this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2026
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I need to find a better phrase than "cargo cult" but I see a lot of that at work. People who don't understand why a system is the way it is become fanatical about doing it particular ways.
Like, you have to do "file -> save as" into the directory. If you save it somewhere else first and copy it that's NO GOOD
Yeah. I think sometimes it comes from using a lot of shitty softwares that only work with "happy path" so they like to repeat what works and won't experiment (because that means repeated work).
I have a lot of "we have to do it this way", me: "this is better", them: "we always do this way".
As well as, me:"hey it's easier this way, I think clients will like this way, even if we do the original they have to switch eventually", them: "no, they asked for this, we NEED to do this", me: "can we ask?", them: "...", i talked to the clients and they were already thinking about the new one and had no problem, saved us weeks of work trying to back port an already existing solution
I just had a flashback to one of my first office jobs.
They had weekly reporting that needed to be done, and someone non-technical had been assigned to do it. They had like gone into the database and copy-pasted records into excel, and the whole operation took a full day.
I was like, "Hold on. What? You know you can script all of this, right?"
Luckily my boss liked me, and let me go ahead. Changed the task into an hour, including making whatever charts and slide-deck management wanted that month.
Though I do wonder if sometimes doing things badly is a weird pro-labor move- They get paid the same if they take all day versus an hour, so why bother speeding it up?
I think that's honestly how it goes. If you're efficient and just get more tasks, or get called off for not working (if you're done with work and doing something else), then you have to pace yourself. Lot if work I get is copy paste this from here to here that takes hours, I could have written an script to do all that in the time I spent cooy pasting, but then I'd be the only one who could do it again. Even though the next time it'd take 5-10 minutes
sounds more like state religion