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She Was Fired, But Never Told
A fun one: "An employee at Network Commerce Inc. (formerly shopnow.com) found out that she was fired when her company cellphone was cancelled, network account was disabled and building keycard wouldn't work. This article from The Stranger talks about the somewhat callous attitude that this particular dotcom has taken towards its soon to be ex-employees." Now, with readership as diverse as ours, I'm sure there are a few good stories out there about getting fired from a dot-com.
It's not like he's passing bad cheques dude. The judge would throw it out.
How we know is more important than what we know.
heh.. are you in Australia? Then I think it's a good bet. I never knew the nicks that these guys used to post on Slashdot.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Have you been in a cave for two years? Yahoo has already cratered in the market, but the paychecks are still coming through and they are still meeting their numbers every quarter. Ebay too.
Of course I'm not arguing that these companies are sitting pretty, but they are in no dnager whatsoever of going under, not even close.
In fact, you could argue that things are going according to strategy - both of these companies should comes out of the downturn with most of their competition wiped out, allowing them to raise fees for advertising and services without fear of losing customers (immediately). This happens in any competitive market - eventually two or three players emerge who gradually push prices back up for services or merchandise once the competition is pushed out.
I used to work for $(MUMBLE_SALT_PILE_MUMBLE), and they were actually fairly nice to me, as such things go. During one of their countless 'reorganizations', they gave me six weeks' notice, as there was a deliverable they needed me to finish. Everyone else had to be out of the building that same day.
Despite the fact that I was staying on, the IS department (IS&T, Information Services and Telephones, which we constantly referred to as "isn't" behind their backs) froze out my account. No big deal; I still had an open 'telnet' session to the build machine, which I kept open until the account was reactivated.
I was a good little drone, and although I publicly flamed IS&T for spending time farting around setting up a PointCast proxy rather than focusing on keeping essential services running solidly, I finished my deliverable, and left only with those things that rightfully belonged to me.
I would have sworn they would be F*ckedCompany.com material by now. But, remarkably, the company is still in business, focusing on its core competency (spending lots of money creating derivative products).
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
During my brief employment at CompUSA, I witnessed an interesting ritual. About three weeks after any new hire was brought in, one of the employees would take his magnetic time card and toss it in the nearby "Comments" box. Now, keep in mind that usually the hire was a young male in serious need of a reality check and an attitude adjustment. It would not be long before he stormed into the Manager's office and demand to know why he had been "fired."
The manager would, without a word, go to the break room, unlock the comment box, and place the card in the hand of the hire, who by now couldn't pronounce the word "sorry" if his life depended on it.
The manager never seemed to mind - I suppose the shakeup was just what most of the victims needed.
One of the cool things that I have learned is that there are websites out there that critique IT companies in local areas... Here in Chicago, we have http://themayreport.com. The may report allows ex-employees (or anyone for that matter) to give opinions of the companies they work(ed) for. All the comments are available for posting on the web, and if the person so chooses, they may have it posted anonymously...
I think this gives a great way for people to do their own research (even if its based on hearsay) of what ex/current employees feel.
Sarcasm is the recourse of a weak mind...
--
In the real world, our data is stored on a central server (dual 300mhz Ultrasparc 2 w/ anA1000)... Which I backup when I can (no autoloader), but we're horribly understaffed as I mentioned before (as most places are ... once again, in the real world I usually end up doing OTHER peoples work : Teaching secrataries Latex, Photoshop, Word, Access, Illustrator ... Correcting Proposals, answering programming questions etc etc ...
I spend 30 mins a week doing actual administrator things, and the rest is wasted away...
And the thing about the research is, its not even OUR research, the length of most research projects is a year, and we get X dollars to do research on project Y in time T ... If some guy strands us because he got offered a real job (again, our fault:) we're still liable for that research he was supposed to be doing, and we'd better have a paper ready to publish at the end of the contract
So your correct, if we weren't in crisis mode all the time (which my boss chooses to be in -- we have the money to hire more people) then backups would happen 3 times a week and everything would be cool. But we are and its not :)
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
i don't remember hiring anybody named 'ph33r' or 'eleet'.... i'll have to remind them that they shouldn't have blank passwords. darn users.
