Procurement also has it's WTF moments


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    I was talking to an acquaintance yesterday. He's a purchasing manager, and he told me of this little tale which happened recently. Apparently, they were organising a coordinated acquisition of a lot of expensive kit (electron microscopes, etc.) and so were having a big get together between the purchasing people and the various vendors who were interested in trying to supply this group. So far, so ordinary. (Far quicker to do this than to get every last damn supplier to come and listen to what you have to say in their own special meeting.)

    The WTF moment was when my acquaintance stood up and said that the criteria for selecting the supplier would be price and quality of product/support, because that got an immediate complaint from one of the suppliers that these were unfair and unreasonable criteria. Apparently this floored my acquaintance for a few seconds (a rare thing!) and then he responded “Well, what other criteria would you propose we use? Colour of logo? Number of ‘R’s in the month?”



  • I can't see why quality of product is necessary. I mean, how precise does an electron microscope have to be really?



  • So if the complaining supplier doesn't get the contract, and this is an official tender, he might feel the need to challenge the tender process in court, because making "quality" a criteria is clearly a discrimination against suplliers with poor quality.



  • I'm not seeing the rest of the story!


  • BINNED

    @dhromed said:

    I'm not seeing the rest of the story!

    Agreed. Needs more Hanzo.



  • And more Rings.


  • BINNED

    @Arantor said:

    And more Rings.

    5 at least. More if we get really hungy.


    Filed under: Mmmm... Onions...



  • I recently had to buy new stuff for our Physics lab to the tune of 80,000€.

    Naturally, we were to get several quotations. Only problem: We had to get six(6) quotations and they had to be comparable.

    The problem with the first requirement: There are only 2 companies in Germany who have a complete set of Physics lab equipment (Phywe & Leybold).

    The problem with the 2nd requirement: "Comparable" meant "identical to the last detail". Which means that if Phywe offered a coil of 1 meter length with 400 windings and Leybold offered a coil of 1.2 meter length with 450 windings, the quotations wouldn't be comparable anymore. Even if they were functionally identical. (Just one example. In essence, even if both quotes allowed for the exact same experiments, about 90% of the stuff wouldn't be "comparable")


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @dhromed said:

    I'm not seeing the rest of the story!

    Yeah, well that's all I got as my train arrived and forestalled further discussion. The guy who told me was too busy laughing (and feeling glad that his response wasn't sexist, as the person from the supplier was female, not that that really adds anything to the story). I've got no idea who the dim supplier was.



  • I seem to remember hearing at my last job that we received an RFQ for something that was not really in our industry. We were told government regulations required them to get a quote from a certain number of vendors before they were allowed to actually contract anything. The problem being there were fewer known actual vendors than legally required, so they would send RFQs to random companies just to satisfy regulations.


  • :belt_onion:

    @dkf said:

    “Well, what other criteria would you propose we use? Colour of logo? Number of ‘R’s in the month?”

    I love your purchasing manager.



  • @Rhywden said:

    The problem with the 2nd requirement: "Comparable" meant "identical to the last detail". Which means that if Phywe offered a coil of 1 meter length with 400 windings and Leybold offered a coil of 1.2 meter length with 450 windings, the quotations wouldn't be comparable anymore. Even if they were functionally identical. (Just one example. In essence, even if both quotes allowed for the exact same experiments, about 90% of the stuff wouldn't be "comparable")

    You don't specify functional and performance requirements and evaluate based on that baseline? (Complies/does not comply).

    Because delving into implementation details at that stage, and discriminating based on them is literally insane (which is kinda what you're getting at).



  • Yep, its got electrons alright!



  • At one time, I wrote an proposal for a BMBF (government research funding society) project.
    We had to specifiy every last item, we wanted to use in the project, which was planned for three years and involved ten people.
    It was so much fun to guess how much money would be needed to buy books, pens or even wages. Even worse, it is impossible to change the "destination" afterwards, e.g. you have spend less on pens but you want to go to that conference, which was established in year 2? No luck, the money can only be used for pens.
    Project controlling is a great idea, but the german research funding system is redicolous.
    oh I forgot: We could not buy computers, because that should be done by the university. But the university had no money to do so - so we had to use ~10 year old computers with 15 crts....nice



  • Sounds like the waterfall budgeting model.

