Sysadmin's £100,000 revenge after sudden sacking

Here we are again on a bright British Friday morning, which means it's time for On-Call, in which readers recollect their ramblings into the real world to fix things up. This week, reader "James" has shared a story “from my days as a Sysadmin, at the dawn of the broadband area, when I worked for a very well known company …

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: James is a dick...

No he isn't. I was made redundant from a firm when they were downsizing and agreed to stay on an extra day (you were actually supposed to leave immediately, bin liner and security etc.) to do training for the wet behind the ears kid who would be taking on part of my role. So I made it absolutely clear to the head of my department that the extra day was free but as I was going freelance anything else would be charged for at fairly high rates. So 3 months later on this kid calls me in a blind panic because he can't remember how to do something vital. I pointed out that this was going to cost them and did he have management approval to do this. "Yes yes" he says so I sorted out his problem in about an hour. It would have been quicker but he had not only forgotten everything, he was either acting thick or genuinely was.

I sent in an invoice for my time which was ignored, so I sent another which had the same reception. Talking to my accountant they said send it via registered post and if it's ignored again we have grounds to write it off against your tax as a bad debt. I asked if it was worth pursuing this through the small claims court and they said no just send the invoice again. This is a company that uses a perfectly legal method of exporting a large part of their revenue off-shore so I now regret not having pursued them in the courts.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: James is a dick...

Sorry that should have been 3 weeks not 3 months. Also should be noted that although my job was redundant the things I used to do, everything that made up my role still existed. It was just split up amongst people in the department and added to their jobs.

[Amorous Cowherder]

Re: James is a dick...

Bollocks! Your manager, direct line manager or project manager, should ALWAYS be aware of what you are doing, the projects you are working on and it's their responsibility to ensure they know of any issues. As a professional you have a duty to tell them of any issues they should be made aware of right up to the point at which the money stops being paid. After that, sod off!

In the past when I've left a job and good colleagues have called me to ask a small favour and some quick info, yes I've helped them out by telling them the info they wanted but I'm under no obligation to do anything for you once I'm no longer in your employ UNLESS my contract states so. I'm thinking here about NDAs, if your contract states you keep your trap shut and you don't take any code you wrote away, etc, yes those are legally binding.

Sorry but people have worked long and hard to ensure we don't return to the days of serfdom and we all free men and women entitled to pick and choose with whom and where we work.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: James is a dick...

... then so am I.

I departed from a major financial institution on bad terms (though I subsequently benefited from tens of thousands in compensation). I'd over achieved all my targets for the year including bottom line cost savings of ten times my salary, but nevertheless was rated as underperforming. They panicked a week before the end of my notice period at which point I was ordered to: "document everything involved in performing my job including all internal and external contacts, all undisclosed stores of computer hardware and software (!) and all 'spanish practises'". My legal adviser said that as I was still an employee I should comply but pointed out that as the employer clearly didn't know what they didn't know they were in no position to dispute the completeness of my report. He also pointed out that by identifying any spanish practises I risked exposing myself or others to charges of misconduct (there were none anyway).

The report I delivered was a copy of my job description, a list of names harvested from the internal phone book, a list of suppliers I'd done business with in the last year and (true) statements that there were no "secret stores" and that I was not party to or aware of any "spanish practises".

I could probably have delivered some genuinely useful information but that would only have been to the potential benefit of the manager responsible for my departure. I use the term "potential benefit" because I doubt their ability to comprehend and utilise that information anyway.

It would be utterly pointless for me to contemplate any kind of revenge, there's nothing I could do that would cause more damage than the incompetent management continued to inflict on the organisation (share price now down by 50%).

There are two kinds of employee. The first group is those who are committed to do their best for the company, customers and their colleagues. The reward they seek is intellectually satisfying work, to have its quality and value acknowledged and fair remuneration and working conditions.

The second group is those with a "political" agenda, jockeying for power and status regardless of the consequences to any but themselves (and perhaps a few cronies - at least while they serve their purpose). The reward they seek is status and astronomic salaries.

The larger the organisation the greater the opportunities for the latter group to gain the upper hand. They are perfectly happy to exploit the former group. They recognise that heaping praise on them may be all you need to keep them happy but fundamentally they despise them, don't understand what they're doing and regard them as "disposable" commodities, easy to replace.

[eblonk]

Re: James is a dick...

"and prevented from speaking to his colleagues"

What part of this requires further explanation? Even after being kicked out he probably had a provision to prevent him from speaking to ex-colleagues about work. I wouldn't have tried just to avoid being taken to court by Lawyers Workshop. They have done more heinous and petty things.

