Never, ever, keep an employee you can't trust. No matter how clever, knowledgeable or productive they are, your inability to trust them will hurt you far, far more than any temporary loss.
While we fire the boss, can you lock him out of the network?
Welcome once more, dear reader, to On Call, The Register's weekly reader-contributed column detailing the delights and dangers of working in tech support. This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Alvin" who regaled us with the tale of the time one of his clients told him their chief network engineer was suspected of having …
COMMENTS
-
-
-
Friday 12th January 2024 09:58 GMT Andy Non
Re: Likewise ...
I had a client like that once, a multi-million pound manufacturing company I had a good working relationship with. Did loads of software for them and they always paid on time. After a number of years they got taken over by an American firm and it became a nightmare getting paid, so many delays, hoops and hurdles to get past, imposed on them from across the pond. The next time they wanted work doing I said "No, I'm not prepared to deal with you any more."
-
Friday 12th January 2024 18:11 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Likewise ...
I've done similar, I was the sole IT support person for a business with several offices, (sounds grand but no, they had maybe 10 people per office), their MD decided to retire and hand down the business to his kids.
About 6 months later it had become *so* difficult to do business with them to meet their unrealistic expectations, the contantly moving goalposts, never mind actually get paid for it, I waved the white flag and walked.
18 monhs later they went bankrupt, bailiffs at the door, the works.
Every now and then I have the pleasure of telling the kids to f*$k off when they contact me via linkedin or some other means.
-
Saturday 13th January 2024 13:02 GMT dinsdale54
Re: Likewise ...
In my many years in presales I dealt with a - thankfully - small number of really unpleasant organisations and individuals.
I once suggested a sales incentive where the top sales rep in the company won the right to tell a customer of their choice to go fuck themselves - regardless of the financial consequences.
I have never seen such enthusiasm from the sales reps for a reward scheme!
-
-
Monday 15th January 2024 11:38 GMT Sampler
Re: Likewise ...
Have done that, do photography on the side, friend needed some help for her market research company, first few projects, no issue, but then it started to have to deal with the India out source accounts team and the Kafka nightmare of circular arguments that I just told them to lose my number (once I finally got my money).
-
Monday 22nd January 2024 23:25 GMT CompliantChaos
Re: Likewise ...
I dealt with a slow paying customer a little differently: Set up a "draw down" account. They were requested to fund it with sufficient funds to pay for about 20 hours at my current rate. As I performed services, I drew down the account. When the credit in the account got low (around 15%), I reminded them to fund it again - and if they did not, no services were performed, even when there was some credit in the account. I did not have to chase them, they chased me. Oh, if they went lagging on funding the account, my fee went up slightly.
They did not like the arrangement and complained vociferously, and were encouraged to seek the help of other professionals. They did on some occasions, and were gobsmacked that my fee was as much as 30% lower than folks they found. They came back to "the fold" .EVERY.TIME! And funded the account again and again. Once a year I reviewed the work done and reset the funding level I required for me to even begin to work on the next issue. \C-L
-
Thursday 25th January 2024 22:15 GMT Alan Brown
Re: Likewise ...
> The next time they wanted work doing I said "No, I'm not prepared to deal with you any more."
I've done something similar - although in my case it was "due to your bad credit record, advance payment is required"
Which resulted in company owners initially asking wtf we meant - and going ballistic upon finding that an underling was making her stats look good by delaying payments to a raft of suppliers (which in turn had resulted in various "good customer" discounts having gone away, as well as some applying an "asshole tax")
-
-
Friday 12th January 2024 13:48 GMT collinsl
Re: Likewise ...
> Contrary to popular belief, the customer is not always automatically right, and you can fire them.
The original part of that was supposedly "The customer is King" (I.E. you should be nice to them and give them what they want whenever possible) but it somehow got corrupted to "the customer is always right" which is not the original intention and actively harms business relationships sometimes.
-
-
Friday 12th January 2024 15:36 GMT The commentard formerly known as Mister_C
Re: Likewise ...
I remember seeing a photocopier joke* back in the 80s of a lady-of-the-night leaning against a bus stop sign. The punchline was "the customer always comes first".
* A funny distributed by people photocopying your copy and adding it to their collection. We've got email for that sort of thing now.
-
-
-
-
Saturday 13th January 2024 19:34 GMT bemusedHorseman
Re: Likewise ...
As a retail salesmonkey, I wish we had the authority to "fire" customers for being twats. But apparently, at least in our district, even the Store Manager no longer has the ability to trespass dangerous customers from the premises anymore! Not without a police report, at least.
-
Saturday 13th January 2024 20:55 GMT Jou (Mxyzptlk)
Re: Likewise ...
Where is this? Because: As a customer can choose a store to do business with, so every store can choose to deny business with a customer. Including denying entry to the premises. I see no sane reason why this should not be the way. This is the first time I hear something like this "world wide", so I am really interested where and what kind of business it is. As for a hospital, for example, I would get that everyone must be able to access, but a hospital is not a normal business with a retail salesmonkey...