    Also, never mind that company X went out of business 2 months ago. The money must be paid to them anyway!


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @mott555 said:

    The problem being there were fewer known actual vendors than legally required, so they would send RFQs to random companies just to satisfy regulations.

    I have run in to something similar. I have had RFPs sent to me and when I respond, "I cannot bid this, we are too busy to get it done in a timely manner" I have had them get back to me and say something like, "Would you care to send me a high quote just so I can fulfill my quota on estimates?"

    This happens often enough that I have a spreadsheet just for it, and on one occasion we won the bid because others backed out. This is what silly procedural guidelines gets you.



  • @Intercourse said:

    on one occasion we won the bid because others backed out.

    Ouch. Hope it was something you guys kinda sorta actually knew how to do!


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @mott555 said:

    Ouch. Hope it was something you guys kinda sorta actually knew how to do!

    Yeah. It was early in the days of me starting the business and it was a network cabling job. I think we ended up doing it for ~$250/drop when an honest bid would have been more like ~$135/drop. At those prices, we got it done. ;)



  • Well, due to bureaucratic shenanigans we had to go through a different department. The "normal" department already had been bludgeoned into submission by science teachers from other schools. This department however didn't have the faintest of clues about the requirements for Physics and probably thought that it'd be the same as ordering a stack of printer paper or something.
    Luckily, my vice principal came to the rescue and told them in no uncertain terms that they were stupid. The requirements thusly shrank rapidly to the number one(1) - I mean, there are only two sources and we still had some older, partly repairable equipment from one vendor which made that particular one more cost-efficient.

    But, yes, functional and performance requirements would be a good idea - however, it's still a bit of a nightmare when you're talking about equipment for school Physics. Because one single set of equipment is usually good for a double-digit number of experiments. And I was buying 20+ of such sets 😉
    Not to mention that the combination of sets is also possible and yields yet different experiment possibilities...


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @mratt said:

    Because delving into implementation details at that stage, and discriminating based on them is literally insane (which is kinda what you're getting at).

    Not to disagree, but sometimes it's even deliberate. The US Army is supposedly well-known for specifying RFQs so that the only company that can meet the requirements is the one they want. It's not quite "we need handguns that have a "G" on them", but close.



  • @Rhywden said in Procurement also has it's WTF moments:

    Well, due to bureaucratic shenanigans we had to go through a different department. The "normal" department already had been bludgeoned into submission by science teachers from other schools. This department however didn't have the faintest of clues about the requirements for Physics and probably thought that it'd be the same as ordering a stack of printer paper or something.
    Luckily, my vice principal came to the rescue and told them in no uncertain terms that they were stupid. The requirements thusly shrank rapidly to the number one(1) - I mean, there are only two sources and we still had some older, partly repairable equipment from one vendor which made that particular one more cost-efficient.

    But, yes, functional and performance requirements would be a good idea - however, it's still a bit of a nightmare when you're talking about equipment for school Physics. Because one single set of equipment is usually good for a double-digit number of experiments. And I was buying 20+ of such sets 😉
    Not to mention that the combination of sets is also possible and yields yet different experiment possibilities...

    Sorry to fbmac this, but I couldn't find the more recent time you talked about getting new stuff that you only have two vendors for:

    https://dilbert.com/strip/2020-02-28



  • @FrostCat said in Procurement also has it's WTF moments:

    @mratt said:

    Because delving into implementation details at that stage, and discriminating based on them is literally insane (which is kinda what you're getting at).

    Not to disagree, but sometimes it's even deliberate. The US Army is supposedly well-known for specifying RFQs so that the only company that can meet the requirements is the one they want. It's not quite "we need handguns that have a "G" on them", but close.

    Oh well, someone else efficaciously necroed this thread, so I'll comment on this.

    The phenomenon described is in no way unique to the US Army, or even more generally in the US military. I first ran across the idea in my first $JOB after I graduated. My employer was a micro-company (the owner, me, and a secretary from the temp agency down the hall who came in on Wednesday mornings to do the paperwork), doing industrial automation consulting work. We had a series of RFPs that came in, and in many of them, it was clear that the RFP had almost literally been written by a specific supplier, since the descriptions of the requirements for the proposal were a very tight match for that supplier's equipment, and not so much for anyone else's. (Also, when I questioned this, my boss said that it was common for RFPs to be like that.)