[Simon B]

Nice to see Karma, good that the sudden sacking ended up with a big smile in the end :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah

That explains the constant need for price rises/less product from our dearly beloved overlords at Generous Workshop.

Glad to see that a company that is so lawyer/marketing heavy is about as incompetent as you'd expect behind the scenes.

Was even going to stock their latest game, but it turns out that you cannot use their publicity/promo pictures on your own site anymore, because only their webshop is allowed to rule them all. Not surprising, since they do the same (and are hated for it) to bricks and mortar stores.

[Little Mouse]

Re: Ah

Fond memories of White Dwarf & Thrud the Barbarian though. They were pretty anarchic IIRC.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Ah

White Dwarf used to be amazing. Maybe 20% of the mag would be for the game you actually played, but the rest of the stuff was pretty good.

Took a downturn in the early 90's (more battle reports, way more ads), and then became the press release and sales news that we now know and love.

Ah 40k, best way to spend several hours arguing about rules that seem to have been written deliberately to be unclear.

[graeme leggett]

Re: Ah

"several hours arguing about rules that seem to have been written deliberately to be unclear"

They did come up with a rule to solve that pending clarification. the odd/even, flip of the coin one.

But then a lot of the fun in games is the lawyering. I think I even once found a loophole in Monopoly.

[MonkeyCee]

Re: Ah

Yes. That's a perfect example of a GW "rule fix".

Each time there is a rules dispute, no matter how weak one side is, it's a 50/50 call. Does this reduce or increase rules lawyering? Imagine that for poker "but I thought two pair beat a flush. Heads I win..."

You have a game situation with an irresistible force and an immovable object. You could have a rules clarification for which takes precedence (fixed, chosen by player whose turn it is etc). Now you roll each time.

Then you have shooting at vehicle arcs. Vehicles generally have higher armor at the front, so harder to damage. Rule book example uses rectangular tank for arcs. Many vehicles are not at shaped like a rectangle, leading to wide variances in where there frontal armor extends too. So another dice roll every time you shoot at a vehicle.

[Graham Dawson]

Re: Ah

3rd edition was probably the last good one.I still have my colonel schaefer's last chancers veteran unit lurking around here, a couple of cadian squads and a pair of leman russ, all done up in desert camo. I was pretty proud of that lot.

Then the dropped schaefer's squad before turning it into that generic shitty "penal legion". Basically every change since 3.5 has been one step or several further into the swamp. I gave up pretty quickly, not having the money to afford their rocketing prices, and abandoned the whole thing entirely for greener pastures. Looked back recently, find out they've completely nuked warhammer fantasy and dropped nearly everything that made the 40K world interesting, and realised that I'd got out at a pretty good time.

[Uncle Slacky]

Re: Ah

Still have my copy of "Thrud's Graffik Novel" - that's all I need or want to remember about White Dwarf.

[Richard Jones 1]

No Option Really

Since he was given the bum's rush out of the place and all contact with others was directly blocked, I am not sure what options he had to advise the company of anything, he had no responsibilities whatsoever to them.

He was no longer an employee so no responsibilities and inward communications channels were blocked. Clearly the company was supremely well managed and could sort out the problems they created without recourse to any 'off the street' outsider.

His force termination instantly made his status 'outsider with no association'. He had no ongoing responsibilities and was forced to accept that they had everything under control. The fact that he later heard, almost by accident, that they had not managed the situation well, simply demonstrated they had misplaced confidence in their own abilities. They were, purely the agents of their own misfortune, a situation they almost certainly failed to use as a learning experience.

[Grahame 2]

Re: No Option Really

IANAL, but given the situation he would probably be best of keeping his mouth shut. (good idea when you don't know the legal situation)

Given the highly dickish (legal term?) attitude of the company in question, he could risk them interpreting his professional concern as blackmail, 'keep me on, or you will face a huge bill'.

Of course they would be very unlikely to win in court, but legal troubles are the last thing you want, especially when looking for employment.

Besides, as has been previously mentioned, the magnitude of an ISDN bill down the line would likely be the last thing on his mind.

In short not his problem, treating people with courtesy and respect is never a bad idea.

[chivo243]

Re: No Option Really

Bums rush, can help think of the Simpson's episode Mommie Beerest:

Marge: Boy, what a night! Moe showed me how to give someone the bum's rush.

Here, watch.

Get lost, rummy!

Homer: Ah, yes, Detroit-style.

Very nice.

[Little Mouse]

ISDN

I've seen others get caught out by unexpected ISDN bills.