-
Saturday 13th January 2024 21:52 GMT bemusedHorseman
Re: Likewise ...
Home Depot, and it's a local law that says that a police report of "reoccuring" violence is required to trespass someone, it's not a company-wide rule that management isn't allowed to. ...Actually, there's a lot of fscked up laws in my area targeted specifically at retail employees. Like for example, if you "haven't clocked out for lunch before the five-hour mark", it's not the company that gets penalized, it's YOU for "refusal to take a required lunch". As in, the state labor board fines you personally for the infraction. But only for retail employees! The labor board doesn't give a flip if an Amazon warehouse slave even gets a pee break, let alone a lunch... they only care about and penalize retail employees.
-
-
-
Sunday 14th January 2024 18:04 GMT Jou (Mxyzptlk)
Re: Likewise ...
> I'm guessing USA. It's a chain they have.
Ah, I understand. But then it raises the next question: Which USA? There are 50 states, and their laws differ widely from state to state. Even from county to county, from city to city, from town to town, from village to village...
> But also, my experience of Mastodon, in particular, is that posts which don't state their (relevant) location generally end to be USA.
This is a weird bubble thinking, like those 3.75% population of 8 billion humans on earth are the definition of the world and everything revolves around them. Though, when I hear from Americans living abroad and coming back: The US news is only about US, and all foreign news is only reported when it affects US. One of those many reverse culture shocks, and they all say the same about the news.
-
Sunday 14th January 2024 22:09 GMT Terry 6
Re: Likewise ...
": The US news is only about US,"
That would be an improvement.
Having visited my cousins in the US ans stayed in their home a few times, you'd be amazed how little national news there is. Most of it is very local, as far as I could see,
And of course, this is the nation that thinks "football" defaults to meaning the version only they play ( and even they play the proper version outside the big arenas).
And who have a World Series in a sport than no one from any other country plays in against them.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Monday 15th January 2024 11:30 GMT mistersaxon
Re: The customer is always right ...
That ONLY applies to matters of personal taste - if the customer wants a wide-brimmed turquoise hat and a flamingo-pink coat then don't argue with them, let them have it. That's where and why the remark was coined and should not be taken to apply to any other matters in the store, including such things as whether the customer gets a discount, payment terms, is allowed to defame staff or demand "compensation" for imagined slights, etc etc.
I do hate the way that piece of advice for sales staff has been taken and turned into a cudgel to be used against any member of staff, anywhere, at any time, for any reason.
-
Monday 15th January 2024 12:53 GMT Richard Cranium
Re: Likewise ...
Some customers are so demanding the cost of keeping them outweighs the benefit. If you explicitly fire them there's a risk they'll badmouth you.
One solution is to gradually increase your response time and charges.
If you're a large corporate or a government body the solution is to have a "help desk" behind a "call waiting" system and staffed by morons with a poor grasp of English who are rewarded for a high call closure rate and penalised if they dare escalate a call to someone competent. The problem customers will move elsewhere and become a drain on your competitor's resources - a double win!
Two flaws with that - there may be no competitor (Government agencies) but they don't give a f*k about the public they're supposed to be serving and you'll also annoy "good" customers (and miss the opportunity to understand and address genuine problems, imagine if initial reports of problems with Horizon had been recognised, escalated and addressed two decades before it escalated into a massive scandal and cover-up).
-
Monday 15th January 2024 22:22 GMT Terry 6
Re: Likewise ...
In your "two flaws" part of the comment you underplay the main flaw in that argument. i.e. that you will piss off *any* customer who needs to interact with you.
Also, in many cases, currently what helps the exisiting crap companies to retain their customers is that they're all at it so there's seldom any point changing.
They all seem to do it........
They hide or remove phone numbers and email addresses. Instead there's a web page with a tab that says "Contact us" that leads to a page of FAQs that have no relevance to anything that anyone would care about. followed, possible only after you've clicked on one of these, by a link that says "Need more help". This takes you to a generic Help page. On that page, carefully hidden, will be a contact us link. Which leads to the FAQ page...
-
-
-
Saturday 13th January 2024 07:28 GMT Bebu
Probably equivalent to the halting problem....
"absolutely certain that you can revoke ALL their access"
If I were the target or could ever be I would fabricate something that could not actually provide access until you revoked accesses. Fortunately I would never give a rat's at the best of times.
Vendors ship such a massive number remote access "opportunities" preinstalled in their product that Alvin's protagonist could just retain a list of the installed hardware and software (even just in his head) and keep an eye on the various security lists and in no time at all: "I'm back! Miss me?"
If nothing else a situation like this is a wakeup call for the organisation to review policies, all facets of security, operations, logging and documentation. Most SMEs are a complete dog's breakfast and that libels canines.
-
Monday 15th January 2024 10:26 GMT imanidiot
Re: Probably equivalent to the halting problem....
