In an efficient market, why would profit-focused companies employ a bunch of people who by their own admission aren’t doing anything valuable?
and
It seems to be an issue of people spending time and money to create and satisfy procedures that degenerate into rituals, so that they can look all procedural and responsible in front of – courts? regulators? bosses? investors?
People aren't exactly that stupid. Its really more on the lines of malice.
I remember in my first job, it was a big IT services company in Bangalore, India. Our manager created some project initiatives to align corporate initiatives on the lines of 'Promoting Green Technologies'. Two or three people in the evening/night would stay behind and check if people's desktops were on. Mostly people just locked the computers and went home. This was necessary because many people kept IDE's and many other work related stuff running, coming back morning and redoing all that for an hour or two was a waste of time.
But these bunch of three would go around and see if someone's desktop was still powered on. They could then turn off the switch(hard turn off) on the wall socket. Next day people would come and then be mightily surprised finding all their unsaved work, or work state itself wiped out.
After a lot of fights and arguments. They decided they would just send reports instead of turning it off. The reports would then act as way of shaming people for 'wasting energy'. They eventually even got around to automating it.
Months later we saw, It was nothing about promoting green technologies or saving the earth or anything. The three people who were doing it were the manager's pet, and he wanted to promote them. He thought having a line item on 'corporate goal achievement' on their promotion packets would further their cause well. Then we saw those three get promoted over the real people were actually building stuff and delivering things.
Generally when these things happen in a company you need to think on the opposite lines of Heinlein's Razor. Some one somewhere has hiring quotas and budgets, some one is getting promoted, or getting a bonus or getting paid well for bringing up these stupid policies and jobs.
Things exist because there is an incentive for them to exist.
In an efficient market, why would profit-focused companies employ a bunch of people who by their own admission aren’t doing anything valuable?
and
It seems to be an issue of people spending time and money to create and satisfy procedures that degenerate into rituals, so that they can look all procedural and responsible in front of – courts? regulators? bosses? investors?
People aren't exactly that stupid. Its really more on the lines of malice.
I remember in my first job, it was a big IT services company in Bangalore, India. Our manager created some project initiatives to align corporate initiatives on the lines of 'Promoting Green Technologies'. Two or three people in the evening/night would stay behind and check if people's desktops were on. Mostly people just locked the computers and went home. This was necessary because many people kept IDE's and many other work related stuff running, coming back morning and redoing all that for an hour or two was a waste of time.
But these bunch of three would go around and see if someone's desktop was still powered on. They could then turn off the switch(hard turn off) on the wall socket. Next day people would come and then be mightily surprised finding all their unsaved work, or work state itself wiped out.
After a lot of fights and arguments. They decided they would just send reports instead of turning it off. The reports would then act as way of shaming people for 'wasting energy'. They eventually even got around to automating it.
Months later we saw, It was nothing about promoting green technologies or saving the earth or anything. The three people who were doing it were the manager's pet, and he wanted to promote them. He thought having a line item on 'corporate goal achievement' on their promotion packets would further their cause well. Then we saw those three get promoted over the real people were actually building stuff and delivering things.
Generally when these things happen in a company you need to think on the opposite lines of Heinlein's Razor. Some one somewhere has hiring quotas and budgets, some one is getting promoted, or getting a bonus or getting paid well for bringing up these stupid policies and jobs.
Things exist because there is an incentive for them to exist.