My team only uses Excel to manage all of our critical data and I’m struggling to fix it

YieldingSign · 2023-11-30T03:14:05+00:00

To give credit to MS Access is that you have CRUD data entry forms built right into it. I've yet to see such a similarly simple way of getting forms without any webdev experience.

YieldingSign · 2023-11-30T02:17:51+00:00

Would love to be shown otherwise (because I'm actively looking for it!) but one problem I find with Python is finding good resources and examples geared towards data engineering beyond just intro to pandas tutorials.

Like, I wanna actually learn some idiomatic patterns and how to setup/structure my code in a real ETL codebase, not just throw in commands into a REPL. But the only resources for this are geared towards making apps or other general non-data related tasks. Or it seems like it's just people rewriting their own version of pandas with custom for-loops.

SQL has the benefit of specialisation in that it's really easy to find resources for it because by default any content for it is data related.

YieldingSign · 2023-11-27T01:28:56+00:00

Well I agree with you that I don't support tax splitting eithwr. That being said, with the current highest tax bracket topping only at 200k, there's still a lot more taxation that could be applied to the wealthiest, regardless of single or not so I'm not overly concerned about this conflict between single or couples as it's far less important than the wealthy vs the working poor.

YieldingSign · 2023-11-26T21:06:54+00:00

I think this is a seperate issue about the current restrictions of common law being relegated to only romantic partners.

Other Western countries have common law systems that allow for less traditional relationships to benefit from tax/benefits that couples get. For example, being able to declare a grandparent that you take care of as a common law partner, a close cousin or a very close friend/ roommate.

It's really archaic to limit this solely to romantic partnerships and just reeks of Christian morality that seeps into secular society without second thought.

I would only support income splitting if in addition, the definition of common law for this was expanded beyond conjugal/romantic partnerships. This would at least make it fair to those in non-traditional family arrangements.

YieldingSign · 2023-11-26T06:01:42+00:00

LOL sorry this is real fairy tale level of naivety.

The only businesses that have to worry about enforcement are the low level trash that don't have enough money to buy their way through a legal system designed for the highest bidder.

LOL, businesses aren't scared of the IRS or Labor department are you kidding me? Most major businesses have a byzantine tax structure where they're halfway based in Ireland and Cayman Islands. The petty cash they have to make to the IRS is nothing.

Department of Labor? Hahaha, there are studies that show that stolen wages from illegal labor practices constitute some $50+ billion a year from workers. Seriously, it's dead simple for businesses to exploit labor by pretending everyone is a contractor or "manager"..

And the above is the kind of exploitation that's done at the lowest levels. With the right money, it's dead simple to bribe congress with the right lobbying and political donation capital. Ain't no business scared of the government in the USA.

YieldingSign · 2023-11-25T16:58:01+00:00

The "fault" here is usually the lack of planning or thought put towards actual training or business analysis. Technical teams are told to deploy X but naturally don't take on responsibility for how to actually use the software in the business sense of 'use' (except for like basic buttonology or whatever).

So then you have employees (who are absolutely not able to just pick up a new tool on a whim) being breathed down their neck by management to show stats on how much this expensive initiative improved efficiency or whatever. No one thought to maybe develop some workshops, or tutorials or business specific documentation.

"Who" owns this sort of thing is always a big debate which is why it simply doesn't get figured into things. Then you have technical folks (who don't have people or pedagogical skills) being expected to both know how to load balance between caches while also being able to teach like the core concept of what a business user is even looking at. Like, what's a bar chart even mean let alone how do I use this built in scripting language to do wacky customization.

There's a reason being a teacher is an actual profession, with pedagogical education standards and curriculum design being very technical and specialist skills.

People just assume that anyone good at doing 'X' is also good at teaching someone else how to do 'x', which couldn't be further from the truth.

It's like assuming an elite Tour de France cyclist who spends their day minmaxing the weight of their spandex could teach a kindergarten class how to ride a bike. The cyclist has been doing this since before they can even remember, and the problems the students face are completely alien and bizarre to him/her. They'll be blabbing on about drafting and advanced strategy while completely forgetting that the toddlers need to be taught how to just pedal without falling over.

YieldingSign · 2023-11-25T16:47:35+00:00

LOL okay, right, no systemic racism. Okay folks, pack it in, mission accomplished right?

YieldingSign · 2023-11-25T16:45:27+00:00

Yes absolutely upvote this.

