to hold multiple hour long meetings with multiple higher level employees attending and discussing. My agency is billing them at least $100 for my hour alone, meaning that holding the meeting and deciding not to spend said money has already cost them more than just spending the $20 even if that was a complete waste of $20 on an unnecessary service. Another common example is working with my client's clients, usually large platform or service vendors. While I might not have direct equity in a provider, there is usually a high cost to re-platform or replace a key service, even with a near-equivalent provider, and so it makes sense for me to spend time trying to work with the original service provider even if they are difficult to work with. In my previous career as a teacher I had to deal with a metric fuckton of school bureaucracy and administrators. Not sure why the education system around my area is so bloated with non-teaching administrative staff members; not sure how you can justify paying more people as "administrators" than ground level workers like teachers and custodians, but some places seem to have the opposite allocation of staff resources.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    In the past this is why things like per diems came into being - the paperwork tracking it was more expensive than just letting everyone have their $50 and who cares if some brought a sandwich from home and pocketed it. A wise company would make sure any consulting contract had a fixed $500 or whatever for "incidentals" - and if they weren't needed and the consultant pocked it, who cares?
    - Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
      It's also why postage for letters was a fixed rate, it was cheaper than charging differently for every location.
ghostbrainalpha 4y ago
This article was hard to read, even though its short because I could just feel my anxiety rising while getting through it. After being a founder of a small startup, the adjustment back to corporate life has been difficult, and the instances where the company cannot behave logically as an organism really take an emotional tole.
- brokenmachine 4y ago
  Stop caring. Save yourself.
NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
Counterpoint: you're not that important, you're not that special, the control framework may exist for a reason that is not apparent to you or that you haven't bothered to understand, and the people who own that framework may well be empowered to get you fired as you try to circumvent.
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  Well, that's a possibility. Another possibility is that, yes, the work you are doing is as important as you imagine it to be. Not everybody is delusional. If you go and try to circumvent the process, there is a chance you will find out.
toss1 4y ago
>> I used to struggle with people not responding to my emails when I tried to get their approval on a change I was making. “People are busy,” my manager explained. “Instead say, ‘I’ll be making this change on Thursday unless you object before then.’” YUP. I first heard of it as "UOD" = "Unless Otherwise Directed". Extremely useful, as in politely explain the basic reasoning and "UOD, I'll be implementing X, Y,, and Z starting Thursday..." make sure everyone gets that message and proceed. Works both within organizations and even with partners and customers. I also can't say I've ever heard a complaint when it was used.
- nicbou 4y ago
  Calling also works. Emails get delayed but phone calls are harder to ignore.
  - idiotsecant 4y ago
    And also harder to use for CYA.
  - toss1 4y ago
    "UOD, ..." can also work very well on a call. The point is to present a solution and give them the chance to just say "GO" or "Woah" instead of handing them a problem with the expectation to work through it with you. Moreover, the point of just notifying the "UOD, ..." is to minimize getting entangled in the bureaucracy. Calls can often lead to either massive time-wasting for everyone in playing phone-tag, or escalation and further pointless delay which literally benefits no one. Distracting other people from their tasks to get a definitive answer on an item where it is reasonable for me/you to make an executive decision and give them an opportunity to check it before implementing it is really most often best for everyone. Now obviously, if it is a real unknown on a critical item where getting it wrong will really fork-up someone's week, then you call and nail down a hard answer and then document it in writing. But, the point is that for a surprisingly large amount of stuff, "UOD, ..." works amazingly well for everyone — and I do mean everyone.
  - HPsquared 4y ago
    Instant messaging is the happy medium.
Firmwarrior 4y ago
haha, classic > I booked that distant hotel and took an uber everyday. Now here’s the kicker: the hotel + uber cost more than what I would have paid if I had gotten a hotel walking distance from the venue. I ran into the same problem. All the decent hotel rooms near a customer site were booked up, so I bought a blanket from Target for $20 and slept in my car rather than sleep in a bug-infested motel for $100. I couldn't expense the blanket, though. (In the company's defense, I think this is due to tax laws making it too complicated for the company to allow, rather than any particular person's incompetence)
- bombcar 4y ago
  Buy something expensable (tech equipment often is, or even just drinks) and then photo the receipt, and return and buy the blanket. But that's technically fraud, heh.
  - Firmwarrior 4y ago
    it's OK, I already wasted $20 worth of time reading HackerNews blog articles, haha
- HPsquared 4y ago
  You'd probably have been ok if you destroyed the blanket after you were done with it. Maybe that's a business, certified destruction of items claimed on expenses.
bitwize 4y ago
"I'd like to help you, but I can't. I'd like to tell you to take a copy of your policy to Norma Wilcox -- W-I-L-C-O-X -- on the third floor, but I can't. I also don't advise you to fill out a WS-2475 form with our legal department on the second floor. I do not expect someone to get back to you quickly to resolve the matter. I'm sorry, but there's nothing I can do..."
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- judge2020 4y ago
  For reference https://youtu.be/_R8GtrKtrZ4?t=39 https://youtu.be/_R8GtrKtrZ4?t=39
woliveirajr 4y ago
