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locallost • today at 6:18 PM • 2 replies • view on HN

I am aware of the story and the theory behind it, I just don't agree. There is always something to do, and if you have a tightly run competent group, things go smoothly only because the team has a routine built on experience. If you throw a wrench in that and have someone waste time fiddling with m&Ms it will make the other important things worse. For me, asking for something like that and actually getting it would be more terrifying because it would be an indication that you're dealing with amateurs that don't have a routine and no experience. And also like I said, people pleasers that prioritize satisfying important people's whims instead of providing quality work. It's just been my experience those two don't really mix well, you either strive to be skilled at what you do and progress in your career, or you strive to make someone happy, and progress in your career. Think of the Volkswagen engineer that implemented the exhaust gas test cheating device. I expect qualified people to question nonsense, and to disagree. Skilled people are not McDonald's employees flipping a burger after the instructed 90 seconds or whatever. If you run your organization or team rewarding lemming like behavior, just following along with everything everyone else is doing, you will get a team full of lemmings. There's no way around that. How much you can accomplish with that depends on the task. For McDonald's it's fine, but then again it's a shitty product.

We can of course disagree, there's no harm in that.


Replies

Barbing • today at 10:05 PM

> things go smoothly only because the team has a routine built on experience. If you throw a wrench in that and have someone waste time fiddling with m&Ms

Isn’t there variance in how long a venue’s contractual obligations will take to fulfill? One weekend someone needs you to spend X hours coordinating on sound and lighting, the next weekend it’s .5X hours? (Correct me if I’m wrong here if someone knows.) If they get the M&Ms right and they triaged appropriately, seems like a little indicator they scheduled enough people to work long enough to make it through the whole rider.

No cop out here with “oh just tell them you’re ignoring it”, treating the whole doc as a serious thing to get through or they can find another venue that will.

Edit: apparently to even deal with Van Halen you’d have to deal with not three 18-wheelers of gear, max, but three times as many! So you’d need way more hours I bet. Also an alternative that might rub some less the wrong way: some redditor (or liar) claims they’d put something really dumb mistake in their riders and good venues would essentially bring it up first thing.

Forgeties79 • today at 6:29 PM

One call: “hey saw the m&m requirement. Respect, but we aren’t doing it of course. See yall at the show.”