6 ms·

I see this type of an argumentation very often and I strongly disagree. You're removing all responsibility from an actor that is a part of a bigger thing. Imag

I see this type of an argumentation very often and I strongly disagree. You're removing all responsibility from an actor that is a part of a bigger thing. Imagine if you slapped someone on his hand for doing something wrong, and he or someone else argued what you did is wrong because it wasn't that hand that has offended. I'm an antitheist but the Bible (gospels) put it well "The student is not above his master" [translation mine] - which means if you follow said master you have to share responsibility for his doings or the doings of the gang as a whole. From the perspective of the effect, if you make life of an employee miserable, the employee is more likely to resign or ask for a raise, this does apply some pressure. Moreover, consider what happens if your argument convinces too many people: malevolent actors can just wall themselves with "innocent" people and get away with pretty much anything.

watwut 6mo ago
No amount of beating low level employees will change whether they can accept pdf sent by email or not. And also, they are not supposed to use their intuitive ideas about what is and what is not dangerous use of software. When they do use their intuitive ideas, hacks happen. Karen here doing what she was told and accepting only formats that her organization security team told her to do is Karen doing the correct thing. We are on HN. People who are responsible for overreaching unreasonable security rules ... are basically us. And we are all paid way more then Karen, but are the first to call Karen an idiot when the hack happens. Karen does not know why pdf is different from doc or whatever. Nor is she required to know.
- trinsic2 6mo ago
  Disagree. Employees need to be responsible and make their voices heard. The whole thing was justified. We enable nightmares with our acquiescence.
  - perching_aix 6mo ago
    And how does the author (or you) know she doesn't keep raising this? Edit: can't even confirm that it really is only fax and physical mail that's available; on a cursory search, tackling this fully online is already well possible: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47544562 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47544562
    - snk 6mo ago
      You mean, Karen lied?
      - perching_aix 6mo ago
        No, that is not what I meant. If anything, the blogpost author might have, but that's not what I mean either. It is entirely possible for both parties to have simply missed thinking of this. Or for me to be missing or misunderstanding something.
- johnnyanmac 6mo ago
  >No amount of beating low level employees will change whether they can accept pdf sent by email or not. I disagree. I'm sorry Karen here needs to bear the brunt, but if this kept up, at some point Karen's boss will take notice, And then it moves up the chain to someone who can affect that policy. Companies purposefully set us up to communicate bottom-up, so we can either play the game or break the law. >People who are responsible for overreaching unreasonable security rules ... are basically us No, it'd be a policy maker or CEO who thinks we're in the 90's and that secure email documentation isn't a thing. "We" could suggest so many ways to handle it that would save costs while being more secure. We're not much higher on the totem pole than Karen. Yet suddenly, we get these incidents and our bosses are suddenly rushing to IT to find a solution. As if 6 months of deliberation wasn't enough.
  - masklinn 6mo ago
    > I'm sorry Karen here needs to bear the brunt, but if this kept up, at some point Karen's boss will take notice, And then it moves up the chain to someone who can affect that policy. That’s a hilarious fantasy you have here.
    - johnnyanmac 6mo ago
      I'm open to options. Not doomerism "the system can't be fixed" mentality. I don't like to think of myself as combative. Ideally we get listened to in council and they properly pull what strings are needed to help. But this has been my reality. Employees can evangelize for months for better security, but then a (very avoidable) hack happens and suddenly the budget for it appears out of thin air. Being a nuisance (or letting nature take its course, in the perspective of an employee) is much more powerful to these kinds of organizations than words.
      - masklinn 6mo ago
        > But this has been my reality. Employees can evangelize for months for better security, but then a (very avoidable) hack happens and suddenly the budget for it appears out of thin air. So your lived experience indicates that harassing front-line low-level employees about it does not work because they won't be listened to. Why, then, are you advocating for harassing front-line low-level employees? Go for the people who can actually set policy: ministers, representatives, council, agency boards, managers. When you call, rather than take it out on the employee request to be transferred up. And even if you don't have the energy to keep fighting after your own case has been fixed (a very common remedy when it's usually much easier to grease the squeaky wheel than to actually fix the axle), try to leave information on your process and contact points in accessible locations so that those afterwards can start a step or two ahead.