> Remember there is no “company.” All of the company’s decisions are actually individuals acting within their own set of incentives. The “company” is what emerges when those individual incentives interact with each other. This! Doesn't matter what the "company" does, gives information to SEC, publishes Ads at the newspaper. A company is made of people - for good and bad.
- notch656a 4y ago
  If there is no company then why don't individuals become felons when a company is convicted of a felony? Why aren't individuals typically liable when the company goes bankrupt; wouldn't you hold the employees to pay the debt if they were ? Why don't the non-equity holding individuals of the 'company' capture the capital gains and post-operating-expenses profits? It's important to remember when you are an individual you aren't the company. You typically hold no equity in the company, unless you are lucky enough to have it included in the benefits of certain professional and executive positions. No the company is carefully constructed to make sure you aren't in it. You are a resource FOR the company, not part of the company.
  - GlenTheMachine 4y ago
    Because the fire alarm is actually on someone's radar. it's been reported up the chain, budget requests have been submitted, it's on checklists and slide decks etc etc. In other words, someone would notice if it magically got fixed. But if your cell signal suddenly goes from zero bars to three bars in the building, nobody is the wiser.
    - notch656a 4y ago
      Yeah I mean I don't work for the government so I guess it doesn't make sense to me. So what, they show up and it's fixed. What's gonna happen, is someone seriously going to get fired / prosecuted for fixing the fire alarm? I presume if no one is ratting you out for the repeater they're not going to rat you out for the fire alarm, and even if they do the consequences can't be worse for fixing a life-saving alarm vs a possibly frivelous repeater.
castratikron 4y ago
What if "getting stuff done" ends up being more like "subvert the system and redefine my job to be whatever I want it to be"?
- fallingknife 4y ago
  Sounds even better
- ZainRiz 4y ago
  That's what the best do!
GlenTheMachine 4y ago
This works 10x with government. You'd be amazed how many things you can do - physical things you do with your hands, like, say, turning a storage room into an office, a thing I actually did - if you just ignore people telling you you aren't allowed to. If you ask the question "what will happen if I ignore this policy", and the answer is not "I will get a pay cut" or "I will get fired," then the policy in question isn't actually a policy. It's just a suggestion. Figuring your management's pain points is also very very helpful. I work in a building with metal walls and no windows. As a consequence we get no cell service in the building. We've been asking for cell repeaters for nearly fifteen years; we were always told "we can't do that, it's a personal service provided to employees, we can't pay for personal services." Eventually the fire alarm went out - for 18 MONTHS. During a lab wide conference call I pointed out that in case of a fire there was no way to alert employees in the building. They said "we'll send cell phone alerts", and I replied that as they knew, because I had been telling them every year for fifteen years, there was no cell service in the building, and that this was a lawsuit waiting for the next building fire. Guess what is being installed as we speak?
- notch656a 4y ago
  I still don't follow why they would elect to install a cell repeater rather than fix the fire alarm. One of the two sounds like a good way to get in jail for embezzling public funds; I certainly don't like the idea of my public tax money going towards unapproved repeaters (if the employees pooled together their own money or something, more power to them). On the other hand, no judge/jury is going to convict for fixing the fire alarm whether the money was authorized or not.
  - GlenTheMachine 4y ago
    "You have to learn why things work on a starship." The building itself is "owned" by a separate part of the government than the part that actually sits in it (and this is almost always true, no matter what part of the government you're talking about). As a consequence, getting the building fixed requires coordinating someone else's budget and personnel. Whereas installing unofficial cell repeaters can come out of your own budget, specifically because they're unofficial.
gkop 4y ago
> The cheaper hotels were 30 minutes away, but then I’d blow the budget for uber rides. I asked if I'd have to cancel my conference trip. > Manager: “There’s not actually an uber limit” When the Man exploits you by keeping you guessing about the expense policy, it's your moral imperative to spend as much of the Man's budget as you possibly can.
hbarka 4y ago
There was this guy at my previous work who was in charge of Salesforce. Literal sales force members were denied access to Salesforce information under the guise of “SOX Compliance”. He threw this bureaucratic wall out every time. I don’t think he knew what SOX policy meant. It was purely subjective and was really a ploy for power and control. The company suffered for it.
- m463 4y ago
  reminds me of: https://review.firstround.com/lean-startups-eric-ries-on-how-to-make-gatekeepers-a-source-of-power-and-speed https://review.firstround.com/lean-startups-eric-ries-on-how...
Tade0 4y ago
I've seen things getting fast-tracked because they were passed through the CEOs girlfriend (also employed there), who was but the only person able to consistently reach the man.
Nextgrid 4y ago
Another strategy I highly recommend is to not let companies have leverage on you. Don’t commit to any long-term contracts (you want the ability to stop paying them at any time without having to potentially litigate to get out of long-term obligations) and have backup plans in case your primary supplier screws up. The dynamics change dramatically when the company needs you more than you need them. Instead of you having to fight them to get what you want, you can simply notify them that they’re not gonna get any more money out of you unless the problem is fixed, and leave the “fighting” to your contact at the company whose paycheck depends on people continuing to buy services from them.
3qz 4y ago
“Remember there is no “company.” All of the company’s decisions are actually individuals acting within their own set of incentives. The “company” is what emerges when those individual incentives interact with each other.” A good summary of the whole article