I don't understand why, in my mail handling /etc/aliases file, all the research, engineering and top management e-mail addresses are listed as follows:
username: username,covert_operations@bigcompetitor.ru<sigh> I guess the old IT guy who was finally fired just had a different way of handling incoming mail than I have. You know, when you inherit a system from someone else...
<grin>
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Lots of .com's don't tell their employees about new hires either, until they see their name in /etc/passwd one day...
No, it's just a coincidence
Years ago I worked in a Distribution Center for the GAP. I was one of the ppl in the MIS staff there and got to work in a somewhat relaxed land of mainframes and cubicles. This one operator didn't fit in too well with the crowd, took a few too many sick days and showed up late a few times (he was commuting over an hour). one friday he called in sick, the boss said ok no problem and hung up, promptly called security had his key card deactivated, all access to everything removed and told one of the other operators to box his stuff up and take it out to security. no notice no call no you're fired. He got to drive an hour the next monday to find out he couldn't even get in the building. That's a little corse.
(Subject line says it all.) They can get in a LOT of trouble for failing to pay up.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
First they fired my assistant, which pissed me off immensely but didn't make me leave. Then they tried making vague implications to all my coworkers that I was psychotic, which merely got them laughed at. Then they tried to convince me that I was psychotic, which was surreal to say the least, but I wasn't buying it.
Then they accused me of falsifying my timecard, but I produced a log in which I had documented for each day not only how long I had worked but what I had done and why I had overtime every single day. They never admitted they had made up the accusation, but they stopped trying to use it as an excuse to get rid of me.
Then they accused me of doing poor quality work, so I produced memos from all the department heads saying what I wonderful job I was doing and how grateful they were that I had helped them to so substantially increase productivity in their departments.
Then they turned off my account on the server, which meant that as a systems administrator I couldn't do any work, and hoped I'd just *assume* I had been fired and leave. So I officially asked (in writing) if the disconnection of my account was intended to indicate that I was fired, which resulted in my boss throwing a screaming fit at me loud enough to send the whole staff running to the phones to call their headhunters, but no firing.
So I inquired politely what they would like me to do on company time, and was told to sit at my desk and do nothing, do not touch the server, do not do any work, do not read anything, do not talk to anyone. That got *awfully* boring quickly, so I wrote a memo to my boss in which I ever so politely pointed out that as he had rendered me unable to do any work, I was not creating any value for the company, and if he would like me to be able to do something to contribute I would need access to the server. Within an hour he fired me for "insubordination" for "ordering" him to give me access to the server. They gave me enough severance to buy a new suit and pay a few months rent, but it didn't matter because right after I put my resume out Harvard phoned to hire me for a contract job without an interview. (Always nice to have a job negotiation begin with "you're hired, can you start today", don't you think?)
As I was walking out the door I heard the scream of the alarm indicating the server's UPS shutting the server down due to overload because the boss had plugged a laser printer into it. (The manual specifically said not to do that...) I thought it fitting that the server I had built, which had never once gone down while I worked there, died as I walked out the door. I heard from former co-workers that a month later the boss had a nervous breakdown and had to give up computing forever and became a waiter in a coffee bar.
Convergys? Which part, the former CBIS or former Matrixx Marketing? (that would be easy to believe, the bozos).
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
My fiancee works as a web designer in a contract position with the state. She has received many kudos for her work, and is very well liked in her office.
At one point, her contract was coming up for renewal. One Friday after work, she opened up a non-descript envelope in the mail, containing a 'status update' printed on a tractor-feed self-duplicating form. The form had several checkboxes indicating whether or not your contract had been renewed or terminated.
