Despite the unfortunate development of new information technologies, the best bureaucratic jobs remain concerned with shuffling paper. Deep within an abandoned coal mine in Pennsylvania, bureaucrats in outstanding jobs have worked for decades to this day processing the retirement paperwork for all federal government retirees. They collect paper documents into files and then type the files into an electronic database. Computers and electronic databases have changed a lot over the years. But the job of collecting paper documents together into a file has changed little. That job is unlikely to change rapidly in the future. Shuffling paper makes for secure jobs.
The advantages of paper are many. Paper has extremely low power consumption, is immune to cyber attacks, and doesn’t need to be constantly updated. Paper is the most general interface technology for connecting different information systems. Paper thus supports a wide variety of bureaucratic jobs:
I used to work for a medical billing company. My job was to print patient and billing information from a database. Then I would manually type all of the information that I just printed out into another database. {forkboy2}
I used to work for a place called Orthonet where case managers would type physical therapy costs into a spreadsheet, print it out, and hand it to me and another guy to type it into another spreadsheet. We kept our mouths shut and collected that sweet $14/hr to be that extra cog in a very inefficient machine. {kegtech}
Almost every workplace I have been in has had mind-numbing soul-crushing inefficient manual tasks. Those tasks are almost inevitably designed a decade or more ago by the people who are now seniors/management. They don’t like to see their long refined process and work flushed down the drain and respond to any suggestions with absolute hostility.
It doesn’t matter how nicely you go about it; if you don’t love and adore and gush over their paperwork baby then they will view you and the rest of your opinions with contempt and slowly freeze you out until you’re out of a job. I fell for it the first few times. But eventually I worked out “open door policy” means tow the line or it’s game over. {im_cody}
Most reports, even if they are written electronically and never printed out, are designed to be printed. They have a first page, and another page, and another page, and another page, etc., until the last page. That organization allows management to count easily how many pages of work employees have done. Reports intended to be weighty must be printed on heavy paper. A paper report must be filed in a cabinet to show that it has enduring value. No one cares about datasets. But reports produced are measurable outputs. Paper, whether actually used or not, is the controlling form for bureaucracy. Shuffling paper is the soul of bureaucracy. It’s the substance of the best bureaucratic jobs.
In other bureaucratic issues this month, financial services companies are pondering how to migrate automated teller machines (ATMs) from legacy Windows XP systems. If financial services companies had remained with tellers processing paper deposit and withdrawal slips, they wouldn’t now be facing the difficult question of how to migrate from Windows XP.
Microsoft recently released the source code for the MS-DOS operating system from 1981. Releasing this code undoubtedly required many levels of management approval. Hence it’s not surprising that it took 33 years for the code to be released. Open-source projects that release code more rapidly should consider whether they are staying current with best bureaucratic practices.
A Harvard Business Review blog has ignored obvious bureaucratic economics in examining “why good managers are so rare.” These management experts think that the limiting factor is inmate managerial talent:
Most companies promote workers into managerial positions because they seemingly deserve it, rather than because they have the talent for it. This practice doesn’t work. Experience and skills are important, but people’s talents — the naturally recurring patterns in the ways they think, feel, and behave — predict where they’ll perform at their best. Talents are innate and are the building blocks of great performance. Knowledge, experience, and skills develop our talents, but unless we possess the right innate talents for our job, no amount of training or experience will matter.
That’s ridiculous. The easiest way to look like a good manager to hire a lot of other bad managers. By continually increasing the ranks of management, bureaucratic development works to increase the number of good managers. If good managers are rare, the cause is bureaucratic under-development.
That’s all for this month’s Carnival of Bureaucrats. Enjoy previous bureaucratic carnivals here. Nominations of posts to be considered for inclusion in next month’s carnival should be submitted using Form 376: Application for Bureaucratic Recognition.