A large portion of my job is automating things, and whenever there's a discrepancy my immediate response is to check the automation for issues. Automation brings speed and consistency, but there's a significant difference between consistency and accuracy.
I love when the boots on the ground tell me I screwed up, because then I can pick their brains and make things better!
Our job is to build, but we aren’t experts in the field we are building software for. Detailed, high-quality feedback is insanely useful, because we are trying to get in the head of someone using our product day to day, but we can’t know exactly how or users want to work…
Automation brings speed and consistency, but there’s a significant difference between consistency and accuracy.
I deal with automation vs manual input a fair bit also, this is really accurate.
As a rule of thumb, when one or two cases go wrong, it's usually human error. If hundreds of cases go wrong at once, it's probably automation run amok.
Let's imagine OP was trying to scam the company. The sheer gall of asking for approval on a scam would be so audacious that honestly, it wouldn't be safe to have an employee like that working on anything of value. The level of "fuck you, I don't care" that it would show would mean that the safest thing to do with an employee like that would be to fire them.
The guy didn't ask the basic question of "has OP given us any reason not to trust them?" If the answer to that was "yes", then maybe flying them out to the UK to act on the company's behalf isn't a great idea. And if that doesn't seem likely, then it's probably an employee trying to help and they should be encouraged
Oh boy, this is such an awesome story. Thank you for sticking it up to the abusive manager and entertaining us with the result.
Unfortunately I didn't have the guts to do this. I used to work at a place where everything was fine until a new line manager was installed who moved me to a different desk in another building. That desk was right next to the server room, which was noisy with a constant low-pitched grumbling. I was not able to think or concentrate in that environment, so I would frequently take my laptop to another floor and do my work there. The manager was not happy about that and demanded that I should return to my assigned desk and stay there. I told him it would mean I wouldn't be able to accomplish any work and he said something on the lines of “I don't care”. I should have taken him up on that; I should have stopped working entirely and just browsed the web all day until he gets wind of it and finally admits that he does care. But I was too cowardly to dare. I continued to defy him by spending most of my time at the “wrong” desk though.
I did when I went back in the next day to pick up my stuff. The younger ones were shocked while the older ones thought I exaggerated by quitting. They agreed with the fact that I was cheating saying that I was raising the standard to a point where they couldn’t compete. I still remember our accountant “if everybody did what you did, then the older ones like me wouldn’t have a place to work because you younger people and your computers took away our chance to work”. I do get being afraid for your future and having a resistance to change and low adaptability, so for ones over 50 I really do understand where they were coming from. They were barely learning how to use Facebook at that point…
Yeah I can understand where the older folks are coming from. I'm just a bit disappointed in your coworker "C" that got mad at you after you guys worked together so well/efficiently. Maybe it was a heat of the moment anger thing. Regardless, a bittersweet story!
Love the way you worked this against HR. I had a situation kind of like yours once where we got a per diem daily for a hotel and one meal. The company let us keep the leftover money from the per diem until they hired a new manager that insisted we turn in the extra (it wasn't much maybe $5-25). Fine, we all started getting more expensive hotel rooms and spending the rest on food using every cent they gave us. . After about 2 years the guy who made us turn in the leftover money left and we went back to being able to keep the extra money.
I had a P card and would expense food on the road, so no per diem to worry about. I didn't travel super often, so I would use this opportunity to treat myself on the company dime, choosing food and drink that often went beyond the limits of what we were allowed to get. So I would just pick whatever the fuck I wanted and tell my server/bartender that I was gonna be splitting my solo check: $X on company card, everything else including tip on my personal card. I'd get whiskey or beer or wine and steak or lamb or something like that. I would wind up with excellent meals for like $10 out of pocket. But because I rarely traveled, my company mileage and fuel costs were like 5% of everybody else's in my district, so my monthly expense reports were almost always under $1k (usually more like $300) while everybody else was routinely $5-10k. So thankfully, nobody was dumb enough to give me a slam dunk malicious compliance story haha.
I thought the HR director was being especially ridiculous, because I wasn't paid by the hour. Also I had to rush to complete stuff after the meeting anyway, so there was zero chance I could have slacked off in those two days.
I always say "they're stepping over dollars to pick up pennies." Similar, but I like to point out that they're exerting extra energy and reducing profits in one fell swoop.
'Dime' is American, I'd say penny is more international. There's a saying in the UK: "penny wise, pound foolish", I'm sure there's plenty or regional variations of this in different countries.
So I once made the mistake permitting a client to store some (say a dozen) boxes of financial records in my home for a couple of weeks. By ‘permit’, I mean they just dumped them there, and I didn’t physically restrain them from leaving.
Haha...yeah. I'm an academic at heart and my first few years at running a business were a complete disaster. I've since graduated into being a mediocre businessperson, which is probably about as far as I intend to get.
Maybe someday, but it's exhausting. I would probably be much happier if I just closed shop and went to do a PhD. I might even be able to afford to, in a couple of years.
Then maybe teach engineering in some unknown university in the countryside. Or run a machine shop that helps artists make things. Or just build alarmingly large robots for no reason at all.
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