I can relate to the author 100%. The on-boarding process just sounds absurd. I have been there. It was awful. I hated it.
The worst that I experienced was a requirement that all new hires complete a training course for Splunk, the log aggregator. Why? Apparently, Splunk was a shared resource for this massive company. As a result, careless queries or logging could result in degraded performance for other teams needing to query their logs in Splunk.
Ok, no big deal, right? That's what I thought too. I dutifully started working on my training to get it out of the way. I took detailed and copious notes like my job depended on it. After an entire week of eight hour days doing nothing but taking Splunk trainings I was finally done...with section 1.
What the hell? There is another section? As it turned out, it took most new hires 2-3 weeks to complete the trainings. If a new hire did not complete the training they could not access Splunk, and apparently this meant they could not do their job. Absurd on many levels. To add insult to injury, this was a new requirement and many on my team were given access and were never required to complete the training. Those very same people kept telling me "oh, just do it, we don't expect you to be productive right away".
Well, I didn't do it. I refused. I told anyone that asked that I thought the requirement was unnecessary and a waste of time. Eventually, my manager got very pushy about it. I continued to stand my ground. In particular, I told my manager he needed to go to bat for me and get me access if he wanted me to do my job.
LO AND BEHOLD, I was given access.
The author is right for not wanting to be forced to do stupid things and have their time wasted. I don't know where some commenters get off calling the author "entitled" or "not a team player". Why are they so invested in this?
The worst that I experienced was a requirement that all new hires complete a training course for Splunk, the log aggregator. Why? Apparently, Splunk was a shared resource for this massive company. As a result, careless queries or logging could result in degraded performance for other teams needing to query their logs in Splunk.
Ok, no big deal, right? That's what I thought too. I dutifully started working on my training to get it out of the way. I took detailed and copious notes like my job depended on it. After an entire week of eight hour days doing nothing but taking Splunk trainings I was finally done...with section 1.
What the hell? There is another section? As it turned out, it took most new hires 2-3 weeks to complete the trainings. If a new hire did not complete the training they could not access Splunk, and apparently this meant they could not do their job. Absurd on many levels. To add insult to injury, this was a new requirement and many on my team were given access and were never required to complete the training. Those very same people kept telling me "oh, just do it, we don't expect you to be productive right away".
Well, I didn't do it. I refused. I told anyone that asked that I thought the requirement was unnecessary and a waste of time. Eventually, my manager got very pushy about it. I continued to stand my ground. In particular, I told my manager he needed to go to bat for me and get me access if he wanted me to do my job.
LO AND BEHOLD, I was given access.
The author is right for not wanting to be forced to do stupid things and have their time wasted. I don't know where some commenters get off calling the author "entitled" or "not a team player". Why are they so invested in this?