114 points by ZainRiz 4y ago

> Ever tried dealing with a large company, only to get stonewalled? You're talking to a black box that repeats “Sorry, that’s against policy” or “I can’t do that” Unless you have equity in the company, why would you waste time doing that?

elbigbad 4y ago
A paycheck, meaningful work that aligns with your values or goals in life, getting experience in a more mature org before jumping to a startup, job stability of a large company, interesting work, off the top of my head.
entropicdrifter 4y ago
Sometimes you need to deal with a glitch on their end and end up stonewalled because nobody who you're allowed to talk to has the authority to fix your problem
naet 4y ago
I regularly have to interact with large companies I have no "direct" equity in, and I think it's fairly standard. Some are my clients, who may need my help BECAUSE their internal bureaucracy is causing them problems. One recent personal example: a company has a hiring freeze or other policy preventing them from hiring a new full time member, but they still require technical support, and have some budget for an "outside consultant" to get them through this period. I have no equity in this company, but I am still being paid by them and incentivized to work through their problem even when another internal department of theirs is blocking or otherwise complicating the process with bureaucracy. There have been times where I need to provision something for less than $20 dollars on a company card... and to justify that cost, I have to hold multiple hour long meetings with multiple higher level employees attending and discussing. My agency is billing them at least $100 for my hour alone, meaning that holding the meeting and deciding not to spend said money has already cost them more than just spending the $20 even if that was a complete waste of $20 on an unnecessary service. Another common example is working with my client's clients, usually large platform or service vendors. While I might not have direct equity in a provider, there is usually a high cost to re-platform or replace a key service, even with a near-equivalent provider, and so it makes sense for me to spend time trying to work with the original service provider even if they are difficult to work with. In my previous career as a teacher I had to deal with a metric fuckton of school bureaucracy and administrators. Not sure why the education system around my area is so bloated with non-teaching administrative staff members; not sure how you can justify paying more people as "administrators" than ground level workers like teachers and custodians, but some places seem to have the opposite allocation of staff resources.
- bombcar 4y ago
  In the past this is why things like per diems came into being - the paperwork tracking it was more expensive than just letting everyone have their $50 and who cares if some brought a sandwich from home and pocketed it. A wise company would make sure any consulting contract had a fixed $500 or whatever for "incidentals" - and if they weren't needed and the consultant pocked it, who cares?
  - Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
    It's also why postage for letters was a fixed rate, it was cheaper than charging differently for every location.

ghostbrainalpha 4y ago

This article was hard to read, even though its short because I could just feel my anxiety rising while getting through it. After being a founder of a small startup, the adjustment back to corporate life has been difficult, and the instances where the company cannot behave logically as an organism really take an emotional tole.

brokenmachine 4y ago
Stop caring. Save yourself.

