Remove spend company money like it's your own Efficiency subvalue

In order to remove a sub-value from the GitLab values page, please review the process for removing sub-values in the handbook.

Please indicate the reasons for removing this sub-value (note: a sub-value must meet at least one of these criteria to be removed):

• This sub-value is a duplicate of an existing sub-value.
• This sub-value is not actionable
• This sub-value is vague and is too open to interpretation
• This sub-value can be combined with other sub-values to create one sub-value
• Other

If other, please add an explanation:

Introduction

Spend company money like it's your own has been one of the earliest subvalues, and it was added to ensure that we can get our work done as quickly and efficiently as possible. It was considered inefficient to ask for additional approval (outside of manager approval) because every part of the organization had different requirements, and what was not necessary for one - could be an efficiency booster for other.

What changed?

As we grew, the list of expensable items grew and it moved from recommendation to a hard requirement. This on its own is not unreasonable. However, with the way expense reports are being processed these days, it appears that the flexibility and understanding of our company structure became more rigid and as such it creates inefficiency.

Few examples:

1. The items listed in the hardware table are all listed in USD, but locations outside USA are more often far more expensive than not. This creates frustration, misunderstandings and ultimately inefficiency.
   • I will use my own experience with this: I was unable to find a quality webcam for the price that was recommended in the handbook at the time, so I opted for a more expensive model. I explained this to my manager who approved the expense, but the expense ended up being rejected. This created additional back and forth to resolve the issue.
2. With the introduction of policy to not reimburce individual subscriptions, we are no longer able to expense software that can make us more efficient in our day to day.
   • Recent example is discussion around various software, Krisp, Little Snitch and various other software. The gist of those links is that people spend additional time trying to understand the policy, ping responsible individuals for clarification, and then lead discussions on what is possible and what is not.

It appears that we are moving towards a procurement model where everything a team member will need has to go through a defined procurement process.

I personally believe that procurement process is by definition inefficient and I would never personally go through a procurement process like it's your own, which is the reason why I am suggesting the removal of this subvalue. Ideally, this removal would not be needed, and we would have some flexibility from expense approvers but that is a different discussion.