- callmeal 6mo ago
  >No amount of beating low level employees will change whether they can accept pdf sent by email or not. Yes, but a boss being unable to receive a fax because the machine is "otherwise occupied" may do that.
  - autoexec 6mo ago
    I highly doubt it. Not accepting PDF files from random email addresses that send to your very publicly listed email address is a smart policy. One angry jerk trying to DoS the fax machine is not going to change the policy. At best, it'd cause them to ditch the paper and toner and upgrade so that all incoming faxes are automatically scanned and sent to an email box.
- cortesoft 6mo ago
  > We are on HN. People who are responsible for overreaching unreasonable security rules ... are basically us. I don’t think that is true. Rules that you have to use a fax machine are enshrined in outdated laws. No IT professional is going to say to use a fax machine for security. The same thing is true for a lot of security practices. Our company had silly password rotation policies because of certification requirements, not because our IT team thought it was necessary.
  - autoexec 6mo ago
    > No IT professional is going to say to use a fax machine for security. An IT professional will say don't open PDF files from every random email that comes into your publicly posted email address though.
ryandrake 6mo ago
> From the perspective of the effect, if you make life of an employee miserable, the employee is more likely to resign or ask for a raise, this does apply some pressure. Not meaningful pressure, though, at least for large organizations. This is a variant of the flawed "vote with your wallet" argument: One wallet changes nothing. Even 100 or 1000 wallets change nothing. These huge businesses and huge governments are too big for one person at the bottom of the totem pole to make a difference. Sure, they may share 1/N of the culpability for what their organization is doing, but if they rage quit, they will be immediately replaced with another body. The organization won't even notice it. Individual human beings acting individually are totally irrelevant when it comes to the behavior of large organizations.
- philipallstar 6mo ago
  > This is a variant of the flawed "vote with your wallet" argument: One wallet changes nothing. Even 100 or 1000 wallets change nothing. It's not flawed at all. If the last five years have taught ideologues at Disney and in the video game industry anything, it's that you can waste hundreds of millions on ideology-drenched projects and get, say, 1000 concurrent players as your peak.
  - ryandrake 6mo ago
    That's pretty vague. I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about, but OK.
  - deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
- bmurphy1976 6mo ago
  Eh, it has an impact. It's not always obvious but it adds up over time. Use your analogy of choice: slowly building up pressure until it boils over or a small pebble starting an avalanche or whatever works for you. I don't necessarily agree with the OPs approach. He could have filed a complaint or done any number of things that may have been better. But in the heat of the moment nobody is making perfectly rational decisions. Regardless, we need to fight back against abusive systems on the big and on the small. We won't always get it right but the act of fighting is what matters.
bambax 6mo ago
Absolutely agree. Also, the kind of Karens described in the post usually enjoy their position and the meager power they hold over other humans. They need to get bitten sometimes.
- autoexec 6mo ago
  > Also, the kind of Karens described in the post usually enjoy their position and the meager power they hold over other humans. Do you have a citation for that or is that just an idea of a villain you've invented in your head? Karen doesn't hold any power whatsoever over anyone. Karen is a low level employee who has to answer the phones all day. She doesn't decide who gets benefits or not. She didn't create the Continuing Disability Review. She didn't create the security policy that said they should refuse to open PDF attachments from random people who email them. She doesn't need to "get bitten" any more than you do.
  - bambax 6mo ago
    By that reasoning we shouldn't shoot at enemy soldiers during war, because they're not the ones who declared war and they have no power over its conclusion. We're at war with bureaucracy and the front line is, well, the front line.
- hooverd 6mo ago
  If you're trying to effect actual change that seems like a great way to harden the people you need to be influencing against you.
LeifCarrotson 6mo ago