  • @Steve_The_Cynic I've been told that job descriptions are frequently written the same way as well when the company wants to hire internally but has a requirement to publish the openings first.



  • @Benjamin-Hall said in Procurement also has it's WTF moments:

    @Steve_The_Cynic I've been told that job descriptions are frequently written the same way as well when the company wants to hire internally but has a requirement to publish the openings first.

    It's very common, as are [phone] interviews for such jobs when they are required to do them. (I've been that interviewee a few times. :(


  • BINNED

    @Steve_The_Cynic
    One of the reasons of our upcoming merger is size. While technically 2nd in this Belgian niche market it means jack all if customers write their offers to include random requirements like 'company has to have X persons on pay roll in Belgium and should make more than € in turnover in his previous fiscal year". This excludes us and sometimes even the first in this niche market because we both are exclusively working on this niche.



  • @Benjamin-Hall said in Procurement also has it's WTF moments:

    @Steve_The_Cynic I've been told that job descriptions are frequently written the same way as well when the company wants to hire internally but has a requirement to publish the openings first.

    It even happens for external hires. I don't know if it's still the case, but way back when, almost 40 years ago now, a US company that wanted to hire a foreigner (and by implication sponsor a work permit etc.) had to try to hire an American first. Nothing stopped the company from advertising the job in a way that made the job sound unappealing in the extreme, so that no American applied for it, and therefore it was OK to hire that foreigner.

    I refuse to acknowledge the possibility that in one case, the foreigner in question might have been, for example, my father.



  • @Steve_The_Cynic French universities are quite infamous (in the small French academic community, at least) for doing that. On paper every lecturer/professor is recruited on an open job offer, all candidates being heard by a committee that then decides. In practice, often the university wants to recruit one specific candidate so they'll set requirements for not only the broad field in which they'll be working, but down to specific experience in random ultra-niche sub-fields, down to the level where only someone who has worked on this topic during their PhD, and that topic during their post-doc, and happened to have given lectures on that other topic, matches the criteria and oh look there's just the right person here, and none of the other candidates match the requirements.

    In the business world, I regularly see that in our company. We're a service provider and most of our clients are large companies (sometimes state-owned). When they put out a project to tender, if they want to work with us they might include requirements that only our software can produce (and generally we'll know in advance and may even informally help them write it), while OTOH if we see a tender that includes weird random requirements that we'd never heard about before, we can be sure it's because it's intended for one of our competitors (and then we don't bother bidding, or just by quickly copy-pasting some standard stuff just to not cross them in case they want to work with us one day in the future).



  • @remi which does make a mock of the "open application" idea or the "finding the best candidate" idea. I'm not sure there's a cure that isn't worse than the disease, however. Because the only cure (that I could see) would be to set all the application descriptions and RFPs centrally and uniformly...which would be a total nightmare given the variations in actual needs.



  • @Benjamin-Hall Or simply to make rules that recognize that the practice exists and prohibit it, and have people actually watching out for it and punishing it when it happens. A principle-based solution could easily be done without having to centrally prescribe requirements.



  • @Mason_Wheeler said in Procurement also has it's WTF moments:

    @Benjamin-Hall Or simply to make rules that recognize that the practice exists and prohibit it, and have people actually watching out for it and punishing it when it happens. A principle-based solution could easily be done without having to centrally prescribe requirements.

    Yeah, sorry, that doesn't work without perfect people (who don't have that problem at all anyway). Because there's infinite ways around it without technically breaking the rules, so you have to make stricter rules, which provide more loopholes, etc. All that means is that things get less transparent and more obfuscated. I won't give the obvious counter-example here because garage material, but it's been tried and usually makes more of a mess than it solves.

    It's like testing in schools. If the teachers can write the tests (at any level) or even see them after the fact, they can "teach to the tests." The only way to prevent this is to keep the tests and their content secret from the teachers. And change it at random. Which is well worse than the disease in most cases.