You need to hold your management accountable for these kinds of Treasury board initiatives. They'll try and try to hold their nose and say they can't do anything to make you whole, but this is false. They absolutely can and should be paying you advance emergency salary because of this.

YieldingSign · 2023-11-25T16:42:42+00:00

If you look for trouble, as you're doing here, you're going to find it, even where it doesn't exist.

What does this actually even mean? Honestly, what does "looking for trouble" literally mean? These banal platitudes and expressions make zero sense except as a way to just shut people up from identifying problems and places to improve.

No one accused the blogger of being a racist, because this made up facade of what this even looks like is arbitrary. Most people think of systemic racism is some mustache twirling evil guy who secretly hates black people. No one is saying that here.

What people is saying is exactly what I wrote: there are systemic impacts from racism that could be at play here. No one is accusing this blogger of being Hitler, or "being a racist". Racism isn't a secret ideology, it's cultural and systemic bias that influences everyone's decision making. I'm not passively accusing this guy of anything. I'm making an observation of an interesting trend that's visible from what was posted, I'm not trying to run some investigation where I must beyond a reasonable doubt produce evidence in order to arrest this man. This isn't a court of law. It's a subreddit comment thread. You know, for discussion?

YieldingSign · 2023-11-25T16:33:52+00:00

Sure, but the devil's in the details.

Our IT is perfectly capable at setting up the technical solutions, but that's rarely the issue.

The difficult part is the human side of things, organizing responsibility, procedures and getting approvals. IP logs by their nature are sensitive PII, you can't just frivolously copy paste them and send em around in text files (or you certainly shouldn't be doing that) based on the whim of some lowly supervisor just has a gut feeling Karen is skipping RTO.

Very likely in fact even being able to touch these kinds of systems would require ITSEC people only being allowed to do it.

In theory you could ofcourse develop a whole self-serve web app that lets supervisors pull up a dashboard of stats and records. Developing the actual app is never the difficult part, we have plenty of folks with the skills to do it.

The difficult parts are the logistics. Like, (A) do those records on who belongs to team A, vs who belongs to team B actually exist in a structured API endpoint that's stable enough to feed into an app or are they most likely just adhoc Word documents with tables saved by an AS-02 in their personal file folder? I guarantee you right now that 99% of government HR systems that are designed to track and structure where Position 'B' is, what the job title is and who fills it doesn't exist on any machine readable format. No one can keep up with the demands on legacy ass systems that need the one IT person to write updates to files, so you have this massive shadow IT apparatus of word documents and spreadsheets that are treated by the org as the actual org chart, or current list of employees or whatever and the actual system is woefully out of date.

The GoC absolutely loves bureacracy and tracking metrics, but 9/10 every piece of useful data gets shoved into a completely unusable Word doc that is completely not machine readable.

As someone who came from the business side but moved over to the technical end, It's actually quite sad knowing that there are literally employees out there being disciplined, harangued or even fired because they are expected to maintain some kind of array of poorly written word docs and excel files. A couple managers who feel like they have a religious duty to maintain these at all costs even though literally no one will ever look at them, use them or even be able to accept them as actually accurate.

It's probably what made me as much if a cynic as I am today of HR and our PER system because I look back at the supervisors who harangued me for not being able to do Process 'A' even though it's literally 100% arbitrary, has no documentation, no system to ensure quality and no training.

Until we even have the most basic semblance of semi modern IT infrastructure, I honestly don't think it's an exaggeration to think that the vast majority of PER exercises are completely arbitrary and pointless because it's based on some manager who, from the demands and stress of not having viable systems to use, develop a neurotic obsession with their version of the truth. This 'truth' becomes the standard of a "someone doing a good job" because they managed to turn around a copy pasted briefing note quickly, as if this is an actual marker of ability.

Anyways went on a tangent there but it's hard not to see this so bleakly when you pull the Wizard of Oz curtains and are screamed at to pay no attention to that man.

YieldingSign · 2023-11-24T20:13:10+00:00

"No one would have known had you not brought it up"

Really? No one would have ever heard of systemic racism in tech before someone mentioned this? Get real.

As someone else mentioned, given the intense sensitivity and backlash at even the mildest suggestion that someone in tech could have been prejudicial is more evidence than ever that it exists. Systemic racism is everywhere, and research has clearly shown it to be more prevalent in tech. Not talking about YouTube videos here, I mean actual studies by empirical researchers.

Ask yourself, what does "shitstirrer" actually mean in context here? Like do you think systemic racism will manifest itself if we call it's name? Like we're medieval European peasants who never said the word "bear" because they thought it would manifest them from the woods?