I find it far more effective to make friends with and be kind to that employee, and then describe how I know it isn't their fault but this one aspect of the thing that their company does really sucks, right? They're then able to carry that specific complaint from one of their best customers up the chain. There are a thousand reasons why someone might be miserable, might resign or ask for a raise, but at the next monthly meeting or whatever opportunity they have for receiving suggestions, an employee who actually likes you will be more likely to speak up and get something done. This has worked for me at least in the B2B space, where I'm affecting one of 50 state applications engineers or something like that. I'm aware that this isn't exactly the same as the federal government that employs like 3 million people, but the principle is the same. If you got on Karen's good side, she might grouse with you that sending and receiving faxes is archaic, that mail is slow, agree that printed paper's not that accommodating to blind people, and acknowledge that it's cruel and wasteful to ask people to prove their chronic, incurable disabilities every year under threat of taking away their benefits through these platforms. You could work together and laugh about how funny it would be to communicate the real costs and hardships with her supervisors if you literally faxed 1,200 pages of a PDF, wearing through multiple toner cartridges and reams of paper, generating a box that she could drop on the table with a "thud" to emphasize that they should stop doing that. That might create change, especially if it happens for multiple employees multiple times a day. Making a bureaucrat miserable because they have a lot of paperwork to do is not going to create change.
- hooverd 6mo ago
  Indeed, if you're nice they might take your side. If you're an asshole, that's a lot less likely.
jt2190 6mo ago
> if you make life of an employee miserable, the employee is more likely to resign or ask for a raise, this does apply some pressure. Perhaps, but the question to ask is not “how to apply some pressure” but “how to apply pressure in the place where it’s most effective.
card_zero 6mo ago
The Bible of course also says "if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee", which is where I thought you were going with this at first. The Bible says a lot of things.
gosub100 6mo ago
This is exactly what I do with telemarketer scammers. I have no limit of depravity that I draw from in attempt to offend them. No limits. And exactly for the reasons you describe. Get them to crack and quit the company.
- palmotea 6mo ago
  > This is exactly what I do with telemarketer scammers. I have no limit of depravity that I draw from in attempt to offend them. No limits. And exactly for the reasons you describe. Get them to crack and quit the company. Have you heard of pig butchering? Sometimes the "scammer" you're talking to is practically a slave that will be beaten if they don't hit their numbers: https://www.wired.com/story/the-red-bull-leaks/ https://www.wired.com/story/the-red-bull-leaks/. Immoral assholes can out-immoral you.
  - gosub100 6mo ago
    That seems like a problem for the telcos to resolve. I.e. don't allow calls from nations that do this.
    - palmotea 6mo ago
      >>> This is exactly what I do with telemarketer scammers. I have no limit of depravity that I draw from in attempt to offend them. No limits. And exactly for the reasons you describe. Get them to crack and quit the company. >> Have you heard of pig butchering? Sometimes the "scammer" you're talking to is practically a slave that will be beaten if they don't hit their numbers: https://www.wired.com/story/the-red-bull-leaks/ https://www.wired.com/story/the-red-bull-leaks/. > That seems like a problem for the telcos to resolve. I.e. don't allow calls from nations that do this. Yes, telcos have a problem to solve, but that's besides the point. It doesn't justify you being overconfident about who you're actually dealing with or an asshole to someone based on your overconfidence. You imagine you're being an asshole to some criminal scammer, but you actually could further mistreating some poor soul who's been trafficked by the criminal scammer. People who don't care about the possibility they're mistreating an innocent person are assholes.
palmotea 6mo ago
> From the perspective of the effect, if you make life of an employee miserable, the employee is more likely to resign or ask for a raise, this does apply some pressure. No, all you're accomplishing is being an ass to that person. They're a replaceable cog in a machine. And often their role as just as much to be a punching bag for assholes like you, to take the hits instead of who's really responsible, than whatever other business function they're performing. The people responsible aren't idiots, they know what they're going. The only thing being an ass to someone who's just a cog accomplishes is making yourself into an asshole.
technothrasher 6mo ago
> I'm an antitheist but the Bible (gospels) put it well "The student is not above his master" [translation mine] - which means if you follow said master you have to share responsibility for his doings or the doings of the gang as a whole. If you're talking about Matthew 10, I think you read that bible passage exactly backward. Jesus was saying not to worry about any persecution caused by following him, because the responsibility is not yours. They are really persecuting him, "the master", and if you just keep doing what he says you will come out on top, even if you are killed, and they will get theirs in the end. (Not that I agree. As an atheist, it feels coercive. But that's clearly what Matthew 10 is saying)