NovemberWhiskey 4y ago

Counterpoint: you're not that important, you're not that special, the control framework may exist for a reason that is not apparent to you or that you haven't bothered to understand, and the people who own that framework may well be empowered to get you fired as you try to circumvent.

marcosdumay 4y ago
Well, that's a possibility. Another possibility is that, yes, the work you are doing is as important as you imagine it to be. Not everybody is delusional. If you go and try to circumvent the process, there is a chance you will find out.

toss1 4y ago

>> I used to struggle with people not responding to my emails when I tried to get their approval on a change I was making. “People are busy,” my manager explained. “Instead say, ‘I’ll be making this change on Thursday unless you object before then.’” YUP. I first heard of it as "UOD" = "Unless Otherwise Directed". Extremely useful, as in politely explain the basic reasoning and "UOD, I'll be implementing X, Y,, and Z starting Thursday..." make sure everyone gets that message and proceed. Works both within organizations and even with partners and customers. I also can't say I've ever heard a complaint when it was used.

nicbou 4y ago
Calling also works. Emails get delayed but phone calls are harder to ignore.
- idiotsecant 4y ago
  And also harder to use for CYA.
- toss1 4y ago
  "UOD, ..." can also work very well on a call. The point is to present a solution and give them the chance to just say "GO" or "Woah" instead of handing them a problem with the expectation to work through it with you. Moreover, the point of just notifying the "UOD, ..." is to minimize getting entangled in the bureaucracy. Calls can often lead to either massive time-wasting for everyone in playing phone-tag, or escalation and further pointless delay which literally benefits no one. Distracting other people from their tasks to get a definitive answer on an item where it is reasonable for me/you to make an executive decision and give them an opportunity to check it before implementing it is really most often best for everyone. Now obviously, if it is a real unknown on a critical item where getting it wrong will really fork-up someone's week, then you call and nail down a hard answer and then document it in writing. But, the point is that for a surprisingly large amount of stuff, "UOD, ..." works amazingly well for everyone — and I do mean everyone.
- HPsquared 4y ago
  Instant messaging is the happy medium.

Firmwarrior 4y ago

haha, classic > I booked that distant hotel and took an uber everyday. Now here’s the kicker: the hotel + uber cost more than what I would have paid if I had gotten a hotel walking distance from the venue. I ran into the same problem. All the decent hotel rooms near a customer site were booked up, so I bought a blanket from Target for $20 and slept in my car rather than sleep in a bug-infested motel for $100. I couldn't expense the blanket, though. (In the company's defense, I think this is due to tax laws making it too complicated for the company to allow, rather than any particular person's incompetence)

bombcar 4y ago
Buy something expensable (tech equipment often is, or even just drinks) and then photo the receipt, and return and buy the blanket. But that's technically fraud, heh.
- Firmwarrior 4y ago
  it's OK, I already wasted $20 worth of time reading HackerNews blog articles, haha
HPsquared 4y ago
You'd probably have been ok if you destroyed the blanket after you were done with it. Maybe that's a business, certified destruction of items claimed on expenses.

bitwize 4y ago

"I'd like to help you, but I can't. I'd like to tell you to take a copy of your policy to Norma Wilcox -- W-I-L-C-O-X -- on the third floor, but I can't. I also don't advise you to fill out a WS-2475 form with our legal department on the second floor. I do not expect someone to get back to you quickly to resolve the matter. I'm sorry, but there's nothing I can do..."

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
judge2020 4y ago
For reference https://youtu.be/_R8GtrKtrZ4?t=39 https://youtu.be/_R8GtrKtrZ4?t=39

woliveirajr 4y ago

> Remember there is no “company.” All of the company’s decisions are actually individuals acting within their own set of incentives. The “company” is what emerges when those individual incentives interact with each other. This! Doesn't matter what the "company" does, gives information to SEC, publishes Ads at the newspaper. A company is made of people - for good and bad.

