[HN Gopher] The F Word
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The F Word
Author : zdw
Score : 70 points
Date : 2026-02-04 15:34 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (muratbuffalo.blogspot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (muratbuffalo.blogspot.com)
| jmclnx wrote:
| >forcing us to file our own travel reimbursement
|
| Similar for me in the corporate world, in the 80s, I just had to
| save the receipts and give the to the Department Admin. Easy as
| pie.
|
| Then that all changed in the 90s. Everytime I traveled, using the
| 'canned' system provided to us, you could spend days trying to
| fill in the forms. It would ask you for all kind of codes no one
| knew to supply.
|
| Multiply that by 10s of employees, there is no way firing a Dept
| admin and contracting that out saved any money. It has to cost
| the company 2x or 3x as much as one admin costs. And that is a
| low-ball estimate.
| switchbak wrote:
| That reminds me of voicemail systems that are clearly
| engineered to confuse, demoralize and eventually hang up on
| folks. I had a major Canadian bank send me to something that
| simply didn't go anywhere, but took you around the merry go
| round for 40 mins before revealing it to be a black hole.
|
| Sometimes it's hard to see the incentives, but once you do - it
| all makes sense. And often they're contrary to what you would
| assume would be the company's goal.
| secretballot wrote:
| My experience has been that a hell of a lot of "automation"
| doesn't automate much, but is used as an excuse to make people
| do work that didn't used to be their job.
| jonahx wrote:
| > If the goal isn't actively set to help and streamline the
| process
|
| In the reimbursements example, the goal shifted, by design. The
| environment moved from high-trust to low-trust as the department
| grew, and the aim moved from "keeping people happy" to "spending
| less money"/"not being taken advantage of". Not defending it -- I
| hate paperwork like this -- but it seems almost inevitable as
| groups of any kind grow large enough and you actually can't
| assume good faith anymore.
| hamdingers wrote:
| The level of trust didn't change at all, Joann must have read
| every single receipt as she filled out the forms. A fraudulent
| or out-of-policy expense would've been noticed either way.
| seb1204 wrote:
| This, the person nitpicking the Concur entries might as well
| have done Joanne's job and achieve two things at once.
| Compliance to concur and the regulatory compliance built into
| the concur process and not wasting everyone's time doing
| concur
| jonahx wrote:
| High-trust doesn't mean absolute trust. Hand me a pile of
| receipts and I'll figure it out (probably with leeway in your
| favor) is much higher trust than uploading receipt,
| categorizing, adding explanations for exceptions, etc. One
| feels reasonable and still dignified. The other feels
| adversarial and paternalistic.
| thwarted wrote:
| Joanne probably had to field some "sorry, this can't be
| expensed" situations, and/or those were reduced because
| people knew another human was doing the work and they'd get
| called out, trying to game/abuse the system was less or
| just naturally discouraged. That was high trust, by both
| the employee and by Joanne.
|
| With the employees needing to use Concur directly, there's
| a tendency, since there's a diversity in how each employee
| will handle the specifics, to try to "save money" by
| denying reimbursements for any random violation, making
| sure all i's were dotted and t's crossed. The automated
| system itself encourages this because it's so low effort to
| deny and send the expense form back, potentially wearing
| down the employe that they just give up. Joanne could avoid
| all that _at scale_ because there was little /no diversity
| in how expenses were handled. If an i needed to be dotted,
| she could handle it, and she knew all the i's that needed
| to be dotted across all expense reports.
|
| I currently have someone to handle my expense reports _who
| sits in front of Concur_ for me! And that person routinely
| asks me for specific detail without me having to mess with
| Concur at all, things like "who was at this dinner you
| gave me a receipt for" or "I can't find the receipt for
| this company card charge".
| sseagull wrote:
| Over the long term, yes. However, universities like Buffalo
| might have some peculiarities. They are overall run by the
| state government, and professors/students/staff are state
| employees. In addition, the money that pays their salary often
| comes from the federal government (NSF, DOE, NIH) which comes
| with their own restrictions and regulations beyond typical
| accounting practices.
|
| So things like reimbursements are handled by a university
| trying to implement a state government's interpretation of both
| granting agencies desires and federal and state
| laws/regulations.