A regional office of ours didn't sign up to the corporate managed AntiVirus solution and instead installed a "trial" <cough!> copy. And every couple of minutes it polled the internet instead of our own servers for updates.

Thousands of separate ISDN connections really do add up...

[Emperor Zarg]

Re: ISDN

In the mid-90's, when leased 64k lines were still ridiculously expensive, we set up an inter-office mail relay using ISDN. The hardware was Sonix (became 3com) Intermezzo ISDN30 concentrator at the central office and Sonix Arpeggio Lite ISDN2 routers at the branch offices. The arrangement was brilliant. The mail gateways would transfer any waiting mail once an hour (ha!) and then drop the line - the ISDN circuit then being idle and therefore not costing anything - but the routers would spoof packets to make it look like the line was always up. A nice, cost-effective solution, for the time.

However... a firmware issue on the Sonix Arpeggio Lite caused it to bring up the link for just a second and then drop it again immediately. Every minute. Nearly 1500 calls a day. From every branch office. I don't think we had per second billing on our Telecential (remember them?) ISDN circuits. Nobody noticed until the rather large bill came in.

[Number6]

Re: ISDN

I got kicked off the Freeserve unmetered internet because a machine on my network kept trying to phone home and kept the link up enough that they got upset. Fortunately Demon started theirs about that time so I just switched. It did spend an awful lot of its time on-line, almost as good as (and much cheaper than) a leased line, and the near-zero link set-up time after the 56k modem made it quite good. I still have the ISDN modem and the spare somewhere around.

[Ol'Peculier]

Re: ISDN

I had a photographic agency client that had hi-res images on a server in their office, connected to the outside world via ISDN. The website, search, thumbnails and the like were all hosted externally but called in to get bigger images for logged in users. Looking back, pretty advanced for it's time.

Then Code Red came along. Because there was no way of filtering calls in, every couple of seconds their IP address would get pinged, opening a connection.

ADSL wasn't an option then, but they became the first company on their exchange to get it when it was.

[Whitter]

Who's calling

You fired me.

You have no right what-so-ever to be calling me, or indeed, to have retained my phone number.

Goodbye.

[Tom Servo]

Re: Who's calling

I think a better response would be:

I can tell you exactly why this bill is so high and what you need to do to mitigate it in 1 minute, but to do so you'll have to employ my services as a newly created consultancy company 'FuckGW IT services' at a rate of 5K per day or part of.

And then put the phone down. And wait for it to ring again.

[Voland's right hand]

Re: Who's calling

And then put the phone down. And wait for it to ring again.

That has been tried. The way UK computer misuse legislation is formulated you have just made yourself liable for a lengthy court case which you will lose and can kiss your professional career goodbye.

So just refer the guy that sure, this is expected and it is because he failed to complete the project plan. If he does not have the people to complete the already agreed and written project plan you can consider a reasonable per hour offer at market going rates. From there on it is a matter on how you define market :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Who's calling

That has been tried. The way UK computer misuse legislation is formulated you have just made yourself liable for a lengthy court case which you will lose and can kiss your professional career goodbye.

I beg to differ.

For that to happen the company would have to prove malfeasance or they would not only lose this case but even face a far more costly counterclaim of libel and reputational harm. James was just doing his job, and all evidence at the company would prove this.

Given that James was executing a project plan that someone would have had to approve as it involved parting with money and contracts it would be easy for James to explain that (1) he was sacked and escorted out without prior warning and was thus denied any chance of handover (which would make this attempt to sue him effectively entrapment), and (2) as there had been approval at higher level it would be reasonable to assume that IT management would have seen it coming - after all, that's their job.

Both points thus also deposit large piles of liability at the feet of the IT Director.

[el_oscuro]

Re: Who's calling

From accross the pond, I'd setup a 1099 chapter LLC and require payment up front. It sounds like the UK laws may be murkier though.

[Jelliphiish]

BAU

Sounds about right for that particular business entity.

(Cue Our Tune music) 1996: I was a lowly shop floor 'redshirt' ..The IRA had just done their insurance job on the shabby bottom end of the Arndale, and I was at a loose end due to my normal place of work being just the other side of the breezeblock to the offending van.

I was shunted out to the provinces and was helping out in another location. The end of the busy half-term week comes and a swift visit from our 'Chaplain' to the manager comes and goes..and 2 minutes later I get called into the office to be told I'd been reported by a customer for swearing in front of their kid.. which I naturally disputed. Some managerial re-thinking ensued and after another ten minutes it's retconned to the manager himself having heard me.. again, some dispute aired about this also. I'd never swear on the shop floor.. I mean, really..

