boss: “I’m conceiving a new policy for engineering. What do you think about these changes?”

me: “Looks good”

boss: “You hardly looked at it”

me: *looks for one second longer than I did last time* “Looks good”

boss: “Do you actually care about this?”

me: “Am I going to have to enforce this policy or interact with any aspect of what happens when it becomes official?”

boss: “No”

me: “Honestlly, man….I really don’t”.

boss: :( “Ok”.

🤷‍♀️

People keep complaining about stupid policies but then when a manager asks an engineer on payroll to review the policy (a request well within the responsibilities of an engineer) they're met with this.

@lbfalvy I’m curious how reviewing high-level corporate policy is “well within” the responsibilities of a single, non-managerial individual contributor engineer.

Is said engineer beholden to the policy? Are they charged with upholding it? Are they empowered to amend the policy? Revoke it? Levy penalties for breaches?

If not, how is it “well within” their responsibilities?

We probably have had different lived experiences, but pardon my cynicism towards these kinds of perfunctory and superficial reviews conducted by the rank-and-file serving any additional purpose other than validating whatever assumptions leadership and management already had their minds made up on.

They’re going to do whatever the hell they want with these *anyway* and we both know it.

@ComputerToucher As a worker you have the necessary knowledge to assess and critique policies dictating your field of work. Whether it's within your responsibilities has nothing to do with whether the policy will affect you once it's in effect, nor whether your conclusions are likely to make an impact. Your reason to do it is that you've been asked by your boss and it's within your responsibilities because you have first hand experience with the work the policy is about.

@lbfalvy I’ll keep this in mind for my next rant. Thank you.