Ask HN: How unprofessional is your work place?

2 points by Geenirvana 8 years ago | 1 comment

We all work in an professional environment but how often to you sit back and realize some of the things you do is so poorly implemented it is amazing the business functions?

For example, my place is internally known as an £100 million turnover business that runs off spreadsheets. We have a spreadsheet for almost everything, one of the biggest spreadsheets we have replicates a MRP system and it takes over 5 minutes to open and 40 minutes to refresh at 100% CPU. I have lost count the number of times people told me they felt embarrassed showing new customers on how we run.

I also see it with some of our customers. Our customers are some of the largest automotive companies in the world yet when I have to access their services, they are so poorly made I cannot fathom to understand how it works. Of course, due to the nature of the services they are bespoke but thing's are so notoriously complicated it makes it an unpleasant experience.

warrenm 8 years ago |

Depends on the aspect of the "work place" you're asking about.

Nothing is "professional" everywhere - you see it across so-called "Shadow IT", lack of proper tools (running all of your product compliance testing and tracking through individual Excel files, for example), goofy "compliance" requirements, and on and on.