I was being stitched up as surplus to staffing requirements whilst there was a lack of location..

The kicker: whilst in this somewhat turmoilsome state of mind, there was a secondary ruccus occurring. A smallish kid had been in the shop all week, being left there by it's mother. And I do mean all week: she was leaving it with a packed lunch. Management appeared OK with this and whilst mildly obnoxious in the way of young teenies, he was a customer (well, his mum was..) However, this particular Friday, after a week of this, he'd gotten into his head that he had some leeway around shop behaviour. It didn't help that the manager and the other redshirt were goading him and appeared to have no concern for his antics.

Cut to me: pricing paint sprays on the central island, somewhat distracted by my recent conversations with said manager and just a tad wound up. The kid is circling the table whilst kinda being pursued by either of the other staff, hijinks ensuing all over the place. Quite irksome, and to my mind, potentially hazardous.

So I did the obvious thing: as the kid is coming around the nearest corner, I level the price gun around shoulder hight and give it my best Dredd: Freeeze Punk! .. only to realise the kid is just that bit closer that I'd anticipated and had taken a 3.99 right between the eyes.

We'd just about gotten him calmed down with profuse apologies and the bribe of some free lead when his Mum arrives.. and he bursts out crying for the benefit of his fresh audience..

I just fetched my coat. There's just no arguing with the weather..

[Aqua Marina]

Re: BAU

That used to happen to us when I was working as a Manager at Escom in 1996. People would leave their kids in the shop as though we were some kind of baby sitting service while they went shopping. We had one particularly agressive woman complaining to us that we hadn't checked with the abandoned child, whether it needed a toilet break.

I wanted to implement a "no under 16's without an adult" rule, but was told it was company policy not to qualify customers.

As a side note, our shop on Deansgate had blast resistant glass installed only a couple of weeks prior to the Manchester bombing. When staff were finally allowed back a few days later, it was the only shop in the row that still had a front, although the front was now concave.

[Gareth Perch]

Re: BAU

Did anyone else hear a film noir voiceover whilst reading Jelliphiish's post?

[Aqua Marina]

Re: BAU

Only voice I was hearing was Dave Lee Travis.

[chivo243]

Only once

I've gotten a phone call, don't come in, again, ever. No reason given. When I called back, a secretary took a message, but they never returned my call... I hope they found the guacamole and yogurt I had left in the employee fridge!

There is a civil way to let an employee go, and James didn't get it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Only once

"There is a civil way to let an employee go, and James didn't get it..."

I've been shown the door on a "collect your belonging, don't come back" basis once, BUT the payoff was generous, and whilst being let down a bit more gently might have been nice, I think it pays to take a deep breath, think practically and rationally about any future requests for help based on the any payoff, any need for references. A further consideration is that you'll get asked about the job and why you left. If you harbour ill will and resentment, that's difficult to hide. If you can rationalise and accept what's happened, then it's a lot easier to present your time at that company as a positive experience.

Mind you after a few P45s you get used to the variety of ways companies throw people out. In fact I'm starting to think that I'd like to be in with the chaff at my employer's next downsizing, as they pay people off quite well.

[MonkeyCee]

Re: Only once

Golly I've been "fired"* a number of times, and no-one has been quite crazy enough to kick me out without trying to find an acceptable compromise.

If you need someone gone, just offer them a suitably sized sack of cash and go from there. It's also a lot easier to ask them back, or pick their brains, or have them warn you of potential fuck ups if your last interaction was "here's a cheque, now GTFO"

* Usually asked to leave and negotiated, as being dismissed requires more paperwork and leaves a black mark on your record. Plus contracting, so you get asked back a lot, but you're too expensive to keep on payroll.

[chivo243]

Re: Only once

@MonkeyCee

It was a smallish family company, no real contract I was in my 20's just out of school and wasn't planning on staying a long time, so I took it as a sign. I landed on my feet, hit the streets running.

[MonkeyCee]

Re: Only once

Small family companies and charities top my list of "feck no" clients. Especially ones run by a couple <shudder>

Losing corporate politics gets you fired and your career killed. Get the wrong side of someone in a family business and the firing may be more literal.

It's best to get burnt young, rather than put in your 20 and get shafted.

[kmac499]

Re: Only once

Being marched off site IF done properly is quite sensible.

The employer has to be aware of the risk a disgruntled employee could do to trash the IT system Ranging from resetting passwords to DROP DATABASe <return>

The right way to do it, is to state pubicly to the leaver and those that remain, that there is no suspicion of bad intent but to protect both sides an immediate disconnection is the safest thing to do.

