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I quarter agree :-)

I have been through (many) purchase processes and they have always been painful. Especially true the first time you try and make a purchase at any large org.

I call this "Director Hazing". Being promoted to Director (US company designation) usually involves a year of administrative hell as you have to learn all the horrific systems that have grown up in the company over time. There is a sort of "sink or swim" mentality and once a director gets through it they are selected for being the sort of person who can operate this system (ie responds to emails quickly) - and that tends to work against promoting people who will fix it.

Anyway, as I say I reckon 25% of the time management thinks it should fix the problem and 75% of the time "I can work the system and so can anyone else at a certain level - everyone else has not been promoted and so should not get to spend the cash"

I still remain convinced the system works as intended.

A side note - there was some study I read about a major supermarket chain that used cameras and POS data to rank their checkout workers - and a small revolt from store managers killed the project. The store managers knew who performed best and worst at that part of the job - but that ranking did not fit the ranking for the other intangible parts of the job. And they wanted the flexibility to decide who to fire / keep / promote. And a clear metric would have got in the way.

Similarly management can if they want make sure your vendor is set up, your licenses paid for. If it is high enough up their priority tree. And if it is not having a widely hated terrible system is a good excuse to avoid saying no to subordinates...




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