Ask HN: I'm considering insubordination at work, looking for some input. | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: I'm considering insubordination at work, looking for some input.

3 pointsSeekingAdvice6 comments

I work at an enterprise web software company. We're only compatible with IE 9 -- no Firefox, no Chrome, no Safari. We were, at one time, compatible with these, but Javascript functionality has moved on in some ways that crippled functionality. Because of this, we invested a lot of work developing some browser tracking and logging software that sits on all of our sites to keep out these newer browsers. Our product engineers assured us this was less effort than making our sites compatible.

I am an implementation engineer at this company. I know the product's inner workings better than almost everyone at the company -- maybe better than anyone else at the company. I have found the major causes of what made the site incompatible and know how to fix it. For the first one, it took around four hours of time, but now that I know how, it takes about thirty minutes per site. We have a few dozen sites. I'm being told to sit on this.

We are getting dozens of calls a day to our support center about this. We're a small company, less than twenty full-time non-management employees. I am considering just sending this to QA and deploying it after it passes.

Our sales team has told us the browser issue is a big deal for them. I think our engineers are lazy in the wrong way and are taking advantage of management.

What's the right way to handle this? The burden it is putting on our users, and our lethargic response to that burden, is, IMO, indicative of a rotting culture I would like to reverse. I am aware this risks getting me fired, but I'm still favoring that risk presently.

It may be a very good idea, but if you specifically disobey your management and do it against their wishes, don't be surprised if you get fired. As the other comments suggested, you can try to look for a way to convince them that it's the right thing to do. But if you fail, forget about it.

However, you might consider starting to look for a job in a company whose way of doing things aligns more closely with your own. And it will be easier to get your next job if you haven't been fired from your previous job for insubordination. It's much better to make the choice of leaving on your own, when the time is right for you.

It appears that your current position is one where you may not have all the relevant facts, e.g. there maybe contractual issues or the possibility the company is in a due diligence phase or that the company is in negotiations for a contract that would pay for making the changes.

To put it another way, the closest to a business case you have presented is that sales has voiced complaints to you. They're the ones in a position to make a business case to management and it's management's prerogative to act upon it or not. This isn't worth falling on your sword. Move on or find a side project to channel your energy.

Good luck.

Yea it sounds like the mgmt is trying to squeeze money from customers to "pay" for the upgrades. Best solution is just find a new employer.

I would run through "Driving Technical Change" by Terrence Ryan for a few ideas. It's short and to the point:

http://pragprog.com/book/trevan/driving-technical-change

http://www.amazon.com/Driving-Technical-Change-Terrence-Ryan...

Gather evidence that will show how easily the system can be updated to support other browsers. This will allow you to gain buy in from management.

If the product engineers are refusing to make the site compatible when the customers obviously want it, they're failing to provide the product they're hired to create.

I'm being told to sit on this

This question is more problematic than you think. You should consider resigning and getting a new job.

Insubordination will not only put you at risk for losing your job on an involuntary basis, but in a precarious legal position should you be fired. (Your company will have the ability to deny you unemployment, and/or provide a reasonable professional reference.)

That being said, the way to handle your situation is to "skip-level" your boss. Most established companies provide for this (potentially via the HR function). The purpose of a skip-level is to raise issues internally that are important to the business but may be bottlenecked by a conflict of interest in middle-management.

This is a situation that needs to be handled with discretion. You don't want to trigger an emotional reaction from anyone about this--stay away from ad-libbing stuff like "I think our engineers are lazy in the wrong way"--you simply want to resolve a remediable inefficiency.

The key considerations for you are (1) establishing credibility, if its not already evident to your 1-over-1 manager; (2) being forthright with the risks (and fairly treat your immediate manager's stated position/s); and (3) finding a way to implement a decision without making your boss look "lazy in the wrong way" {etc}.

The question to you is really about the upsides to taking a pro-active approach?

The standard for that upside should be reasonably high. Can you deliver results to both your immediate boss and your 1-over-1 boss by doing this? If so, and if this will decrease any disfunction/toxicity (rather than trigger it), that is more persuasive.

If this is just going to inflame a bad situation, then again you may want to just look elsewhere before sinking more energy into a dead-end rabbit hole.

The downsides to doing a skip-level are mitigated by the discretion of your HR and 1-over-1 manager if this is simply declined. The messier edge case is where they decide to implement your fix, but something goes wrong technically or in the political implementation that damages your own reputation (for showing good judgement).

The bigger picture question: if the culture is "rotten", what are the odds that your skip-level is an equally un-satisfactory decisionmaker?

A "cowboy" implementation (with no approval) is unlikely to trigger a cultural renaissance you have multiple layers of bad management. It is possible, but remember someone up above you thinks those guys above you are "decent-enough". So you're initiative would have to overcome essentially 3 bad layers of managemnet--that is alot of inertia.

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