[NotBob]

Re: Only once

I got marched out once, best firing I ever went through. Worked with some sensitive systems for big name customers, so they didn't want me to have any access to anything from the moment I was told I was fired. They cleared the area and walked me to my desk to clean it out, I turned all of my notes over to help with the systems I supported. Pleasant exit interview and all...

...Didn't hurt that the contract said I was getting paid for the next month even though I wasn't allowed in the building...

[Tom 7]

Re: Only once

I got redundancy once - and the work period involved outlining my design for the software in detail for the outsourcing company in India to take over. Annoyingly this handover period was longer than it would have taken to mostly complete the software and even more annoyingly a drink with a remaining employee a couple of years later revealed it still wasn't complete. He said he amused himself in meetings by mentioning that if they hadn't got rid of me it would have been finished before they got rid of me. They'd learned their lesson by then and didnt get rid of underlings that were an embarrassment because they could wipe the floor with them. And I think they really enjoyed their 4 trips a year to India to find out what was going on with the software development.

[Roland6]

Re: Only once

I hope they found the guacamole and yogurt I had left in the employee fridge!

Fridge?

Due unforeseen circumstances, I exited a client's office on summer's day in a hurry, having left an unopened Innocent Pineapple, Banana and Coconuts smoothie on the desk - I understand they explode...

[chivo243]

Re: Only once

@Roland6

I was expecting to return to work, and have said goodies... hidden in an opaque bag in the drawer, so if nobody knows who it belongs to, it may sit for long enough to turn ;-}

[Anonymous Coward]

Marvellous

Absolutely marvellous - that made my day.

[rhydian]

I wouldn't call it revenge...

...As that would involve planning and could be actionable. Having a massive belly laugh at a bunch of feckwits for sacking you and the boss without finding out if there's anything important they should know beforehand is, on the other hand, perfectly fine!

[SimonSplat]

It was probably documented. RTFM?

Any company worth their salt (which this one may not be) would have had a plan document/business case/sign off for something that is hugely expensive (ISDN) and detailing that "In x weeks, before the contract lock in, this benevolent company will cancel the expensive option and order the new fangled cheaper option".

They probably didn't read it or the people higher up (seeming that this guy AND his boss were booted out) had no idea what it was saying.

So... RTFM.

[FordPrefect]

Re: It was probably documented. RTFM?

Documented in the early 2000s? Most things even in big companies were on the back of a fag packet and maybe a quick and dirty visio back in those days.

[Matt Bryant]

Re: FordPrefect Re: It was probably documented. RTFM?

"Documented in the early 2000s?...." As a standard op proc in the 80s and 90s we would offer documentation with every project and fully-commented code, at extra cost. You would be surprised how often even the biggest of companies thought it was a smart move to save a couple of thousand by not taking up the offer for either or both. But, legally, seeing as we had made the offer and it had been declined, there was nothing that could be done against us.

[Anonymous Coward]

I got let go at short notice once, and still had a load of source code on my laptop that id developed but hadn't had chance to check into the company version control system. it was a proof of concept that we'd demoed to a new client, and the client was impressed and signed a deal based on my code.

They let me go, I didn't get my final invoice paid, so they didn't get the code. I have no idea what happened to the client, but they wouldn't have got the product we demoed!

[Doctor Syntax]

"I didn't get my final invoice paid"

I always tried to get in a clause to say that IP only belonged to the clients when all invoices had been paid. Never had to use it.

[Yugguy]

Sacked

When I leave a company, by mutual consent, I do everything I can to hand over as much as I can, as I know it won't be the teflon managers that bear the brunt, it would be my ex-workmates - they'd have to keep the service running, and I don't mind if they give me the odd phone call after I've left.

Even if I was summarily sacked I'd still keep in touch with the ex-workmates I liked.

HOWEVER - in the above case from what I read there were no service issues, no downtime, it just cost management a hell of lot more than they realised.

And in that case, I'd have laughed down the phone at them and then told them to get stuffed.

[Bbbbit]

The hidden victims

I completely agree with James' decision; he was bang on, but what about the hidden victims? What about the poor children* who had to pay extra for their Space Marines as Generic Wargames probably passed the costs onto their customers? The children...will not anyone think of the children?*

*middle aged long-haired gentlemen wearing 80/90s metal t-shirts.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The hidden victims

On the other hand, perhaps James went off and worked for BT, headcount budget having being increased because their ISDN division having unexpectedly picked up an extra £100k.

[Anonymous Coward]

just looked up the OED definition of Karma and it was this story!