[gnicholas]

I used to be an associate at an international law firm. One of the partners told me that the firm was structured to maximize the percent of time that lawyers spent on billable matters. There was substantial support staff to take care of scheduling, handling mail, reimbursements, and other non-billable matters.

I've been shocked to see how this mentality is not duplicated in university environments. I know tenured professors at Stanford who spend countless hours arranging travel with visiting scholars, dealing with reimbursements, and other office minutiae. It boggles my mind that these people — who are supposed to be focusing on teaching and research — spend to much time on menial tasks.

It isn't that these tasks are 'below them'. Rather, it's that there are a limited number of hours in the day, and every hour they spend handling reimbursement paperwork is an hour they're not spending doing award-winning research or writing an award-winning book.

[alisonatwork]

Annoyingly, this exact same thing happens in tech companies too.

In my current company, one of the employee perks is a lunch allowance. But to get the lunch allowance, you need to get a tax receipt from the place you bought lunch, and then scan it, submit the scan to a woefully slow and painful expense system, then also physically glue it to another claim sheet, and annotate it with some more details, etc etc. From my perspective it's essentially rewarding employees who waste the company time not doing the work they were hired to do. To me it's utterly absurd that any software developer spend their day doing expense claims when a professional administrator could do the job much faster and (probably) more cost-effectively.

And this isn't the first place I've worked like this either. I miss my job 20+ years ago when we had a secretary who not only took care of these things but also did stuff like take meeting minutes too. The loss of administrative staff has made the workplace far less efficient, in my opinion.

[gnicholas]

Somebody needs to bring his/her kid to work over the summer and start a side-business of processing reimbursements for a buck or two apiece.

> From my perspective it's essentially rewarding employees who waste the company time not doing the work they were hired to do.

I think they're counting on the fact that relatively wealthier employees won't miss $15 in reimbursements, or will feel 'cheap' submitting the receipts. The company has found a way to just subsidize lower-paid/cost-sensitive employees.

It's creating friction in order to get employees to self-select into (1) those who find the free lunch to be a meaningful perk, and (2) those who don't care that much. But I completely agree that it creates frustration for those who do it (and those who don't due to the time-consuming nature). I wonder if people would feel better about it if the company came out and said that they have an inefficient submission system specifically to deter wealthier employees from claiming the benefit?

[indeedmug]

> "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." - Hanlon's razor

There probably isn't a grand strategy when it comes to awful processes. The process was probably setup by some woefully overstretch person. No one bothered to update the process because there are too many fires from the other awful processes that was also setup by another woefully overstretch person.

[gnicholas]

I'm not suggesting malice at all! An economist would even call it 'efficiency'.

It's also possible this is a hybrid — that the process grew in complexity for exogenous reasons, and when someone considered streamlining it, they realized that doing so would result in more reimbursements processed (specifically for more well-off employees) and decided to leave it be.

[bumby]

I ran into this with a safety reporting system that required a hand-mailed complaint to company HQ. When we inquired as to the possibility of updating to an online system, one primary reason was that they did not want it too easy to report safety issues because then they would be obligated to process the higher volume of complaints. They felt this bureaucracy made their side more efficient (but I would argue less effective).

[taylorius]

I don't subscribe to Hanlon's razor. I'm not convinced there is a clear dividing line between stupidity and malice. Is greed and selfishness malicious, or stupid? Both? And who is to know the contents of a bureaucrat's heart when they reject your form? Hanlon's razor is nothing but a broom to sweep bad intentions under the rug.

[hoseja]

I stop Hanlon's Razor at the individual level. As soon as you have a meme-entity subject to evolutionary pressure (corporation, government, nation, religion, charity, ...), assume maximum malice only loosely limited by its effect on fitness.

[taylorius]

I agree 100%. If one were to apply Hanlon's razor in those circumstances, one would have to explain how such entities always seem to come out on top from their "stupid" actions.

[raverbashing]

> by some woefully overstretch person.

Doubt. And if they're overstretched it's most likely because of their own shortcomings

No, sounds more like playing whatever little amount of power they have

[mrtksn]

That's strange because this problem is actually solved with specialised payment cards that you give your employees and they can spend their allowance they way they like and there's no paperwork because the card network handles the restrictions on what the card can be used.

Maybe those are not available everywhere?

[setr]

That’s.. interesting. My current company has had issues with optimizing reimbursements, mostly because it was previously an honor system but with recent growth you’ve gotten abusers (usually people coming from large companies e.g. minorly more convenient flights for triple the price — solved by travel agent — Uber black rides — solved by manual review, family outings billed as client dinners, etc). Not sure how much would really get captured by automated credit cards, but it seems like something worth suggesting.

Any idea what the actual name of it is?

[palebluedot]

TripActions Liquid is one of these solutions. Spending categories and limits are enabled on the VISA card, and can also be time-blocked (for trip per diems). No receipts necessary, you can only use it in the approved categories.

[mrtksn]

Sodexo Restaurant Pass is a big one, there are many other alternatives. I see Sodexo offers the service in Germany, India, Turkey and probably other countries but apparently it's not a global thing. Ticket Restaurant is another big one.

[hackeraccount]

Just pay people more.

[rsj_hn]

I think these companies are exploiting the fact that many tech employees value the $20 lunch perk more than an extra $5K in salary. I've seen this first hand, and for a lot of employees, a paid lunch is valued far more than it should be.

This is the basic reason for a lot of office perks. I'd personally prefer the cash and arrange for my own gym/lunch/coffee bar, as I don't want work to swallow up my life, but I'm in the minority.

[neilknowsbest]

To be sure, $20 per day at ~250 days per year is $5k. And that's tax-free to the employee, so if they're going to be spending that money on lunch anyways, it is better for the employee to trade the $5k pretax salary for the lunch benefit.