|
| My university seems to be going crazy with rules lately. My
| hypothesis is that the state, and by extension the university,
| wants to button down everything so as not draw attention of the
| federal government (given who is in charge). It's taking
| already stressed professors (funding cuts, etc) and piling on
| more stress.
| tombert wrote:
| I remember at a previous job I had to do a fair bit of business
| travel. The company had their own internal tool for filing
| expense reports.
|
| I would do the typical thing of "take picture of receipt, upload
| receipt, specify how much it cost, etc.", and for the most part
| it was seemless and it would be sent to my bank account.
|
| One time, I bought a box of Fiber One bars at a CVS Pharmacy and
| expensed that. I got a phone call from the billing department
| asking why I would expense something like that and I said
| something like "because I don't usually eat that healthy during
| business travel and I suspect you can guess the reason after
| that". They told me they would get back to me, and then I got an
| email telling me that they rejected the expense report and I
| would have to file it again to get the rest of my stuff
| reimbursed.
|
| I can be a pretty petty dude, so I filed it again, completely
| unchanged, I get another phone call telling me to remove it, and
| this repeated two more times. Eventually I complained to my
| manager and he was able to get them to let me expense it and it
| all worked out.
|
| I find it amusing, because the box of Fiber One bars was less
| than five bucks. I suspect all the time that they wasted of
| theirs and mine probably cost considerably more than the $5 would
| have saved from not covering it.
| orochimaaru wrote:
| Didn't you have a specific per day expense budget? I think
| there is a department of labor guidance for local travel and a
| department of state guidance for international travel.
|
| Usually, if your per day expense is less or equal to the
| guidance (where I work we do $90/day), no one cares. If you go
| above, you pay. The per day expense is for food. Alcohol cannot
| be claimed as an expense unless you are in sales.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Even in your short, simple comment I see 4? 5? (or more?)
| pieces of administrative policy that need to be policed, and
| then we need a process to handle these rules - and the edge
| cases (ex: what if I'm travelling with someone in sales but
| I'm the senior employee and we take a client out for dinner?
| only sales can expense alcohol but typically the most senior
| employee must pay), and the resubmission process, and the
| approve of exceptions process, and on it goes...
| tombert wrote:
| There was a limit but I wasn't allowed to just buy anything I
| wanted. I think I got up to $100 a day (not counting hotel).
|
| I didn't expense alcohol.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| 37 signals has a story about this, and the birth of policies &
| procedures that cost far more than the "crime" they're intended
| to prevent, because in your case it was $5 in granola bars, but
| that scenario will repeat itself for the rest of time, and
| extra resources will likely be dedicated to this "problem
| area". This seems inevitable as companies grow, and is one of
| the signals I use that it's close to my time to leave.
| Veserv wrote:
| That is more likely a result of legal requirements. As a
| general rule any personal benefit you get counts as your income
| and is taxed accordingly. Expensing is not, instead counting as
| a business expense.
|
| To avoid people just forming a personal company and declaring
| everything they spend a business expense and thus not taxed
| there are rules around what can be counted as a business
| expense.
|
| If you instead want to take your salary in the form of Fiber
| One bars, but pay taxes on that spending in dollars, then your
| accounting department might have had fewer issues since they
| would not be mixing legally distinct costs and accidentally
| committing financial fraud.
| onion2k wrote:
| If that was true the OP's manager wouldn't have been able to
| fix it. If finance rolls over it cannot be a legal issue.
| jjkaczor wrote:
| Why is it a personal benefit? If I am onsite for 5-10 days, I
| am likely going to have 1-2 bars/day - especially if I am
| working a high-stress engagement where actually leaving the
| client site would have taken away my ability to execute to
| the required level of service.
|
| At some point, policing what each employee eats and how they
| spend their maximum "per day/per diem" total allowance
| becomes a cost-drain.
|
| I have been in orgs where some people were frugal and bought
| essentially groceries, so they could eat in their hotel room
| - some of that was dietary or health choices and
| restrictions. Eating restaurant food every single day for
| 3-meals/day is not a healthy choice (especially years ago
| when portion sizes were typically far too vast in some
| countries/regions). Then, in the same group - we had staff
| who would determine an average size meal - and then ensure
| that the tips they left would max-out to their daily maximum
| allowance, to "spread-the-wealth" so-to-speak.