That's one of the good reasons it's worth it to have the IT team play "red team" every once in a while in a friendly competition. Winner is the on that gets in undetected, prize is something simple (get to leave an hour early, get the easy jobs for a week, a Mars bar from the vending machine, whatever) and the recognition of your coworkers for "being a smart bastard".
Then afterwards "blue team" the findings and how to close the holes everyone found.
-
-
-
Friday 12th January 2024 11:36 GMT Pete Sdev
Agreed.
Recently had to do something similar (revoking accounts, changing server passwords, etc.) because we couldn't trust the recently let-go cow-orker not to be malicious. Fortunately they weren't senior.
There is also the corollary rule of "Never never keep working for a company you can't trust".
-
-
Saturday 13th January 2024 06:17 GMT An_Old_Dog
Working for Untrustworthy Companies
You may not be able to "buy food for your family" if an untrustworthy company -- or untrustworthy people inside that company -- you work for under-records/under-reports the number of hours you've worked, the number of paid sick hours and vacation hours you have accrued, doesn't send in required tax and unemployment insurance contributions on your behalf, mis-classifies you as an independant contractor, or otherwise fucks you out of money you've rightfully earned in their employ.
Unfortunately, I've worked for two companies like that, but transitioned as quickly and gracefully as I could to a better employer.
-
Saturday 13th January 2024 12:39 GMT gnasher729
Re: Working for Untrustworthy Companies
Not sending in the employee’s taxes is in most countries treated as theft. It is serious trouble. It’s not like your salary: Your salary is legally the company’s money until they pay you and it becomes yours. But your PAYE is _your_ money which the employer should send to the tax office. So not sending it is stealing from you.
-
Monday 15th January 2024 09:19 GMT Lord Elpuss
Re: Working for Untrustworthy Companies
Last year I was contacted by the tax office saying there was a shortfall in my PAYE and I needed to pay upwards of 4 grand.
In fact what they ACTUALLY said was: "You owe us 4 grand, and you have 30 days to pay it." Not a joke, not an exaggeration. That's what they said. After contacting them and being given the runaround by a number of tax office telephone support peeps who were pleasant enough but just didn't know the reason, one called me back and told me it was because my client had used the wrong tax code, and had underpaid tax in the previous tax year; which they were reclaiming.
Luckily (due to years of experience in contracting fuckery) I have a slush fund for situations like this and could pay it. But imagine if I couldn't? Plenty of people don't have 4 grand floating around, and tax offices aren't known for their leniency - so even though it was a client fuckup, they still came to me.
-
-
Tuesday 16th January 2024 17:59 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Working for Untrustworthy Companies
I'm still waiting for HMRC to even acknowledge receipt of my letter which they signed for back in July - telling them why their demand for additional tax (also triggering the need for on account payments for the following year) was "incorrect". And they've not responded to my request to explain why when I went to fill in my tax return, I found that someone had changed the address on my account - thus making it rather hit and miss whether I'd get (in a timely manner, or at all) their letters (I work on a very large site, where there are a lot of people, but I'm not an employee of the company who's site it is).
It'll be interesting to see how far they will go (or not, and just leave it) before I tax it to the tribunal.
-
-
-
Sunday 26th May 2024 20:10 GMT Tony Mudd
Re: Working for Untrustworthy Companies
A bit more borderline is when it takes 6-7 weeks for your pension money to appear in your pension account.
i.e. the employer has paid you, deducted tax and pension, but it takes ages to appear in the account with the pension provider.
This was with a large employer and a large (nationwide) pension provider, so someone's sitting on > GBP1million and taking the investment/interest from it.
It looks like there is a regulation about it, but why is it 56 days (I think), in this day of banking and faster payments etc, the payments should go missing for more than a week.
-
Saturday 13th January 2024 22:19 GMT Terry 6
Re: Working for Untrustworthy Companies
Ah yes. Reference here the company bosses/owners that don't report and pay forward National Insurance obligations (while deducting them from staff). Leaving a nasty mess for (ex)employees when the company goes belly-up. My late father was a manager ( and victim) in one such. The insolvency company kept him on for several months to help resolve the tangles.
-
-
-
-
-
Friday 12th January 2024 22:19 GMT jake
Re: ?
"but better sources are gone."
http://jargon-file.org/archive/
This particular mispleling first appeared on Usenet sometime in the late 1980s. Sadly, the gookids destroyed the DejaNews archive, so finding the actual date and original poster's handle seems somewhat unlikely at this juncture ... although nothing posted online ever truly goes away, so there is hope.
Hint: Cow-orker first appears in version 4.1.0 of The Jargon File.
-
Monday 15th January 2024 10:03 GMT Displacement Activity
Re: ?
This particular mispleling first appeared on Usenet sometime in the late 1980s. Sadly, the gookids destroyed the DejaNews archive
That was an act of unforgivable vandalism. Some of the old comp.lang groups were priceless, and you could learn an obscure language quickly just by hanging around for a few months (that basically made my career). Stackoverflow is completey useless for these languages. I occasionally look for backups of some of the groups, but haven't found anything.