  • @Benjamin-Hall said in Procurement also has it's WTF moments:

    Yeah, sorry, that doesn't work without perfect people (who don't have that problem at all anyway). Because there's infinite ways around it without technically breaking the rules, so you have to make stricter rules, which provide more loopholes, etc. All that means is that things get less transparent and more obfuscated.

    Which is the current situation, AFAIK. The rules prohibit writing a too-detailed list of requirements, because of this obvious bias, but people still do it. They might simply try to make the offer open-enough to not openly flout the rules while being restrictive-enough to still achieve what they want. Since we're talking very specialised fields, it's not that hard to achieve with a bit of creative writing. Sometimes (which is IMO worse), the requirements are open but most of committee is aware of the actual "true" list (i.e. wanted candidate), because they're all department heads and alternate through some sort of gentleman's agreement on whose turn it is to recruit this year. As a candidate, if you're lucky you have enough insider contacts to know about it beforehand (and either not apply, or apply just in case committee-politics or some random events throws a spanner in the works), if not you spend time to prepare, do your best and get rejected for no good reason...

    So to answer @Mason_Wheeler, how do you "watch out and punish" for that? If you have an external observer monitoring the whole process, you need a lot of oversight from very qualified people (because they're recruiting very specialised top-academics, remember) and those people are going to be basically colleagues so you'll have the same issues at the next point. If you count on disgruntled committee members to snitch on their colleagues, well they're their colleagues and the academic world is a jungle so either you won't get anything because people keep quiet (if you want to have your turn in recruiting someone one year, you need to keep the other people on your side the other years!) or you will get endless streams of bickering and pointless complaints which you can't really investigate without "oversight from very qualified people" and you're back to the previous point. And if you hope that rejected candidates will do the snitching, well it's the same as with committee members (most candidates have all done at least one post-doc so they're already part of the academic system) except worse because there will always be one rejected candidate who's not happy to have been rejected (duh).

    I'm not saying not setting any rules is any better, basically it's fucked up whichever way you look at it. But I don't think adding more rules is actually helping either.



  • @remi Yeah. And with things like faculty, where working together (ie fit) is just as important as outright qualifications, you can't take the easy way out and remove the hiring decisions to a "neutral" 3rd party (aka HR). It's a crappy situation with a lot of kludges to make it work and workarounds for the current rules, but I'm not sure there's a different set of rules that would make it any better. It's just a crappy situation no matter how you slice it.



  • @Benjamin-Hall said in Procurement also has it's WTF moments:

    @remi Yeah. And with things like faculty, where working together (ie fit) is just as important as outright qualifications

    No. Hiring for "fit" is almost always inherently corrupt. Good employees do their jobs; bad employees worry about likes and dislikes and fit.



  • @jinpa said in Procurement also has it's WTF moments:

    @Benjamin-Hall said in Procurement also has it's WTF moments:

    @remi Yeah. And with things like faculty, where working together (ie fit) is just as important as outright qualifications

    No. Hiring for "fit" is almost always inherently corrupt. Good employees do their jobs; bad employees worry about likes and dislikes and fit.

    I strongly disagree. Put me in a school that is all about fluffy stuff and doesn't care about academics as much and I'll not fit and won't be able to do my job effectively. Because my job involves dealing with other people. Put a "fluffy stuff" (from my perspective) teacher in a "traditional" school and they'll have the same problem. In fact, doing so is actively counterproductive--the net benefit from doing so is negative. Yet in an environment that's a better fit, both styles can be productive.

    Outside of factory line work, employees are not indistinguishable cogs. They're people, and people can work better or worse in different environments. What helps you may harm me and vice versa. Hiring is not an objective affair most of the time (or at least has non-objective components). And those need to be considered.


  • And then the murders began.

    @Benjamin-Hall The candidate should be choosing based on fit, yes, because they know what kind of environment(s) they can work well in. But while you know you won't be as effective in a more "fluffy stuff" school, you're just assuming the reverse is true for your example "fluffy stuff" teacher. They could well be effective in both environments. Any attempt for the employer to hire for fit is going to be a coin flip at best, a prejudiced assumption at worst.



