3 ms·

> Proposing the motion at this week's meeting, Dr Marks said: "I'm no expert on HR software, but I do know that manually copying and pasting from seven differen

by roenxi 3y ago

> Proposing the motion at this week's meeting, Dr Marks said: "I'm no expert on HR software, but I do know that manually copying and pasting from seven different Excel sheets, all laid out in different ways, is bound to go wrong one day. So who set up the system? Who set up the QA processes and the staff training?" This sounds pretty standard to me. Spreadsheet stacks are actually effective - and often robust if the Copy Paste technician has a little bit of nous. I don't think it makes sense to get the individual involved in trouble, but it isn't intellectually honest to pretend this is that strange or unreasonable. Offices are full of people who make things work in inefficient ways. Such is life. Improve the system if it fails, but there isn't any call to act surprised that the process is awkward. I expect there is a lot of politics at play here.

jjgreen 3y ago
Copy Paste technician, fabulous, up there with Prompt engineer
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  Well, out of their, say, $50/hr rate, $1 is for the actual labor of copying and pasting, and $49 is for knowing what to copy and where to paste :).
  - jjgreen 3y ago
    If done by a civil servant (government employee), that would be grade AA (Admin Assistant) or AO (Admin Officer). An AO in London gets £24k/year, which is around £11.50/h, or $14/h https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/onscivilservantgradesandsalarybands https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/fre...
    - HPsquared 3y ago
      That's what they get, but their agency probably bills them out at £50/h
- onionisafruit 3y ago
  Is prompt engineer a derogatory term for people who spend their work day at a shell prompt? If so, I can own up to being a prompt engineer. Or maybe it’s an engineer who does their work promptly. In that case, I’m not sure I qualify.
  - jjgreen 3y ago
    Neither, it's someone who crafts ChatGPT prompts to get the desired output (and that seems to be what they call themselves, so not really derogatory).
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- mananaysiempre 3y ago
  “Typical process latency: Someone copies and pastes data from a thing into another thing”[1]. Jokes aside, though, I don’t think it’s fair to criticise people for using the only user-accessible interapplication communication channel the industry has universally agreed to make work and not use as lock-in leverage. The spreadsheets being in different formats and lacking additional sheets that’d automatically reformat the data the way the next step needs is something I’d criticise, but I undertstand how that might be nonobvious if you aren’t lazy enough to think about automating everything you possibly can. [1] https://xkcd.com/2565/ https://xkcd.com/2565/
sheepshear 3y ago
That's not what they're saying. They're formally accusing management of not doing their jobs.
CraigJPerry 3y ago
>> often robust if the Copy Paste technician has a little bit of nous This is faulty logic. Human error isn't an exceptional thing, it's extremely common and expected. There's an entire field of study dedicated to it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_reliability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_reliability In many scenarios the right thing to do is just accept the error risk - as humans, we often don't need perfect execution but i don't think this is one of those. The person quoted in the article gets it right: "We need senior management that know what they're doing, who realize that this is not, and never was, the way to run an HR system"
hardlianotion 3y ago
Excel stacks can be effective, but they need to be setup correctly and to have effective operational control. Royal College have a right to surprise - they are a client of ANRO and had to winkle the information out of them. Given the way things turned out, I think Dr Marks comments are also appropriate.
codeulike 3y ago
Spreadsheet stacks are actually effective - and often robust if the Copy Paste technician has a little bit of nous This is true. Sounds like they have cobbled together a system using Excel because thats why you have to do when processes change all the time. The alternative is to find a 'proper' HR system to handle all the weird custom processes which is a massive three year project that costs tens of millions and then probably fails to deliver. IT people complain about people cobbling things together in Excel but in the short and medium term thats usually the only way for people to get shit done But yes management dropped the ball and should have had some checks and balances. No-one realised that every candidate from Wales got rejected? Thats a clanger.
- DharmaPolice 3y ago
  >IT people complain about people cobbling things together in Excel but in the short and medium term thats usually the only way for people to get shit done This is true, and why I think it's a shame we never got a real replacement for Microsoft Access (not necessarily the functionality of Access but its intended purpose).
  - pjc50 3y ago
    If only there was a simple system for producing a database-driven set of screens in a webapp. It's the one thing which seems to have got worse since the eras of dBASE and FoxPro.
andrewstuart 3y ago
No doubt there was never budget for HR software.
DharmaPolice 3y ago
Having worked with "spreadsheet stacks" for the last two decades I'd argue that although they can be effective in most cases they are error prone which is the point being made in your quote. And they become more error prone the more complex the "system" is and that's bad news because it's oh so easy to add more complexity whenever you want. I agree the practices described don't sound strange - they sound normal, but so does the resulting errors that occurred - also par for the course.
cool_dude85 3y ago
>Spreadsheet stacks are actually effective - and often robust if the Copy Paste technician has a little bit of nous. I broadly agree with this, but there are ways to make the process effective and ways to make it incredibly error prone, like not having checks to ensure you paste into the correct columns. Obviously there are no such checks here.
pjc50 3y ago
Nobody cares about inefficient or brittle process that produce reasonable results, but when you mess up the careers of a number of people, someone's going to take a look at the process.