watwut 6mo ago

No amount of beating low level employees will change whether they can accept pdf sent by email or not. And also, they are not supposed to use their intuitive ideas about what is and what is not dangerous use of software. When they do use their intuitive ideas, hacks happen. Karen here doing what she was told and accepting only formats that her organization security team told her to do is Karen doing the correct thing. We are on HN. People who are responsible for overreaching unreasonable security rules ... are basically us. And we are all paid way more then Karen, but are the first to call Karen an idiot when the hack happens. Karen does not know why pdf is different from doc or whatever. Nor is she required to know.

trinsic2 6mo ago
Disagree. Employees need to be responsible and make their voices heard. The whole thing was justified. We enable nightmares with our acquiescence.
- perching_aix 6mo ago
  And how does the author (or you) know she doesn't keep raising this? Edit: can't even confirm that it really is only fax and physical mail that's available; on a cursory search, tackling this fully online is already well possible: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47544562 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47544562
  - snk 6mo ago
    You mean, Karen lied?
    - perching_aix 6mo ago
      No, that is not what I meant. If anything, the blogpost author might have, but that's not what I mean either. It is entirely possible for both parties to have simply missed thinking of this. Or for me to be missing or misunderstanding something.
johnnyanmac 6mo ago
>No amount of beating low level employees will change whether they can accept pdf sent by email or not. I disagree. I'm sorry Karen here needs to bear the brunt, but if this kept up, at some point Karen's boss will take notice, And then it moves up the chain to someone who can affect that policy. Companies purposefully set us up to communicate bottom-up, so we can either play the game or break the law. >People who are responsible for overreaching unreasonable security rules ... are basically us No, it'd be a policy maker or CEO who thinks we're in the 90's and that secure email documentation isn't a thing. "We" could suggest so many ways to handle it that would save costs while being more secure. We're not much higher on the totem pole than Karen. Yet suddenly, we get these incidents and our bosses are suddenly rushing to IT to find a solution. As if 6 months of deliberation wasn't enough.
- masklinn 6mo ago
  > I'm sorry Karen here needs to bear the brunt, but if this kept up, at some point Karen's boss will take notice, And then it moves up the chain to someone who can affect that policy. That’s a hilarious fantasy you have here.
  - johnnyanmac 6mo ago
    I'm open to options. Not doomerism "the system can't be fixed" mentality. I don't like to think of myself as combative. Ideally we get listened to in council and they properly pull what strings are needed to help. But this has been my reality. Employees can evangelize for months for better security, but then a (very avoidable) hack happens and suddenly the budget for it appears out of thin air. Being a nuisance (or letting nature take its course, in the perspective of an employee) is much more powerful to these kinds of organizations than words.
    - masklinn 6mo ago
      > But this has been my reality. Employees can evangelize for months for better security, but then a (very avoidable) hack happens and suddenly the budget for it appears out of thin air. So your lived experience indicates that harassing front-line low-level employees about it does not work because they won't be listened to. Why, then, are you advocating for harassing front-line low-level employees? Go for the people who can actually set policy: ministers, representatives, council, agency boards, managers. When you call, rather than take it out on the employee request to be transferred up. And even if you don't have the energy to keep fighting after your own case has been fixed (a very common remedy when it's usually much easier to grease the squeaky wheel than to actually fix the axle), try to leave information on your process and contact points in accessible locations so that those afterwards can start a step or two ahead.
callmeal 6mo ago
>No amount of beating low level employees will change whether they can accept pdf sent by email or not. Yes, but a boss being unable to receive a fax because the machine is "otherwise occupied" may do that.
- autoexec 6mo ago
  I highly doubt it. Not accepting PDF files from random email addresses that send to your very publicly listed email address is a smart policy. One angry jerk trying to DoS the fax machine is not going to change the policy. At best, it'd cause them to ditch the paper and toner and upgrade so that all incoming faxes are automatically scanned and sent to an email box.
cortesoft 6mo ago
> We are on HN. People who are responsible for overreaching unreasonable security rules ... are basically us. I don’t think that is true. Rules that you have to use a fax machine are enshrined in outdated laws. No IT professional is going to say to use a fax machine for security. The same thing is true for a lot of security practices. Our company had silly password rotation policies because of certification requirements, not because our IT team thought it was necessary.
- autoexec 6mo ago
  > No IT professional is going to say to use a fax machine for security. An IT professional will say don't open PDF files from every random email that comes into your publicly posted email address though.