-
-
-
Sunday 14th January 2024 21:53 GMT jake
Re: ?
Why would I want to irk my cows? It makes their milk taste off, which leads to awful viili, yogurt, cream, butter and cheese.
Cows are actually quite docile. No fence needed. If you irk them, they will likely turn their back to you and move away.
Unless they have guns, that is.
I don't actually drink milk ... milk is made for for baby bovines, not adult humans. Have a beer instead. Much more civilized.
-
Monday 15th January 2024 20:57 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: ?
"Cows are actually quite docile. No fence needed. If you irk them, they will likely turn their back to you and move away."
Sometimes, irking them just means being in the same field if the have calves. There's been a couple of case in the year or so locally of people being killed by cows. I don't remember the precise details, but the cases I remember were not kids out messing about, just ramblers passing by.
-
-
Friday 12th January 2024 18:13 GMT Anonymous Coward
good company vs. good boss.
"Never never keep working for a company you can't trust".
except...at least in my world, we don't really work for "companies"...we work for bosses. Good company and bad boss = bad work experience. Bad company and good boss = good (not bad?) work experience.
I work for a sh**-hoke company. We are running at a huge loss, huge debt, and desperately need to replace existing hardware and software. Stock price has dropped from five digits (way over inflated) to one digit (probably still over-inflated) over the last five years. No business plan to change any of that. The only thing I trust my employer about is their desire to replace all high paid workers with low-paid off-shore workers, and the fact they will probably do that badly.
I figured out much of that during the interview process. But the guy I was interviewing with seemed like a good boss. And he is. And having had enough bad bosses over the years (and don't get me wrong, I'm not a perpetual whiner...I have had some FANTASTIC bosses, too), I'm not too eager to jump as long as I have a good boss. HIS boss is a jerk, so I'm sure he'll be jumping when he can and I will leave shortly after. But in the meantime, I'm in no hurry to leave. But then, I have a long and good reputation for the things that matter, I'm not too worried about being tarred with my association with this company. If I were young and starting out and building my reputation, yeah, I'd be afraid of association with this place.
And posting as anonymous coward because, as I said, I've got a good boss, and I'm not in a hurry to be job hunting.
-
-
-
Saturday 13th January 2024 21:25 GMT doublelayer
I guess a competent person who was also a bit unstable. For example, building a real backup location on the cheap could have been useful to a company that wasn't going to build a proper one, but you never do that without permission. I could see a scenario under which an employee could do good work and still have to go quickly.
-
Sunday 14th January 2024 07:13 GMT Jamie Jones
Yeah, I'm not doubting his work, but the fact they were willing to keep someone on who they fully thought capable of being such a loose canon is what got me.
What would he do if during his employment an employee pissed him off, or the boss refused a pay rise?
It just seems weird to me that you'd want to keep someone on even though you don't trust them!
-
-
-
Monday 15th January 2024 11:35 GMT Sampler
He's lucky
Many who think it's a good idea to take revenge on an employer for being let go end up doing time, he could've easily been hit with computer misuse charges here, quite fortunate the company decide to shrug it off.
I've only been let go the once, made redundant so they didn't have to pay my visa renewal (I'd been warned by three separate colleagues it's what happens, but having saved the company nearly my wage in wasted expenditure I naively thought I might be an exception). They were clearly clueless when it came to IT (hence saving them six figures a year of wasted expenditure) and I could've done several things that would've caused them a massive headache as a fuck you.
But the boss was a cow bag and figured karma would get them in the end (which it did, saw a news article how they'd "agreed to step down" from their company a year later) and I'd got a new job six hours later, so need to endanger my visa.
-
-
-
-
Friday 12th January 2024 10:55 GMT Anonymous Anti-ANC South African Coward
Re: Dead mans shoes career progression
A true BOFH never want's to be the boss, at least not in title. Manipulating the person in that post, well, that's just the game!
'strue dat. Being a mangler means you are more visible.
Being a normal worker means you are less visible, and have more time for shenanigans.
-
-
-
-
Saturday 13th January 2024 20:39 GMT CountCadaver
Re: Dead mans shoes career progression
Given the world we live in I'd rather say "The greatest trick ever pulled was convincing humanity that god was benevolent"
I often think the world has it backwards - the "holy teachings" often justify war, handing over your daughter's to a mob, bigotry and worse along with "be miserable your entire life, suffering is good for you, enjoying yourself is sinful"
The devil/satan/boogeyman on the other hand is do as you wish and a lot more focus on free will....
-
Saturday 13th January 2024 22:24 GMT jake
Re: Dead mans shoes career progression
The greatest trick was convincing the proles that God (or Gods) existed at all, and that I am the only one who can see/speak with him in real time, so give me lots of money and I'll put in a good word for you. And if you give me a little more, I'll
tellask the god(s) to protect you from the devil/satan/boogeyman as well.Of COURSE you can speak to god(s) by yourself, without me. But he's really, really busy, running the Universe and all, and probably won't have time to talk directly to you ... but I am the chosen one who has his ear, so obviously your message will get through better/faster/clearer if you go through me. That'll be another couple bucks, please.