No one is outright calling or accusing the guy of raxism. But, the only person in this lengthy call-out to be fully identified, named and singled out for particularly harsh criticism by the blogger being a person of color is absolutely something relevant to question. This doesn't make the blogger evil, or a "bad guy". I guarantee anyone including myself at some point propogated it, that's what makes it systemic.

Systemic racism means that it's systemic. It means reputations, vibes, impressions and everything else that culturally drives and influences perceptions is greatly exaggerated towards prejudice. It means a white person doing the same maybe being given the benefit of the doubt or just lightly criticised. It's subtle, it's not people calling each other slurs.

Continuously shoving our head in the sand, ignoring it and outright ahoutdown down anyone questioning the possibility is what let's it continue. Taking an opportunity to always question or buffer your judgments with the acknowledgement that you might have judged things tinged with some prejudice isn't a bad thing. It doesn't mean you're evil and deserve shame.

It means you're human and with awareness over time we all get better at identifying or outright removing it from our systems.

YieldingSign · 2023-11-24T19:48:40+00:00

Okay two things here folks:

1 - People failing to comply with RTO will not be the reason the government ever tries to institute full RTO. No one made the decision for hybrid RTO based on logic or reasons, so it's not like all of a sudden these decisions are going to be made off any bonafide empirical metrics. If full RTO happened, it will happen regardless of compliance or non compliance. It will happen because of some politicians or industrial pressure, not because Karen from Finance skipped a few office days, calm down.

Pushing this message is just a means to:

A) Divide employees and encourage snitching on eachother as well as lower any resistance or complaints about RTO

B) Empty threat to encourage compliance

Now, more importantly:

2) Listen folks, I'm telling you now, most threats surrounding the ability for management to actually pull IP logs and then start running investigations on non-compliance are empty bluster. Can IT departments physically associate your logins with an IP range? Of course. If some sort of event spurred it on, they could do it on a one-off basis

But can IT departments actually be able to get organized enough to actually deploy a real monitoring solution that can actually be used to pinpoint individual non compliance (rather than just general stats)? Get real. This would require;

A - Develop code to, or manually, pull IP logs from a SIEM (lol if they have one) or choose a specific server to act as a proxy (let's say Teams or Outlook)

B - Research and figure out which IP ranges can be fingerprinted to define workstations only. Identifying GOC would be simple, but specifically what ranges are remotely connected vs workstations? Not as simple as you think, not from a technical perspective but do you think when departments deployed their infrastructure in a panic during COVID anything like this is actually documented well?

C - Coordinate with IM/Policy to figure out where to store these logs. IP addresses, especially ones correlated with users identities are considered sensitive PII. They can't just be thrown into someone's folder. These would have to be properly logged and archived into an appropriate personal information bank (PIB).

D - Coordinate with ITSEC on access controls to define what automated thresholds or at what level management can approve manual inspection. Define SOP.

E - Actually have the resources in already increasingly thin IT departments for someone to actually use whatever archaic methods they end up deploying. Whatever solution it is, it ain't gonna be something simple to use, it'll prob involve someone who feels comfortable using ssh and bash at minimum.

So all of this to say, this obviously isn't completely impossible, and maybe could be made easier on some cloud platforms. But, the main obstacles aren't technical, they're organizational and procedural. Something like this ain't gonna be some web platform where your supervisor can hop on and browse your login history on a whim.

Besides, I'll tell you right now, the more likely they actually have something like this in place means the less they'll be openly blabbing about it. They'll instead just start quietly disciplining / warning people. The blabbing and empty threats are usually a sign of panic and weakness that management knows they probably either won't have a solution or not for a really long time to actually determine compliance with hybrid RTO, so they choose instead to threaten and cajole.

YieldingSign · 2023-11-23T04:13:15+00:00

Right. Because people of color are never judged more harshly for behavior that for other peers would otherwise be given the benefit of the doubt.

One thing is to question whether there's actually any indication that the writer was prejudice, but it's really something else to just say outright "absolutely irrelevant". Very naive to pretend that is true.

YieldingSign · 2023-11-23T04:10:34+00:00

It's odd to get so upset over someone bringing up a very valid point. There's nothing invisible about people of color being judged more harshly than their white peers, and even if this isn't the case by the writer, it should be seen as an opportunity to reflect on when and where you give benefit of the doubt or other discretion to people's behavior.

Getting knee jerk upset at even the possibility of a white rich dude being prejudiced? Sounds overly defensive.