Imagine her horror when she discovered that 'terminated' was checked, with no explanation. She had the entire weekend to fester over how cold-hearted this was, having no options other than to leave a voicemail for her boss politely asking for some sort of explanation.
Her boss called her on Monday and was even more surprised about the termination notice. She made a few phone calls, and came back with good news...
Apparently, many other contract employees had received similar mailings that Friday. It turns out was not fired at all--it was a simple misprint. The form was laid out with the 'fired' checkbox directly above the 'not fired' checkbox. The forms had apparently slipped in the printer, causing the printed 'X' to land in the wrong box.
I'm *sure* there's a usability/form design lesson in all of this...
My manager let it slip then asked me to keep quiet about it.
Been through a couple layoffs at Apple. Read about what I think about Apple's management. But don't think I'm still a fan of Be, Inc. - read about what I think we ought to do to all operating systems vendors.
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
I was working at a startup company about a year ago when they started delaying paychecks to everyone...but we weren't fired and we would get paid back wages. After 2 missed paychecks, all of the employees of this company decided that we had done enough volunteering, and it was time to get a new job. I had a much better job in less than a week too.
About a year ago, maybe less, I was predicting that the tulip bubble the Internet was experiencing was going to burst. In fact, when I heard about Redhat's stock becoming ridiculously inflated, I posted something like, "Ah! I'm going to go hide under my bed" right here on Slashdot.
See that's the trouble with tulip bubbles. Tulips are worth something, and maybe even experience a great jump in value over a short period. (Especially if there is a Rennaisance in horticulture and you get lots of new and interesting breeds of tulips.)
Unfortunately, at this point you get fools with money jumping in who don't know a damn thing about tulips but figure they'll make mucho dinero. They over inflate the market... which is ok as long as you have a further influx of monied fools. Of course, eventually more of these fools are involved in, and thus controlling, the market than serious investors.
This sort of thing can't last forever, of course, and when the bubble burst the fools start running around like chickens their heads cut off. Then, since they now run the market, they are able to depress the value of tulips to a ridiculously low bargain price. It's a really good time to buy tulip bulbs for incredible bargains.
So now I'm out from under my bed, carefully investing in stocks that are ridiculously undervalued and building my portfolio. Yes, some will probably fail completely, and I'll lose my money... but with enough diversity I stand to clean up.
I love being a bear... bulls never have any fun.
You don't need to do anything so traceable....here are some ideas that are sure to offend and hard to blame
Shit in the toilets, don't flush
Shit in the drinking fountian
Shit in a bag, put it with lunches in fridge
Shit in bosses in-box
Smear shit under bosses desk
Make some shit brownies, leave (in nice box) for boss
Make some shit pudding pops, put in freezer
Paintball outside of office building
Shove plastic lighter up bosses tailpipe, with bent hanger, till it drops in muffler
Poison bosses pets
Run hose through bosses mail slot, turn on
Pull fire alarms
Copy building keys, leave around town with address tags
Buy a load of nasty-pulp books, print "Gladly donated by 'Your Coumpany Name'" inside cover, salt childrens section of libary with these
Limburger cheese in vents
Stop-A Stop-A Stop-A
Bend HD15 pins together on monitor cables
HD magnets under mag-media carts, cases, drawers
Call piracy hotline and dime them out, even if SW is all reged.
Switch around cables between switches, hubs
Poke pins in cat-5 clip tops off
Post bad info, true or not, on company in NGs
Kiddie porn sent to boss @ office
Sign boss up for every site on web using his work e-mail
Just a few...
Its standard policy if someone tells us their leaving to lock their account and start up the taper that minute (though if they tell us they're leaving they've probably already done whatever they were going to do).
Though this still isn't an endorsement of those jerks mentioned in the story :)
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
(1)Remove a ceiling tile
(2)Toss a piece of meat up there
(3)Replace ceiling tile
Being treated like that really hurts really hurts to the viewpoint of the exmployee getting fired.