-
Tuesday 16th January 2024 18:17 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Dead mans shoes career progression
the "holy teachings" often justify war, handing over your daughter's to a mob, bigotry and worse along with "be miserable your entire life, suffering is good for you, enjoying yourself is sinful
I'd suggest that in general, holy teachings (of a variety of faiths) do not do this. If you look into it, it's usually people who want to misuse "religion" for their own ends.
Example, in the west, there's a perception that (for example) Muslim teachings say this. AIUI they don't, but as already pointed out, there are those who like to misrepresent them - as we see some extremists corrupt malleable people into performing acts of terrorism (notice how the ringleaders don't do their own dirty work).
That's not to say Christianity hasn't had it's bad spells either.
As for not having fun, well that has been true - go back a couple of centuries and Christianity went through a puritanist phase, and many churches are suffering badly these days as a result (having pews, which were deliberately uncomfortable) stopped churches being the centre of communities (school during the week, social club on Fri or Sat nights, and church on Sunday). Most successful churches these days are the ones that have managed to put some fun back into things, and those trying to plan a road forwards are generally trying to do the same. In our church, we're looking at getting rid of the pews, make the place suitable for more than just "an hour a week on Sunday morning", and hopefully find enough alternative uses to pay the bills - if we don't then it'll be a case of struggling on till there's no money left* and then close.
* While many think "the church" has loads of money, at the parish level it's a different story.
-
Wednesday 17th January 2024 18:27 GMT Toni the terrible
Re: Dead mans shoes career progression
It's the Priests (not all but enough), the original doctrine is often good for the era but after a while with priests manipulating teachings in their personal beliefs and to their own advantage it can be made to justify the Devil. And when that era ends, the doctrine may not be a good fit, and then there are fanatics and fundermentalists....
-
-
-
-
Sunday 14th January 2024 21:23 GMT jake
Re: Dead mans shoes career progression
"I see you are still collecting those downvotes like some kind of badge of honour"
Normally I wouldn't know about
votesthumbs, up or down. I drop them as useless. (Remember, adblockers can block more than just ads).But just for you, I'll turn them on for the comments in this one article, and see what I see.
Looks like 129 thumbs up, and 8 thumbs down, or just under 6% of the total thumbs are down.
Of those, the 4 votes down that you are commenting on (about 4.3% of the known number of total voters in this comment section, and a full half of the total downvotes) are from deluded people who seem to think the BOFH is somehow very real and relevant, and not a tired, aging cartoon leftover from Usenet.
Even if I gave a shit about thumbs, I could easily live with a result like that.
Have a nice day. This round's on me :-)
-
-
-
-
-
Friday 12th January 2024 10:37 GMT Anonymous Coward
I remember a few jobs ago I was brought in as a senior engineer looking after exchange and generally helping run the windows and linux environments.
My senior manager was totally incompetent who hadn't updated his skills and knowledge for years (the reason i was brought in was because he switched the email gateways to open relays and the firm was blacklisted) He was genuinely the most incompetent people I've ever worked with and had an excuse for everything (we once had an issue with a server that was built over a year before, no blame was being raised but when we had a meeting about fixing it his first comment was I was on holiday when that server was built!)
Anyway, I was in charge of our outdated email archiving server and started doing regular access audits as I knew a few people had access. The system was terrible and had no auditing so I whipped up some SQL to run reports. It turned out mr slopey shoulders had been running searches on the HR director, FCO and CEOs emails. I reported this to our head of security who then took it to the director and he was called in for a disciplinary. I'm pretty sure he must have had leverage on the director as he kept his job and wasn't punished at all! He left a year later and last I heard he'd been hired for a hosting company as their senior engineer which was a total joke as the guy knew nothing!
-
-
Friday 12th January 2024 16:51 GMT Marty McFly
Re: Hot backup servers?
Hardware costs aside, power & cooling for servers is not a trivial expense. I have a tough time believing this was a truly benevolent undertaking. Was a 'hot backup' actually present, or was that just the cover story?
Being unauthorized, undocumented, and hidden verges on criminal activity and should have been dealt with accordingly.
-
Friday 12th January 2024 22:05 GMT rcxb
Re: Hot backup servers?
power & cooling for servers is not a trivial expense
Depends where you are.
Some areas have cheap electric rates.
Some areas are cold year-round, and remote so there are no city gas lines, only electric. Before heat-pumps became cheap, resistive heating was the thing, so a few servers would just mean a bit less work for your heater, no change to your electric bill.
-
-
Saturday 13th January 2024 08:02 GMT Bebu
Re: Hot backup servers?
"they needed a hot backup site, and when they balked at the cost"
That bit rings true. I suspect a case of the "pot calling the kettle..."