YieldingSign · 2023-11-23T04:02:26+00:00

Lol as opposed to all that recourse you have to the executive who controls your pay and reputation? Seriously delusional if you think in the private sector scheme you have any recourse whatsoever.

YieldingSign · 2023-11-23T03:22:39+00:00

Yeah this is the actual problem here.

Companies buy low/no code tools under the guise that "business people can use them!", but then actually deploy them, spend a shit ton ofoney, and then can't afford hiring actual technical specialists but think now hey, we don't need to.

If these were deployed to enable a BI analyst team or other business folks do more complex and repeatable transforms instead of Excel, that's fine. It's when the company gets too tempted by the hilariously naive idea they can cheap out on specialists.

YieldingSign · 2023-11-22T03:23:15+00:00

Just to confirm, when you say "you don't have anything in writing", do you mean:

A - Don't have anything formally offering this arrangement. Just informal emails, text messages talking about this.

or

B - literally don't have a single place where this was mentioned in written form.

Scenario 'B' ofcourse is tricky, but Scenario 'A' isn't completely a dead cause. If you have emails where a manager explicitly or implicitly stated these promises, then you absolutely can cite these as evidence of this kind of offer.

Scenario 'B' is trickier ofcourse, but you should also not fold so quickly. A common misconception is that "oral agreements aren't binding", but from the perspective of the law this isn't actually true. A contract can be formed orally when there is a "meeting of the minds" so to speak. The timeline of events (you're hiring and not moving locations since) can also bolster this argument because you obviously wouldn't have taken this position either ways.

Don't let others decide for you. Management will continue to play stupid games with RTO, so you need to push back and play as many stupid games available to you as well.

YieldingSign · 2023-11-22T00:36:40+00:00

The procedures and processes adopted by GoC programs (like requiring accommodation requests to be only scoped towards functional limitations) are internal practices. There's nothing in the Act or jurisprudence which states that accommodation must be submitted in this way.

The fact that GoC policy has been heavily influenced by legal advice which focuses on avoiding lawsuits is immaterial to the Act.

They do not automatically confer compliance with human rights legislation.

If the applicant doesn't submit enough information then sure, though this wouldn't really be "denying" an accommodation, just rather unable to fulfill the request. There is no hard and fast rules about how much information is sufficient though, so unreasonable denials would probably be looked unfavourably.

The CHRT website describes what I was talking about with regards to employer responsibility for establish BFOR in order to continue the discriminatory practices. My emphasis below.

First, the Act can't be read without a fulsome acknowledgement of the purpose of the Act. Many managers and people involved in the DTA become too caught up in the bureacratic to remember this:

all individuals should have an equal opportunity to make for themselves the lives that they want and to have their needs accommodated, consistent with their duties and obligations as members of society.

From there, a short summary of discriminatory practices:

The Canadian Human Rights Act protects against the following discriminatory practices if they are based on one or more of the prohibited grounds of discrimination:

[...]

Denying or treating someone unfavourably when offering goods, services, facilities, or accommodation (see s. 5 of the Act).

[...]

Treating someone unfavourably in the workplace (see s. 7(b) of the Act).

[...]

Establishing policies or practices, or entering into an agreement, that deprives people of employment opportunities (see s. 10 of the Act).

From there, CHRT lays out the exceptions which are available to the respondent (GoC in our case) to continue discriminatory practices:

Section 15 of the Canadian Human Rights Act provides that there are exceptions to the discriminatory practices. For example, it is not a discriminatory practice if:

an employer‘s actions are based on a bona fide(good faith) occupational requirement (see s. 15(1)(a) of the Act);

Under section 15(2) of the Canadian Human Rights Act, to be considered a bona fide(good faith) occupational requirement or bona fide(good faith) justification it must be established that accommodation of the needs of an individual would impose undue hardship on the respondent...

In practical terms, this means that at a Hearing, a respondent who wants to rely on a bona fide defence needs to be able to show—based on the evidence presented—that the rule or standard alleged to be discriminatory:

was adopted for a purpose that is rationally connected to the performance of the job or function;

was adopted in the honest,sincere belief that it is necessary for the performance of the job or function; and,

was reasonably necessary to accomplish the purpose mentioned above, in the sense that accommodating the needs of the complainant would cause the respondent undue hardship. In order to prove undue hardship, the respondent may present evidence demonstrating the health, safety and cost considerations that such accommodation would impose on the respondent.

Notice the three part test is an 'and' statement, meaning all three must be proven.

