Comment by dcre
1 day ago
This is not really malicious compliance because it is not aimed at the boss who ordered the policy. It’s more like chaotic neutral compliance.
1 day ago
This is not really malicious compliance because it is not aimed at the boss who ordered the policy. It’s more like chaotic neutral compliance.
I didn't even see it as that. I saw it as perfectly rational behavior - you only need 10 minutes for a short standup, then squeezing it in between the tail end of meetings makes perfect sense.
Perhaps I'm a tad on the spectrum which is why I have zero problem with this, either from the perspective of the people who booked it for 50 mins or those who booked it for 10.
I'm completely NT here and I agree with you 100%. Maybe it's also that I've usually worked in buildings where finding a free conference room (either on short notice or even in advance) was a nontrivial amount of trouble. So, using an open 10 minutes instead of essentially burning at minimum a half-hour by starting at :00, is doing the whole floor a big favor.
I did hem and haw over whether it was appropriate, but I eventually went with it because it felt in line with the first 2 sentences of the Wikipedia page defining the phrase as "Malicious compliance (also known as malicious obedience) is the behavior of strictly following the orders of a superior despite knowing that compliance with the orders will have an unintended or negative result. It usually implies following an order in such a way that ignores or otherwise undermines the order's intent, but follows it to the letter."
It might have been malicious compliance. It might also have been your coworkers having a reasonable (if incorrect) expectation that their coworkers at a leading tech company understood how to schedule meeting time using the calendar their company produces. Or maybe both.
Malicious compliance is one of the great tips from the Simple Sabotage Field Guide. And it is one of the few effective ways to escalate pain in an organization. If you don't get shit done because of rules, and a boss asks you to simply break the rules for efficiency's sake, you can return the favor and just ask to simply abolish the rules for efficiency's sake. It may surprise you how fast stupid rules can be abolished, even in large orgs.
I don't see how it undermines the intent here, or has an unintended result. It's actually reinforcing the order by forcing other teams to comply with it.