ryandrake 6mo ago

> From the perspective of the effect, if you make life of an employee miserable, the employee is more likely to resign or ask for a raise, this does apply some pressure. Not meaningful pressure, though, at least for large organizations. This is a variant of the flawed "vote with your wallet" argument: One wallet changes nothing. Even 100 or 1000 wallets change nothing. These huge businesses and huge governments are too big for one person at the bottom of the totem pole to make a difference. Sure, they may share 1/N of the culpability for what their organization is doing, but if they rage quit, they will be immediately replaced with another body. The organization won't even notice it. Individual human beings acting individually are totally irrelevant when it comes to the behavior of large organizations.

philipallstar 6mo ago
> This is a variant of the flawed "vote with your wallet" argument: One wallet changes nothing. Even 100 or 1000 wallets change nothing. It's not flawed at all. If the last five years have taught ideologues at Disney and in the video game industry anything, it's that you can waste hundreds of millions on ideology-drenched projects and get, say, 1000 concurrent players as your peak.
- ryandrake 6mo ago
  That's pretty vague. I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about, but OK.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
bmurphy1976 6mo ago
Eh, it has an impact. It's not always obvious but it adds up over time. Use your analogy of choice: slowly building up pressure until it boils over or a small pebble starting an avalanche or whatever works for you. I don't necessarily agree with the OPs approach. He could have filed a complaint or done any number of things that may have been better. But in the heat of the moment nobody is making perfectly rational decisions. Regardless, we need to fight back against abusive systems on the big and on the small. We won't always get it right but the act of fighting is what matters.

bambax 6mo ago

Absolutely agree. Also, the kind of Karens described in the post usually enjoy their position and the meager power they hold over other humans. They need to get bitten sometimes.

autoexec 6mo ago
> Also, the kind of Karens described in the post usually enjoy their position and the meager power they hold over other humans. Do you have a citation for that or is that just an idea of a villain you've invented in your head? Karen doesn't hold any power whatsoever over anyone. Karen is a low level employee who has to answer the phones all day. She doesn't decide who gets benefits or not. She didn't create the Continuing Disability Review. She didn't create the security policy that said they should refuse to open PDF attachments from random people who email them. She doesn't need to "get bitten" any more than you do.
- bambax 6mo ago
  By that reasoning we shouldn't shoot at enemy soldiers during war, because they're not the ones who declared war and they have no power over its conclusion. We're at war with bureaucracy and the front line is, well, the front line.
hooverd 6mo ago
If you're trying to effect actual change that seems like a great way to harden the people you need to be influencing against you.