I suspect many here have seen things while not quite "Universes where the laws of physics were devised by a madman*", have come very close.
If I were Alvin I would have advised the organisation to have asked the engineer what he actually wanted in toto (everything) and then given it him and then advised these lords and masters to resign en masse. (He who covets the crown often isn't so keen when he discovers it comes with a kingdom.) Not a mess I would want to have ever been identified with.
This sort of nonsense and worse is still tragically prevalent and without legislative sanctions that place criminal responsibility at door of the C-suite nothing will change.
-
Friday 12th January 2024 13:08 GMT J.G.Harston
I had one job where I was brought in after the senior engineer had been fired, taking his knowledge with him. They had recruited a replacement, but he couldn't start for a couple of months. Nothing was documented, everything was in his head. I spent the time getting everything documented with backup printouts, and was confident that J. Random Stranger could walk in and take over and know how the system worked.
-
Friday 12th January 2024 13:10 GMT Anonymous Coward
employee of the year
Many years ago, in France (this is important) a colleague had devised a cunning plan for his career:
- smoke and drink coffee a lot, all day long
- scrupulously screw things beyond repair for EVERY of his actions
It served him well, for years because, with time, any time any kind of work was heading his way, the rest of the team, tired to fix his shit, would just step in and say "Boss, no, I'm gonna take care of this", leaving him with nothing to do.
Years after, we moved him to another french team, bigger, where his incompetence would be less visible or damageable.
And no, this being France, we could never fire him ...
-
-
-
Sunday 14th January 2024 23:32 GMT Trixr
Re: employee of the year
Yeah, that kind of narrative annoys me, because it's never so "impossible" to fire someone as is stated. It can certainly be a right royal pain in the ars3 with all the "counselling" and "training opportunities" and "performance plans" that might be required as evidence to get rid of someone. But a year of that is better than multiple years with a useless employee.
Also, that kind of attitude about its impossibility leads to the increasing reliance on so-called "contract" employees working permanent jobs, essentially. But at least you have the opportunity to get rid of them within 6 months/a year if they turn out to be useless. That just outsources the stress of employee management to the employee themselves. Fine if you like being a contractor and having the stress of renegotiating your employment at $interval, but I could personally do without it.
Employers could make more use of trial periods as well, But big companies love the leverage that workforce casualisation gives them, even if the quality goes down with the constant churn.
-
Monday 15th January 2024 11:31 GMT Terry 6
Re: employee of the year
" It can certainly be a right royal pain in the ars3 with all the "counselling" and "training opportunities" and "performance plans""
I've suffered that.
Some years back we had a totally useless *specialist* teacher in a part of our service, who was just wasting the life chances of the kids he was supposedly supporting. Time after time he'd survived disciplinaries, with all the mentoring and support and targets to meet.
As far as I'd seen of him his teaching was to just pull out a set of materials that he'd been using year in year out since forever.and take the kids through them- not in any way matched to the kids' actual needs
The various managers started disciplinary proceedings, set what they thought were targets- which of course he met, because they were all performative. The managers involved were all of the exteachers-who-wanted-to-get away-from-teaching types. So had no idea what targets were meaningful
Targets set, targets met, Nothing changed. Rinse and repeat. For about 10-15 years!!!.
One year I was appointed his "mentor"- which is why I knew his targets were just shit.
Next time round I was the manager prosecuting. I've always taught and refused to join that office-bound type, even as a deputy head. I was always a teacher first and foremost.
So my targets were all about the quality of teaching and lesson planning with relevance to the target child. Rather than generic "Do planning" "record outcomes".
I specified that he had to demonstrate how his "planning" referred to the specific documented needs of the specific children on his case load*. That his "outcomes" measured how the child's learning had changed with regard to the defined needs. And so forth.
He was gone within two weeks ( some deal supported by the union, but with no pay-off or anything) - because I had him bang to rights. No bullying, nothing underhand. I just specified what his job was meant to be. What he was being paid to do. And what the schools/families of those kids had a right to expect. Because he just didn't have the skills or willingness to meet those professional targets (despite years of regular and expensive training!)..
*You'd have thought this was obvious, wouldn't you?? That's mangers for you, though.
-
-
-
-
-
Friday 12th January 2024 17:52 GMT Bitsminer
...pith helmet...
$WORK accidently hired a guy from California. Complete with beard, pith helmet, khaki shorts, leather jesus boots, and Valley Accent.
He was straight out of a Hollywood stereotype factory.
We soon discovered he spent too much time actually hacking websites and trolling very illegal porn sites instead of coding for R&D group.
It took entirely too much time to fire him.
-
Friday 12th January 2024 22:37 GMT jake
Re: ...pith helmet...
Pith helmet? In California?
As a native Californian, I can honestly say I have never run across anyone affecting a pith helmet for daily wear. In fact, I can honestly say I have never known anyone that owned one, except as an old family heirloom. And then, they only wore it on Halloween. Once.