notch656a 4y ago
If there is no company then why don't individuals become felons when a company is convicted of a felony? Why aren't individuals typically liable when the company goes bankrupt; wouldn't you hold the employees to pay the debt if they were ? Why don't the non-equity holding individuals of the 'company' capture the capital gains and post-operating-expenses profits? It's important to remember when you are an individual you aren't the company. You typically hold no equity in the company, unless you are lucky enough to have it included in the benefits of certain professional and executive positions. No the company is carefully constructed to make sure you aren't in it. You are a resource FOR the company, not part of the company.
- GlenTheMachine 4y ago
  Because the fire alarm is actually on someone's radar. it's been reported up the chain, budget requests have been submitted, it's on checklists and slide decks etc etc. In other words, someone would notice if it magically got fixed. But if your cell signal suddenly goes from zero bars to three bars in the building, nobody is the wiser.
  - notch656a 4y ago
    Yeah I mean I don't work for the government so I guess it doesn't make sense to me. So what, they show up and it's fixed. What's gonna happen, is someone seriously going to get fired / prosecuted for fixing the fire alarm? I presume if no one is ratting you out for the repeater they're not going to rat you out for the fire alarm, and even if they do the consequences can't be worse for fixing a life-saving alarm vs a possibly frivelous repeater.

castratikron 4y ago

What if "getting stuff done" ends up being more like "subvert the system and redefine my job to be whatever I want it to be"?

fallingknife 4y ago
Sounds even better
ZainRiz 4y ago
That's what the best do!

GlenTheMachine 4y ago

This works 10x with government. You'd be amazed how many things you can do - physical things you do with your hands, like, say, turning a storage room into an office, a thing I actually did - if you just ignore people telling you you aren't allowed to. If you ask the question "what will happen if I ignore this policy", and the answer is not "I will get a pay cut" or "I will get fired," then the policy in question isn't actually a policy. It's just a suggestion. Figuring your management's pain points is also very very helpful. I work in a building with metal walls and no windows. As a consequence we get no cell service in the building. We've been asking for cell repeaters for nearly fifteen years; we were always told "we can't do that, it's a personal service provided to employees, we can't pay for personal services." Eventually the fire alarm went out - for 18 MONTHS. During a lab wide conference call I pointed out that in case of a fire there was no way to alert employees in the building. They said "we'll send cell phone alerts", and I replied that as they knew, because I had been telling them every year for fifteen years, there was no cell service in the building, and that this was a lawsuit waiting for the next building fire. Guess what is being installed as we speak?

notch656a 4y ago
I still don't follow why they would elect to install a cell repeater rather than fix the fire alarm. One of the two sounds like a good way to get in jail for embezzling public funds; I certainly don't like the idea of my public tax money going towards unapproved repeaters (if the employees pooled together their own money or something, more power to them). On the other hand, no judge/jury is going to convict for fixing the fire alarm whether the money was authorized or not.
- GlenTheMachine 4y ago
  "You have to learn why things work on a starship." The building itself is "owned" by a separate part of the government than the part that actually sits in it (and this is almost always true, no matter what part of the government you're talking about). As a consequence, getting the building fixed requires coordinating someone else's budget and personnel. Whereas installing unofficial cell repeaters can come out of your own budget, specifically because they're unofficial.

gkop 4y ago

> The cheaper hotels were 30 minutes away, but then I’d blow the budget for uber rides. I asked if I'd have to cancel my conference trip. > Manager: “There’s not actually an uber limit” When the Man exploits you by keeping you guessing about the expense policy, it's your moral imperative to spend as much of the Man's budget as you possibly can.

hbarka 4y ago

There was this guy at my previous work who was in charge of Salesforce. Literal sales force members were denied access to Salesforce information under the guise of “SOX Compliance”. He threw this bureaucratic wall out every time. I don’t think he knew what SOX policy meant. It was purely subjective and was really a ploy for power and control. The company suffered for it.

m463 4y ago
reminds me of: https://review.firstround.com/lean-startups-eric-ries-on-how-to-make-gatekeepers-a-source-of-power-and-speed https://review.firstround.com/lean-startups-eric-ries-on-how...

Tade0 4y ago

I've seen things getting fast-tracked because they were passed through the CEOs girlfriend (also employed there), who was but the only person able to consistently reach the man.

Nextgrid 4y ago

Another strategy I highly recommend is to not let companies have leverage on you. Don’t commit to any long-term contracts (you want the ability to stop paying them at any time without having to potentially litigate to get out of long-term obligations) and have backup plans in case your primary supplier screws up. The dynamics change dramatically when the company needs you more than you need them. Instead of you having to fight them to get what you want, you can simply notify them that they’re not gonna get any more money out of you unless the problem is fixed, and leave the “fighting” to your contact at the company whose paycheck depends on people continuing to buy services from them.

3qz 4y ago

“Remember there is no “company.” All of the company’s decisions are actually individuals acting within their own set of incentives. The “company” is what emerges when those individual incentives interact with each other.” A good summary of the whole article