|
| Neither was fraudulent - we were allowed a daily max budget
| (it was not a per diem), we still had to submit receipts -
| heck, in our region if you wanted to spend your budget
| entirely on alcohol, there were (at the time) no red flags.
| loeg wrote:
| Presumably this shift happened due to another F word -- Fraud.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| Agree, but your explanation stops short of the full
| explanation: because fraud appeared, people were not punished
| for it, so it grew until it mattered, so everyone was punished
| with bureaucracy. If fraud would be quickly and severely
| punished (by termination), it would be at a level close enough
| to zero to even ignore it. But I think companies think it is
| better to get lower paid employees with less ethics and save
| 10k while losing 1k to fraud, per employee.
| mcphage wrote:
| > due to another F word -- Fraud.
|
| My guess is the R word --- Retirement.
| cortesoft wrote:
| I wouldn't be so sure the friction wasn't intentional. They are
| probably trying to cut costs, and by making the expense report
| process onerous, you will encourage people to expense things
| less, and therefore save money.
| wewewedxfgdf wrote:
| >> Joann, who was over 60
|
| Just to ensure you know that Joan was not technical, because old.
| jhbadger wrote:
| Well, also to explain why she wasn't there after a time.
| class3shock wrote:
| This maybe for travel expenses but it's the same story for so
| many things
|
| 1. Start with a mostly manual, people labor based, system that
| works well (handing Joann receipts) 2. It begins to not cost-
| scale well with growth (department size increases) or a salesmen
| comes around with a service that offers to do the same thing for
| less (Concur) or both 3. The company switches to reduce costs 4.
| The new service is cheaper partly because it offloads work onto
| employees (filling out travel expense forms) and by cheaping out
| on the experience (not caring that the forms are not easy to
| understand and the system is annoying to use) 5. Employees now
| have to spend time doing a task they never did and their
| experience is worse
|
| And it stays in this state forever because the observable costs
| (service cost vs some number of Joann's) are less. The fact that
| expensive employees (A department full of Phd's) are now wasting
| time and being annoyed by this system are not seen. The hours
| used to fill out those forms and lost productivity due to anger
| are never accounted for. Also the higher ups are detached because
| they still have their own personal Joann's taking care of
| everything.
| sdoering wrote:
| I always say, that finance departments can easily calculate
| costs. But opportunity costs most of the time don't make it
| into the books.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That was spot-on.
|
| All too true, and I never actually thought about it, in that way.
|
| I know that it's controversial, but it's my opinion that LLMs
| could be trained to be Joannes, instead of auditors (the bad
| guys, on Discworld).
|
| That could be good.
|
| Humans seem to get caught up in mustache-twirling exercises, when
| they are given any kind of power or authority. Machines could
| care less.
|
| But also, auditors could program LLMs to be mega-auditors.
|
| That would be bad.
| sdoering wrote:
| I didn't even put in my last hotel bill, because my time was
| worth more to me than navigating a shitty, always borderline
| broken excel file that once filled out leads to a back and forth
| of clarifying questions always with an undercurrent of "them"
| trying to "teach me how to be a good form fill monkey".
|
| If I should win the next pitch, I will definitely have on e of my
| team work on setting up a shadow system, a web application that
| produces pdfs for the finance department that are
| indistinguishable from the XLS based ones. But with a better CX
| for me and my people.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| LLMs could be a good option to navigating this sludge. Fight
| fire with fire.
|
| Another option is work smarter (not harder, because nothing I
| do is anywhere near "hard work") to get into a position where
| you can tell them to get fucked. Don't want to pay my hotel
| bill? Oh well, good luck finding someone else to rework your
| auth system. Call me back when the outsourced monkeys you hire
| end up putting you in the news for a security breach. But at
| least you saved a few hundred bucks on hotel fees, great job!
|
| This is something management and executive positions do on a
| continuous basis - using their position and "prestige" to
| commend respect and bend the rules. But as an engineer with
| context of a critical system you often have _more_ leverage,
| it's just a matter of using it strategically (as engineers we
| initially start out playing the good game, but the thing is
| that everyone else is trying to fuck you - the challenge is
| learning to fuck back).
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