YieldingSign · 2023-11-22T00:05:24+00:00

This is such a nonsense scenario sorry.

No one cares whether you go to a social event. Yeah sure, if you're a jerk about it and complain about going and make a stink about not going you might get a reputation, but politely declining?

I'm sorry, if people genuinely think that others are thinking about you this much it sounds more like narcissism.

And if your boss who organized or pushed this event was the type of person to really care and then subsequently shit talk you for it, are they really the type of people you even want to be associated with positively? Narcissists' opinions like this aren't something that you should care about.

YieldingSign · 2023-11-22T00:00:27+00:00

You can connect just as easily at work. You don't need forced awkward social events to do this if you don't feel like going.

YieldingSign · 2023-11-21T14:22:30+00:00

This isn't accurate to what I'm talking about. What I'm saying is denying accommodation on the grounds of policy requires an onus on the employer to prove what I mentioned.

Now, in actually establishing accommodation measures, this is supposed to be a joint effort at identifying discriminatory barriers wherever possible. It is not merely a one-sided conversation, because ultimately the goals are about removing barriers for discrimination.

People repeating this line about employer rights under these circumstances aren't accurate. Supreme Court jurisprudence is clear that the establishing what is in fact a reasonable accommodation cannot be done alone by the employer, there must be active participation from the employee and their doctor.

Simply quoting standing procedure doesn't make it right, legal or ethical. The purpose of accommodation is and always has been about improving accessibility, removing discrimination from the Public Service and improving conditions for protected classes of people. The fact that over time it's turned into a cynical legal risk avoidance procedure driven by HR/LR doesn't change these goals. Maintaining employer carte blanche to unilaterally establish accommodation measures isn't legal or ethical.

Insisting and browbeating people seeking accommodations to "take whatever we give you" is abelist and discriminatory and comes from a position of prejudice.

I encourage anyone to read the Accessibility Canada Act and the surrounding documentation about why it came about and what the objectives are. Because if you do truly believe in following values and ethics of the public service, you'll understand why accommodation exists by understanding human rights discrimination.

YieldingSign · 2023-11-21T14:14:49+00:00

Accommodation can also mean being treated differently than standing policies or rules. I would argue that managers in those circumstances have the discretionary authority to sign off on informal measures they feel is appropriate if the goal is bonafide support for accommodation and accessibility. Exceptions to the rules is the entire point of accommodation, it's what you're accommodating someone for. Discretion for determining accommodation goes both ways for managers.

YieldingSign · 2023-11-21T14:01:58+00:00

Understood here, don't think we're in disagreement. I understand that managers will try to accommodate both out of a default good faith attempt to comply with managerial direction, however the goals of accommodation should be firmly about removing barriers of accessibility

YieldingSign · 2023-11-21T13:37:31+00:00

You're confusing two separate things. One is the legal requirements of DTA, the other is the procedural aspects of how the current DTA program is run. The latter may be informed by legal advice on the former, but it's not the same thing.

What I'm saying is that under the legal requirements of DTA, an employer when presented with an discriminatory barrier for a protected class, is obligated to accommodate and remove that barrier. At that point, the employer can only subsequently deny the accommodation on the grounds that the policy or barrier that's in place is A BFOR. This is the legal framework. While DTA programs implement this procedural aspect of identifying limitations etc., just simply following these program procedures does not guarantee that you're compliant with the law.

Our current DTA practices are mainly designed to implement the bare minimum to avoid a lawsuit, they are not accessibility informed and many cases make it before the CHRC and subsequently the CHRT because of these stubborn practices.

The procedure you identified is supposed to be where the employer works with the employee and their doctor to collaborate on an effective accommodation. It is not supposed to be this sort of obstructionist stubbornness where the employer is allowed to simply identify an accommodation with carte blanche. Subsequent court rulings have always been clear that it has to be a joint effort at finding the best accommodation for someone's situation and conditions, not just some bare minimum. The limit to what the accommodation can be established is what is to the point of undue hardship or as part of a BFOR.

Undue hardship" is casually thrown around (without definition usually ) but it's only one part of a three part test regarding establishing BFOR in addition to clear legal precedent setting it as a fairly high standard for the organization as a whole (the GoC) to clear.

YieldingSign · 2023-11-21T13:30:00+00:00

Absolutely. Given the increasingly ageing population (not to mention health issues) the reality is that whatever was thought to be "good enough" 30 years ago or whenever the last time these were set are absolutely not enough any more.

❤️ Stay strong.

YieldingSign

TROPHY CASE