by roenxi 3y ago

jjgreen 3y ago

Copy Paste technician, fabulous, up there with Prompt engineer

TeMPOraL 3y ago
Well, out of their, say, $50/hr rate, $1 is for the actual labor of copying and pasting, and $49 is for knowing what to copy and where to paste :).
- jjgreen 3y ago
  If done by a civil servant (government employee), that would be grade AA (Admin Assistant) or AO (Admin Officer). An AO in London gets £24k/year, which is around £11.50/h, or $14/h https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/onscivilservantgradesandsalarybands https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/fre...
  - HPsquared 3y ago
    That's what they get, but their agency probably bills them out at £50/h
onionisafruit 3y ago
Is prompt engineer a derogatory term for people who spend their work day at a shell prompt? If so, I can own up to being a prompt engineer. Or maybe it’s an engineer who does their work promptly. In that case, I’m not sure I qualify.
- jjgreen 3y ago
  Neither, it's someone who crafts ChatGPT prompts to get the desired output (and that seems to be what they call themselves, so not really derogatory).
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
mananaysiempre 3y ago
“Typical process latency: Someone copies and pastes data from a thing into another thing”[1]. Jokes aside, though, I don’t think it’s fair to criticise people for using the only user-accessible interapplication communication channel the industry has universally agreed to make work and not use as lock-in leverage. The spreadsheets being in different formats and lacking additional sheets that’d automatically reformat the data the way the next step needs is something I’d criticise, but I undertstand how that might be nonobvious if you aren’t lazy enough to think about automating everything you possibly can. [1] https://xkcd.com/2565/ https://xkcd.com/2565/

sheepshear 3y ago

That's not what they're saying. They're formally accusing management of not doing their jobs.

CraigJPerry 3y ago

>> often robust if the Copy Paste technician has a little bit of nous This is faulty logic. Human error isn't an exceptional thing, it's extremely common and expected. There's an entire field of study dedicated to it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_reliability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_reliability In many scenarios the right thing to do is just accept the error risk - as humans, we often don't need perfect execution but i don't think this is one of those. The person quoted in the article gets it right: "We need senior management that know what they're doing, who realize that this is not, and never was, the way to run an HR system"

hardlianotion 3y ago

Excel stacks can be effective, but they need to be setup correctly and to have effective operational control. Royal College have a right to surprise - they are a client of ANRO and had to winkle the information out of them. Given the way things turned out, I think Dr Marks comments are also appropriate.

codeulike 3y ago

Spreadsheet stacks are actually effective - and often robust if the Copy Paste technician has a little bit of nous This is true. Sounds like they have cobbled together a system using Excel because thats why you have to do when processes change all the time. The alternative is to find a 'proper' HR system to handle all the weird custom processes which is a massive three year project that costs tens of millions and then probably fails to deliver. IT people complain about people cobbling things together in Excel but in the short and medium term thats usually the only way for people to get shit done But yes management dropped the ball and should have had some checks and balances. No-one realised that every candidate from Wales got rejected? Thats a clanger.

DharmaPolice 3y ago
>IT people complain about people cobbling things together in Excel but in the short and medium term thats usually the only way for people to get shit done This is true, and why I think it's a shame we never got a real replacement for Microsoft Access (not necessarily the functionality of Access but its intended purpose).
- pjc50 3y ago
  If only there was a simple system for producing a database-driven set of screens in a webapp. It's the one thing which seems to have got worse since the eras of dBASE and FoxPro.

andrewstuart 3y ago

No doubt there was never budget for HR software.

DharmaPolice 3y ago

Having worked with "spreadsheet stacks" for the last two decades I'd argue that although they can be effective in most cases they are error prone which is the point being made in your quote. And they become more error prone the more complex the "system" is and that's bad news because it's oh so easy to add more complexity whenever you want. I agree the practices described don't sound strange - they sound normal, but so does the resulting errors that occurred - also par for the course.

cool_dude85 3y ago

>Spreadsheet stacks are actually effective - and often robust if the Copy Paste technician has a little bit of nous. I broadly agree with this, but there are ways to make the process effective and ways to make it incredibly error prone, like not having checks to ensure you paste into the correct columns. Obviously there are no such checks here.

pjc50 3y ago

Nobody cares about inefficient or brittle process that produce reasonable results, but when you mess up the careers of a number of people, someone's going to take a look at the process.