[rsj_hn]

It's not tax-free. It's compensation and taxes must be paid on it. It makes no difference whether your employer buys a sandwich and gives it to you or gives you money to buy a sandwich, it all adds to your income and is taxable, as is your gym reimbursement, etc. Firms that do this increase the withholding taxes and add these benefits to your total compensation which you can review -- go take a look at your employer-provided withholding forms.

[neilknowsbest]

Interesting, I hadn't realized that. I always assumed that firms doing this were just reimbursing the employee and then putting the lunch/whatever expense onto their own books.

[shandor]

I've been wondering this exact same thing, with added bewilderment from the fact that after all this non-core work pushed onto the academic staff the administration is still the one function growing, and growing fast.

We used to joke at my alma mater that the administrators were just trying to fill up their building to get a new one. The joke turned more than a little sour when it actually happened. And no, the university hadn't seen anything resembling necessary growth for such an explosion in administrative staff. If anything the faculties had been under cost-cutting for some years when it happened.

I think the phrase "you can't make this shit up" was coined for these situations...

[musicale]

Stanford University actually built a separate campus for administrative staff. As you note it's hard to make this up:

"Stanford Redwood City is a center of excellence for critical administrative areas. Learn which departments are working at Stanford Redwood City."[1]

A university administration's primary objective, and successful accomplishment, appears to be administrative growth.

[1] https://redwoodcity.stanford.edu

[quickthrower2]

Parasites, not unlike this: https://www.wired.com/2014/10/absurd-creature-week-glyptapan...

[lkrubner]

Since the 1990s there's been a massive effort to get rid of all the secretaries, and this was coupled by the idea that the secretaries were not doing crucial organizational work. The end result is that secretarial responsibilities have been given to other people in the organization, and therefore many organizations are worse run, compared to 30 years ago. This has also been the rare case where labor specialization went in reverse, with secretarial work being given to doctors, professors, computer programmers, police, etc. If you know what Adam Smith said about specialization, you should understand how much worse things have gotten as specialization went into reverse.

[MontyCarloHall]

>I've been shocked to see how this mentality is not duplicated in university environments

Why? Maximizing billable hours maximizes the amount of money the law firm as a whole makes, and thus the amount of money law firm leadership makes. Maximizing research output does not maximize revenue for the leadership of the university as much as further bloating the administration does.

[thaw13579]

At a research university, it would help get grants, a large chunk of which goes to the university via indirect costs. In practice, they expect the grants to flow on top of of these other minutiae often as unpaid overtime.

[hoseja]

This assumes grant-granting makes sense.

[thaw13579]

Right, unfortunately the grant funding model is deeply embedded in university research. Some folks get some startup funds on hiring (usually for lab construction/setup), but the rest is dependent on outside resources via grants. There are a few exceptions, e.g. Janelia, NIH intramural, Allen Institute, but they are unfortunately rare.

[feet]

I'm not sure I understand your comment, could you please expand on it?

[thaw13579]

I think the parent is suggesting that the grant-based model of funding research is itself flawed. There are many issues, so it could be related to how the grants are chosen/reviewed, funds are allocated, universities depend on them, careers of scientists are decided by them, etc.

[barry-cotter]

People, don’t downvote this. Partners at law firms follow their incentives. Administrators follow theirs. Expecting people not to follow their own interests is a recipe for disappointment. If you want good results making a good system works. Relying on gassing good people doesn’t.

[gnicholas]

How does adding administrative bloat increase revenue for the university?

I would contend that maximizing the amount of time that professors spend on the work they are uniquely qualified to do does maximize revenue for the university. It allows them to win more prizes, to cultivate and educate PhD students who can go on to become successful (to the credit of their PhD-granting institution), and educate undergrads (which can lead to more donations from parents or from grateful alumni).

I would think that on the whole, a university that was trying to maximize revenue would enable their braintrust to spend more time on activities that involve their brains.

[lmm]

> How does adding administrative bloat increase revenue for the university?

It doesn't, but administrators' salaries aren't really connected to the university's revenue. (And if they were, they'd probably focus on building more stadiums, selling more merchandise, and doing more advertising for deep-pocketed sponsors).

> It allows them to win more prizes, to cultivate and educate PhD students who can go on to become successful (to the credit of their PhD-granting institution), and educate undergrads (which can lead to more donations from parents or from grateful alumni).

The feedback loop for publishing better papers -> getting a better reputation takes decades, and it's not even clear you'd end up with more revenue at the end of it. As for attracting donations from grateful parents and alumni, the most effective way to achieve that is lowering your grading standards.

[tlb]

Maximizing research time helps over a much longer time horizon than getting lawyers to bill more hours. The principal-agent problem gets a lot worse when the time horizon goes beyond 10 years, as decision makers probably won’t even be around then.

[fxtentacle]

The difference is that scholars don't generate revenue for the university. Also, hiring PhDs in academia is surprisingly cheap.

[dontbenebby]

>There was substantial support staff to take care of scheduling, handling mail, reimbursements, and other non-billable matters.

I know many a phd student or professor who use freemium apps to handle that, at the expense your travel itinerary is now marketing data.

Not a great thing, especially when agents of foreign power will do things like show up in your hostel to pump you for “business intelligence”.

Americans don’t get much vacation, if you bother us in the hostel common room it makes us want to do a”social experiment” where since the EU has no death penalty we drown you in a Dutch canal and see if they give us a 1 bedroom with a PlayStation like they did Anders Brevik, not tell you the inner working of our NGO.

(For context, it’s my understanding since there’s no death penalty for espionage anymore, paired with no EU wide intel agency, many EU folks sell secrets back to the “motherland” - usually France or Israel - for money… to the point it’s basically decriminalized.)