[JV153]

Two viewpoints.

1. Bureaucracy is necessary.
2. Bureaucracy should be eliminated.


I would be interested in your views on when you have supported or attempted to eliminate/bypass
bureaucracy (or administration, if you prefer that word).

Please give specific examples and actions.

[KaiserJeep]

Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that "in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people":

In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely. He has restated it as:
...in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representatives who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.

If even a small bureaucracy exists, it grows like a cancer until the entire organism (i.e. organization) dies. My specific example is the Teacher's Union(s) mentioned above. They have a firm grip on the US educational system's neck, and are squeezing vigorously.

[Outcast_Searcher]

2. Bureaucracy should be eliminated.

I would be interested in your views on when you have supported or attempted to eliminate/bypass
bureaucracy (or administration, if you prefer that word).

Please give specific examples and actions.

Where I can do so legally and ethically, I am very happy to eliminate bureaucracy.

So my best example is at work.

For my nine years as an application programmer at IBM, I was able to knock out some decent sized applications to solve what management deemed a "serious" problem in a matter of a week or two if -- EVERYONE WOULD JUST LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE and let me work unfettered.

So, perhaps a dozen times, management came to me and said (I paraphrase), "Please review these specs and let us know how long it would take you to build this and test it if you dropped EVERYTHING else."

In each case where I gave an estimate of roughly a week or two, with a high level breakdown of how many day's I'd spend coding and testing, what the solution would look like, and what special (if any) resources I'd need -- they were delighted with how quickly I could solve the problem.

When they agreed, I laid down three completely non-negotiable requirements/"rules" I required to make the deadline, which in each case they immediately agreed to (which was kind of amazing with all the many rules/regulations IBM had for employees):

1). NO GODD*MN formal paperwork. Just get out of my way and let me BUILD the beast, and then we can spend weeks or months playing paperwork games if you want. (Management took care of the paperwork, bless their little hearts).

2). I work the schedule *I* want. You likely won't see me much by day, as I need fast machines and to ignore the phone, so I can concentrate and be productive. I will take my calls that have built up twice a day, so if you have an emergency, send a courier to my office. (And they were REALLY anal about scheduling).

3). YOU people make ALL my (other) current work go away for the duration -- you inform my customers in writing, renegotiate the schedules and get AGREEMENT in writing, and fight for me if there is blow-back.

Note: If management reneges on any of these rules (for political convenience, etc) don't even bother asking me to do this kind of thing again on an "emergency" basis. (To their credit they were always completely true to their word on this, even going out of their way to intervene when someone else higher up tried to kidnap me for ANOTHER "emergency", and I cried "foul".

....

Now, you may not believe any of this, but it's the simple truth. T there was a reason they put up with me making these demands and talking to them this way. Several of these projects had estimates from the usual teams working on that type of work of one to three YEARS, given all the complexities and rules of integrating the function into the current application. (I've heard it said that only the federal government could rival the level of overhead IBM built into its processes). I just built my own stand-alone widget. Management clearly had someone much higher up breathing a rain of fire on them and just wanted it to go away, so I'm sure THEY bent a lot of rules to make that happen, but that was their problem.

I actually considered such projects a lot of fun, a break from the routine, a personal challenge, and a way to enhance my reputation as a productive programmer -- so I didn't mind, even if I was working 12 to 20 hour days 6 or 7 days a week during the effort. (If I ran into problems or blew my estimate I did -- that's what building credibility is all about). And I didn't get paid overtime, but I suspect these projects had a role in me getting rather large raises the first decade of my career (back when IBM was a good company and a meritocracy).

....

Since I don't know how to do this (without endangering my freedom) with government involved -- judges, lawyers, police, tax collectors, etc. -- I meekly follow the rules on government matters. Given how much spying it turns out there is going on, I'm happy to have a clean conscience on all that stuff.

[JV153]

Now, you may not believe any of this, but it's the simple truth.

Believe me, I have absolutely no difficulty believing this.