-
-
Saturday 13th January 2024 06:50 GMT An_Old_Dog
Effective Decredentialization Before Firing
Our company had an effective decredentialization procedure they carried out before firing anyone.
It made me very nervous the two or three times I found myself unable to log in, no matter how slowly-and-carefully I typed my passphrase.
*Beep-beep-boop-beep* ... "Hello, Help Desk."
"Hi, Julie, it's Mark. Is there any ... uhm ... administrative reason why I seem unable to log in this morning?"
"*clickety-clickety-clack* *click-click* Hmm ... *click-clack* No, I don't see a freeze on any of your accounts. There've been a few people calling in with the same symptom this morning, and Networks has been looking into it. If it doesn't clear up, reference ticket number 136089."
"One-three-six-zero-eight-nine ... got it; thank you."
-
Saturday 13th January 2024 12:55 GMT gnasher729
Re: Effective Decredentialization Before Firing
A company I worked for laid off people to the day two years after I started. We knew about the layoffs but not who, and I didn’t realise the two years since starting.
The day of the layoffs, my keycard didn’t let me in. Went to the admin building (open to the public) and they told me for security reasons all keycards stopped working after two years, and they already had my new card ready.
-
Saturday 13th January 2024 14:01 GMT Yet Another Anonymous coward
Re: Effective Decredentialization Before Firing
We managed to take revenge in ourselves
One of our most productive employees was rushing to finish up some stuff on their last day and discovered that our corporate overlords had deleted their access to everything at the end of the day in Europe - we're 8 hours behind.
We have encrypted home accounts and HR claim that for GDPR we can't have access to anything that wasn't explicitly shared cos they might have personal stuff on their local machine
-
-
-
-
Saturday 13th January 2024 11:47 GMT Jou (Mxyzptlk)
> Why wouldn't he just access the same files on his own, unmonitored copy?
Because he was not as good as he thought? He got caught for being stupid enough to leave trails. Some peoples minds work in weird ways, not thinking ahead far enough even though he should have known.
The "The engineer was very skilled at gaslighting" hints this type of character, Donald Trump style. Maybe you were lucky and never had to deal with those type of people.
-
Saturday 13th January 2024 18:53 GMT An_Old_Dog
Flakey People
Sometimes people are just flakey. I once had a boss, whom, on termination day after a downsize-fest, locked himself into his office and refused to come out. By the time the creaky chain-of-command had been activated and messages passed up and down, back-and-forth sideways, etc., it had been half a day. When finally Security came and got him out, his paper-shredder bin was overflowing. I never learned why.
-
-
-
-
-
Sunday 14th January 2024 21:11 GMT Graham Dawson
Re: 13 days into 2024...
Main page, scroll down just under the green bar. Or click here.
-
-
-
Saturday 13th January 2024 15:46 GMT FIA
"The company took no disciplinary action against me for my oversight, nor their former network engineer for his sabotage, but chalked it up to a lesson learned for everybody," Alvin told On Call.
What?
Alvin should not have faced any action, but action against the former network engineer should have been taken.
Unless you'd not prosecute in other cases of vandalism?
Just because IT isn't largely ephemeral doesn't mean it should be treated differently.
-
-
Sunday 14th January 2024 21:21 GMT An_Old_Dog
"I'll Wipe Them" -- Erm, No.
"You, our attorney, and our designated tech will accompany you from this meeting to your home, where you will provide all necessary keys, passphrases, and other accesses needed for our designated techie to wipe them. You will then provide all necessary keys, passphrases, and other accesses needed for our tech to wipe all backup media related to those servers, after which you will sign a document laying out what you have done, and attesting that you have not failed to provide access to any media, at any location, upon which you or your associates have emplaced or caused to have become emplaced, copies, in whatever form, of any Company X-owned files, in whole or in part, with financial penalties for failure to comply with the terms in the document. If you fail to comply in any part with this procedure, the matter will be referred for criminal prosecution."
-
-
Monday 15th January 2024 10:54 GMT Stuart Castle
Nothing to do with IT, this...
When I was a student, I needed a job. I got a job as a shelf stacker for my local Sainsburys while I looked for something more interesting.
I used to work Friday and Saturday nights from 10pm to about 3am.
The money was fairly crap, and the job was awful. The stock was arranged into cardboard pallets, and we had to put out 40 pallets an hour. Difficult to do at the best of times, but made even worse by the fact that our store had shelves half the size of the standard Sainsbury's ones at the time, so every pallet needed to be repacked to fit. I used to go home drenched in sweat and aching, despite being in my 20s.
In the month or so I worked there, one of my colleagues hit the target once. He went to the manager, who just looked at him and asked "Why are you telling me this?",adding "Instead of telling me, you should be putting out more pallets".
At the end of the month, Blockbuster opened up a shop about a mile away. They advertised for staff. Being a film buff, I applied for the job and got it. The job still involved a fair amount of physical work, but I was paid slightly more (still a crap wage) and worked with people (including management) who I liked.