LeifCarrotson 6mo ago

I find it far more effective to make friends with and be kind to that employee, and then describe how I know it isn't their fault but this one aspect of the thing that their company does really sucks, right? They're then able to carry that specific complaint from one of their best customers up the chain. There are a thousand reasons why someone might be miserable, might resign or ask for a raise, but at the next monthly meeting or whatever opportunity they have for receiving suggestions, an employee who actually likes you will be more likely to speak up and get something done. This has worked for me at least in the B2B space, where I'm affecting one of 50 state applications engineers or something like that. I'm aware that this isn't exactly the same as the federal government that employs like 3 million people, but the principle is the same. If you got on Karen's good side, she might grouse with you that sending and receiving faxes is archaic, that mail is slow, agree that printed paper's not that accommodating to blind people, and acknowledge that it's cruel and wasteful to ask people to prove their chronic, incurable disabilities every year under threat of taking away their benefits through these platforms. You could work together and laugh about how funny it would be to communicate the real costs and hardships with her supervisors if you literally faxed 1,200 pages of a PDF, wearing through multiple toner cartridges and reams of paper, generating a box that she could drop on the table with a "thud" to emphasize that they should stop doing that. That might create change, especially if it happens for multiple employees multiple times a day. Making a bureaucrat miserable because they have a lot of paperwork to do is not going to create change.

hooverd 6mo ago
Indeed, if you're nice they might take your side. If you're an asshole, that's a lot less likely.

jt2190 6mo ago

> if you make life of an employee miserable, the employee is more likely to resign or ask for a raise, this does apply some pressure. Perhaps, but the question to ask is not “how to apply some pressure” but “how to apply pressure in the place where it’s most effective.

card_zero 6mo ago

The Bible of course also says "if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee", which is where I thought you were going with this at first. The Bible says a lot of things.

gosub100 6mo ago

This is exactly what I do with telemarketer scammers. I have no limit of depravity that I draw from in attempt to offend them. No limits. And exactly for the reasons you describe. Get them to crack and quit the company.

palmotea 6mo ago
> This is exactly what I do with telemarketer scammers. I have no limit of depravity that I draw from in attempt to offend them. No limits. And exactly for the reasons you describe. Get them to crack and quit the company. Have you heard of pig butchering? Sometimes the "scammer" you're talking to is practically a slave that will be beaten if they don't hit their numbers: https://www.wired.com/story/the-red-bull-leaks/ https://www.wired.com/story/the-red-bull-leaks/. Immoral assholes can out-immoral you.
- gosub100 6mo ago
  That seems like a problem for the telcos to resolve. I.e. don't allow calls from nations that do this.
  - palmotea 6mo ago
    >>> This is exactly what I do with telemarketer scammers. I have no limit of depravity that I draw from in attempt to offend them. No limits. And exactly for the reasons you describe. Get them to crack and quit the company. >> Have you heard of pig butchering? Sometimes the "scammer" you're talking to is practically a slave that will be beaten if they don't hit their numbers: https://www.wired.com/story/the-red-bull-leaks/ https://www.wired.com/story/the-red-bull-leaks/. > That seems like a problem for the telcos to resolve. I.e. don't allow calls from nations that do this. Yes, telcos have a problem to solve, but that's besides the point. It doesn't justify you being overconfident about who you're actually dealing with or an asshole to someone based on your overconfidence. You imagine you're being an asshole to some criminal scammer, but you actually could further mistreating some poor soul who's been trafficked by the criminal scammer. People who don't care about the possibility they're mistreating an innocent person are assholes.

palmotea 6mo ago

> From the perspective of the effect, if you make life of an employee miserable, the employee is more likely to resign or ask for a raise, this does apply some pressure. No, all you're accomplishing is being an ass to that person. They're a replaceable cog in a machine. And often their role as just as much to be a punching bag for assholes like you, to take the hits instead of who's really responsible, than whatever other business function they're performing. The people responsible aren't idiots, they know what they're going. The only thing being an ass to someone who's just a cog accomplishes is making yourself into an asshole.

technothrasher 6mo ago

> I'm an antitheist but the Bible (gospels) put it well "The student is not above his master" [translation mine] - which means if you follow said master you have to share responsibility for his doings or the doings of the gang as a whole. If you're talking about Matthew 10, I think you read that bible passage exactly backward. Jesus was saying not to worry about any persecution caused by following him, because the responsibility is not yours. They are really persecuting him, "the master", and if you just keep doing what he says you will come out on top, even if you are killed, and they will get theirs in the end. (Not that I agree. As an atheist, it feels coercive. But that's clearly what Matthew 10 is saying)