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Comment by alanwatts | Hacker News Reader

What if that built-in process is counter productive, obsolete, or doesn't have the value you really thought it did anymore, like that of many college degrees? Mindless adherence to group think and legacy processes in the long run is a recipe for disaster.

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I'm all for constructive criticism, and if a process is burning more money than it is generating I'd speak my mind too. But many of our new fish (at least around here) don't like how much of a stickler I can be for proper documentation, good naming conventions, using the bug tracking system etc. They see it as pointless bureaucracy because they don't report to our boss, who when he asks "how are things going" likes to hear and see more than me just saying "good."

While there are plenty of processes out there that likely don't need to be, there are I'd venture a lot more where the value generated isn't necessarily obvious to the guys in the trenches. I'm happy to explain this to anyone who asks (and have) and we occasionally even have an issue crop up where hey, look how useful this "busywork" you did earlier is right now, but the point is to a certain degree you should expect to simply obey the stated rules even if you don't IMMEDIATELY see their value. It's just respectful.

I'd also say it's far too easy to conflate "mindless obedience" and "respectful behavior" these days.

If they think proper documentation, good naming conventions, and using a bug tracking system are 'pointless bureacracy', then they're too green or belong in a more fast-paced environment, like a startup, because all of those are perfectly reasonable and should be considered a bare minimum for a team of more than a handful of people (and proper naming conventions should be done even with just one person).

True, in the long run. But what usually happens is that the new hire takes a week or a month to decide that a process is stupid and wasteful, and shoots his/her mouth off about what a stupid process it is, and burns a bunch of bridges.

Maybe this should be a rule of thumb: Don't criticize anything during your first six months. If it's your first job out of school, don't criticize anything during your first year. Learn what's really going on, and why things are the way they are. Then you can criticize.

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