One of the greatest pleasures I've had is when I told my manager at Sainsburys. I didn't just pull him aside and tell him (as I would have normally). I waited until the shop was really busy, took him in to the middle of the area where people used to queue at the checkouts, and in full view of dozens of people, told him to go fuck himself and stick his job up his arse, then walked out during the stunned silence that followed.
TBH, I'm surprised I wasn't banned.
-
Tuesday 16th January 2024 08:42 GMT Cooper Coopie Coo
It would be interesting to know what HR files he was looking at and why. I would be surprised if he was not influencing events based on the information he was gathering. I would also be surprised that he was not either altering data, selling it or both with that home backup server. I is hard to believe that he was taking an enormous risk and expense by shear happens pence with zero ulterior motives. I think Alvin missed the bigger picture just like he missed the Internet.
-
Tuesday 16th January 2024 08:42 GMT Cooper Coopie Coo
Missing the Big picture
It would be interesting to know what HR files he was looking at and why. I would be surprised if he was not influencing events based on the information he was gathering. I would also be surprised that he was not either altering data, selling it or both with that home backup server. I is hard to believe that he was taking an enormous risk and expense by shear happens pence with zero ulterior motives. I think Alvin missed the bigger picture just like he missed the Internet.
-
Tuesday 16th January 2024 08:44 GMT Anonymous Coward
Insider threat!
I worked as ITSM for a switch that processed %80 of card transactions for a certain country, there was a guy who had worked there for over a decade. He was the only person who fully knew how the switch worked at the coding level. He smelt bad, had half his breakfast still in his nicotine stained beard, wore a stained t shirt, had desk piled up with crap, he was rude to everyone, and had a lot of secrets in his personal life, he flatly refused to transfer any information to work collogues, he never took more than a few days holiday at a time. I flagged him as a risk from day two on site. He had so many reasons to be disciplined, but HR and the CEO were scared of him! One day I came across a print out he had forgotten that was for a farm he had purchased at auction, there was no way he could have bought it at the rate he was being paid. I reported it to anyone who would listen, but everyone just kept their heads down and ignored it!
-
Tuesday 16th January 2024 17:31 GMT Albatross
Re: Insider threat!
Huh, that SAME guy worked at a place where I once worked! His cubicle was piled with garbage, with a spherical indentation into which he could socket his bulk. When his cubicle gets too fragrant the office shuffles the cubicles, which process persuades him to toss some of the trash.
The first meeting I had with him I asked why a certain set of systems were directly exposed to the Internet, on public IPs. He shouted at me, and I was later told that he was particularly sensitive that "for performance reasons" those systems remain directly on the Internet with no firewall. Still are to this day.
Garbage guy was presenting during a meeting with me, several others, and one particularly puckish colleague when a question was raised about the "backplane" of a certain switch. Garbage guy started tying "backplane" into his search bar, but when he had typed "back" the searchbar briefly displayed something akin to "https backpages(.)com / City / escorts / redhead /..."
I exchanged a look with my puckish colleague, who took the next opportunity to ask Garbage guy to explain "the backplane thing" again. Sure enough, Garbage guy repeats the entire process, and the URL appeared again.
Nothing came of it, Garbage guy is still there and I'm long gone, but... ew.
-
Wednesday 17th January 2024 07:26 GMT An_Old_Dog
Interpretations
I initially interpreted your first sentence up to the comma as referring to Hollerith (punched) cards, not credit cards, thinking, "Wow ... but yeah, I've seen that type of mixed technology levels before."
In the 1980s, I went to a college where their shiny-new IBM 4330 was connected across the campus to a room with a minicomputer-and-terminals-attached-to-it. Also in that room, was an IBM Remote Job Entry station, which was how we talked with the 4330 mainframe. While the other students did their work interactively via the terminals hooked up to the minicomputer (a Texas Instruments 990/12), we punched our cards offline, then dumped them into the RJE and waited for our printouts.
-
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
Monday 19th February 2024 12:42 GMT Anonymous Coward
I haven't personally had to fire anyone, but my old boss was.
We never had any official reason given, or notice. Not that I would expect either.
Apparently, not long before 5 one friday afternoon, my boss's boss turned up to my boss's office with a large security guard in tow. He grabbed my boss, and took him to his office. I never saw the boss again. My colleagues were ordered to pack up his personal effects for the company to deal with, and also ordered to remove all of his access to our systems. They were told not to leave until this was done. Apparently although they didn't normally get overtime, any overtime required was paid.
The next monday, me and one of my colleagues were called to see the big boss, who said she'd heard we maintained friendships with my boss outside of work. In my case, that was not true, but in my colleague's case, it was. She said she could not order us to do this, as she had no control of our lives away from work, but she recommended we cut all contact with him. We did so.
I later heard a rumour that he was selling company equipment cheaply and illegally, but have never been able to confirm that. Nor have I really tried.