  • @Unperverted-Vixen said in Procurement also has it's WTF moments:

    @Benjamin-Hall The candidate should be choosing based on fit, yes, because they know what kind of environment(s) they can work well in. But while you know you won't be as effective in a more "fluffy stuff" school, you're just assuming the reverse is true for your example "fluffy stuff" teacher. They could well be effective in both environments. Any attempt for the employer to hire for fit is going to be a coin flip at best, a prejudiced assumption at worst.

    I've been involved with hiring new science teachers (at the "observing and commenting" level). And there were some that were very well qualified on paper. But who, when they interviewed in person, were horrible fits. And every time we've gone with such candidates, it's been a royal mess.

    Hiring for people-facing things is essentially subjective, because people are subjective. And the closer people have to work together, the more subjective the "fit" criteria is.

    A mediocre plan, executed with full assent and buy-in (which depends on fit) is much much better than a perfect plan, executed grudgingly. So unless there's decent fit, you'll either have to dictate everything from the top (not a good idea) or deal with constant disagreements. Even if everyone is competent.



  • @Benjamin-Hall said in Procurement also has it's WTF moments:

    . Put me in a school that is all about fluffy stuff and doesn't care about academics as much and I'll not fit and won't be able to do my job effectively. Because my job involves dealing with other people. Put a "fluffy stuff" (from my perspective) teacher in a "traditional" school and they'll have the same problem. In fact, doing so is actively counterproductive--the net benefit from doing so is negative. Yet in an environment that's a better fit, both styles can be productive.

    Indeed. I have been "in the game" long enough " [40+ years]. Today the people aspects far outweigh the technical aspects.



  • @Benjamin-Hall said in Procurement also has it's WTF moments:

    Put me in a school that is all about fluffy stuff and doesn't care about academics as much and I'll not fit and won't be able to do my job effectively. Because my job involves dealing with other people. Put a "fluffy stuff" (from my perspective) teacher in a "traditional" school and they'll have the same problem. In fact, doing so is actively counterproductive--the net benefit from doing so is negative. Yet in an environment that's a better fit, both styles can be productive.

    No. Concern about fluffy stuff over academics is simply a negative quality. The problem is not fitness, the problem is administrators who hire people based on "fitness". People who dislike better teachers should never be rewarded for doing so. They should be corrected.

    HIring for "fitness" is actively counterproductive, and anyone who does so should not be allowed to have a voice in hiring people. Hiring for fitness is negative. The problem is that better employees should not experience problems for being better.



  • @jinpa said in Procurement also has it's WTF moments:

    @Benjamin-Hall said in Procurement also has it's WTF moments:

    Put me in a school that is all about fluffy stuff and doesn't care about academics as much and I'll not fit and won't be able to do my job effectively. Because my job involves dealing with other people. Put a "fluffy stuff" (from my perspective) teacher in a "traditional" school and they'll have the same problem. In fact, doing so is actively counterproductive--the net benefit from doing so is negative. Yet in an environment that's a better fit, both styles can be productive.

    No. Concern about fluffy stuff over academics is simply a negative quality. The problem is not fitness, the problem is administrators who hire people based on "fitness". People who dislike better teachers should never be rewarded for doing so. They should be corrected.

    HIring for "fitness" is actively counterproductive, and anyone who does so should not be allowed to have a voice in hiring people. Hiring for fitness is negative. The problem is that better employees should not experience problems for being better.

    My "fluffy stuff" descriptor is my own personal bias. Based on the vast majority of programs and schools out there, I'm the less competent one for opposing such things. Your point is predicated on there being objective, agreed-on standards by which we can rank things absolutely. Those do not exist for the vast majority of jobs out there. Because people are no widgets. Heck, I'll even say this--a "fluffy" teacher can be just as effective as my more "traditional" style. Because in the end, methods only matter a tiny amount in teaching. That's the dirty secret--choosing a style that works for you and for your colleagues matters way way way more than what that style is (within very generous bounds). Same goes for most non-factory-line jobs. There isn't a clear-cut better/worse here. There is just way #34523 and way #35632 and everything around them.


  • sekret PM club

    @Benjamin-Hall I would think that choosing people with a teaching style that works for the students would be more important than whether that style meshes with the other teachers. I can't tell you how many teachers I had (both in high school and in the limited college I did before I stopped going) that basically just lecture on and on and on and expect that to get through. (Protip: For a fair number of students, it does not!)



