anagast
(ε)
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User ID: 230
anagast
(ε)
11mo ago
I've been reading up on the same, spurred by Palladium's recent piece on a related topic.
The 1991 CRA lists the goal "to codify the concepts of business necessity", but it doesn't actually do anything to define that term. The most common legal theory I can find is "No Alternatives", which states that you can use an aptitude test as long as there's no alternative that would have less disparate impact. The actual implementation seems to be a hedge magic of best-practices, derived through the flailing of HR departments reacting to lawsuits. Critically, the burden of proof is on the business -- if you're causing a "disparate impact", you're guilty by default unless you can prove the necessity.
So, there could be room for the courts to clearly spell out a way of proving business necessity. If I were a lawyer I'd go digging for court cases where such a proof has been successful.
Were you expecting it would be easy? Scaling from "do it yourself" to "get your team to do it" is a rare skill.
From their perspective, you are scope creeping. You're asking them to take on more work, and it's not the kind of visible high-impact work that leads to increased compensation or political power. You might solve this by figuring out how to reward the work more, or by increasing the amount of coercion applied to the sysadmins, but it's unlikely the problem is resolved without one or the other.
Yeah, intelligence is in short supply. You can try to find some magic pixie dust that lets you hire better, or you can figure out how to factor the work such that it can be productively resolved a few rungs down the IQ ladder. PM types tend to be responsive to systematization -- "I did the X process for Y client and now we're Z% of the way through the flowchart" sounds better than "I did some bespoke work for Y client", even if it's the same work. And IME once you set up the bare bones of a structure, they'll be quick to pick it up and fully develop the process.
If this harms productivity, then you have a politically cheap justification to ask him to change. If it doesn't harm productivity, then who cares? Let him be an asshole.
Yeah, can't help you there. The US government effectively mandates that you hire unqualified people. If it's any consolation, your competitors are required to do the same.
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