  • @e4tmyl33t said in Procurement also has it's WTF moments:

    @Benjamin-Hall I would think that choosing people with a teaching style that works for the students would be more important than whether that style meshes with the other teachers. I can't tell you how many teachers I had (both in high school and in the limited college I did before I stopped going) that basically just lecture on and on and on and expect that to get through. (Protip: For a fair number of students, it does not!)

    That's exactly it. Students are not indistinguishable widgets either! Fit is important there. Trying to force faculty to teach a particular way AND forcing students into a particular school culture both cause issues related to fit. For a lot of kids, both the droning, non-responsive "lecture" (which is a pathological case, FYI) AND the modern "inquiry", "project-based", engagement-driven styles are poor fits. For others, one style (when done well) works well and the other less so. Or maybe a 3rd, different style, say "flipped" classrooms (watch video lectures at home and come to class to do problems). And parents and kids should find styles that work well together.

    But if you have a school that's all in on one style, they shouldn't hire someone who is best at a different style even if they're a good teacher of that style. Just like a dojo specializing in one particular school of karate shouldn't probably hire a sensei who only really knows capoeira to teach their karate classes. Even if you get him to actually teach the moves of karate, the methods and modes of thought are (relatively) different enough that it won't work so well. And teaching methods are even further apart.

    And for research academics (the original topic), having a nucleus of colleagues all doing the same sub-field of research is important for collaboration and thinking. You actually do get returns to scale in research when you have other groups you can bounce ideas off of locally. And you can share some of the equipment, making things way cheaper. Hiring a heavy computational guy (who wants compute clusters) into a heavy analogue-experimental group (who uses computers but mostly specialized, say, cryogenic magnets) means you're splitting your equipment budget and no one will be happy.

    Now there can be actually bad teachers by any reasonable standard. Those that don't care if their students don't learn. Those that don't put any effort into whatever style they've adopted. Those that don't evolve their style as they learn what works for them and for their students. But these apply across teaching and learning styles.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Benjamin-Hall said in Procurement also has it's WTF moments:

    the droning, non-responsive "lecture" (which is a pathological case, FYI)

    I've never met anyone who liked that style of teaching. Even among top students (i.e., university students able to go to one of the very best and most competitive courses in the world) the droning lecture was absolutely loathed and not retained at all. Of everything I know about software engineering, not one thing came from the course I was formally taught on the topic. Anyone who actively likes such teaching is seriously weird and probably ought to be put on some sort of watch list.

    Or be made faculty, that works too.



  • @dkf said in Procurement also has it's WTF moments:

    @Benjamin-Hall said in Procurement also has it's WTF moments:

    the droning, non-responsive "lecture" (which is a pathological case, FYI)

    I've never met anyone who liked that style of teaching. Even among top students (i.e., university students able to go to one of the very best and most competitive courses in the world) the droning lecture was absolutely loathed and not retained at all. Of everything I know about software engineering, not one thing came from the course I was formally taught on the topic. Anyone who actively likes such teaching is seriously weird and probably ought to be put on some sort of watch list.

    Or be made faculty, that works too.

    That makes sense--university faculty are not trained, hired, promoted, or retained for their teaching abilities (in the main, at non-teaching-only schools). They're hired, promoted, retained, and trained for research. Undergraduates exist to pay part of the bills of the school--they're a necessary evil. So teaching is something to be done as a duty--in fact, one of the traditional punishments is to raise the teaching load of a teacher.





  • @jinpa said in Procurement also has it's WTF moments:

    Hiring for fitness is negative.

    I dunno, doesn't seem so bad to me.
    Screenshot_20200305-165529.png


  • BINNED

    @HardwareGeek
    WHY DIDN'T YOU ANSWER MY CALL?


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    @Luhmann said in Procurement also has it's WTF moments:

    @HardwareGeek
    WHY DIDN'T YOU ANSWER MY CALL?

    Better question: Why is it not swiped away?


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    @levicki said in Procurement also has it's WTF moments:

    @Tsaukpaetra said in Procurement also has it's WTF moments:

    Better question: Why is it not swiped away?

    Even better question: Did you take my 'roids?!?

    I and'ed them all together.


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