.com workers who are reading this comment gets fired, I want you to remember this article here on slashdot and how everyone thought it was so funny.
Have any of you been fired before?
I was the angriest I have ever been in my life when I was fired. Being a tech worker I was treated like nuclear waste and was really embarrased and humiliated by having security escort me out in front of everyone. What hurt was being treated like I was a percieved threat after the blood, sweat and hard work I provided for that company.
The non tech workers are not fired fired that way because its cold and too humiliating. I felt like the people staring thought I was stealing or into extortion or somthing really bad when a security guard comes in. That just put fire into me. At least my other co-wrokers didn't know ahead of time. That would of made even more angry and betrayed.
WHen one of
Its not funny at all.
So being blind is meant to guarantee you a job for life? Why the hell shouldn't a blind person be treated like anyone else?
The equal opportunity and disabled american laws mean a blind person can not only get a job as easy (or easier) than anyone else, but can also require the company to spend extra money to accomodate their disability.
So, what's your personal firing priorities? Should we fire the people with families to support first, or the blind people, or the people without much savings?
Doh!
One time I was working at a particular company (I suppose it could be called a dot-com) and I decided I didn't want to work there anymore. I was just really disapointed with about every aspect of the company. Anyway, I just didn't go into work for about 5 weeks or so and eventually the boss called up and asked if I was quitting and I said "yeah".
So blind people should merit a "get out of downsizing free" card? I don't understand why you
make such a big deal of them firing a blind person.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
was manager of the documentation dept. we had layoffs - it was tough - they had her fire over half her department ..... then they fired her .... (scum! but then this is the same company who's president was let go from his next job for embezzeling $750k) ....
i was the first eng. at a web-dev shop in san francisco, papermedia. after 6 months of working there and growing about 3x the original size yet still not doing anything interesting - I started looking. I found a company that looked awesome, Collab.net, so i dropped my resume to them and only them. I even felt like a bit of a traitor for doing it. I had a phone interview with them soon after and was very impressed with them and scheduled an in-person interview.
I was nearly burnt out at the job i was still at, doing all the sysadmin work - some tech support - and doing a lot of the programming, and told the company I was taking my first 2 days off. On the evening of my first day off (a thursday) one of the two owners said there was an all-hands meeting the next morning and i had to come in for about 30 mins at 9 am i think. Well at 10am was my in person interview with collabnet. So I got there at 9am with no worries since both places were close from where i live in downtown.
well they laid off about 15 people myself included. after their lil spiel about how sad they were and how this wasnt personal in any way but a financial neccesity they asked if anyone had any questions. I asked what time it was, and when they told me and asked why, I replied, "I'm in a hurry because in 30 minutes a have my second interview with a much better company."
I filled out a few small papers, got a shitload of severence and left.
I'm now *extremely* happilly employed @collabnet.
Who's stabbin who?!!
Almost the same thing happened to me, except I was one of the people on an e-mail list who got termination reports to turn off access to a certian system. Looking down the list one day (I didn't usually, macros usually handle it) I see a familiar name. Apparently my last day had been the day before (but they still hadn't disabled my e-mail or network login!).
Took MONTHS to get it resolved. Teach HR not to fat-finger employee IDs!!! (Worst part was, there were 2 systems. The data was right in one but when the person RETYPED it into the second system, I got automagically fired!)
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
First of all, remember that being blind isn't her choice. Bad things happen to all sorts of people, including the best. Next time, you might be the person who gets hit by a drunk driver or gets damaged by some freak accident.
The poster 'PaxTech' never said that blind people should get a "get out of downsizing free" card. Read what was said and you will see what was said. They fired a women with disibilities who had worked there for 13 years. I am not 100% about this, since I didn't see this personally, but chances are she worked hard and made some money for the company. One day, they fire her and don't even have the decency to help her get her property, which belongs to her and is probably needed for her daily survival, home.
Disabled people should not be imune from critisism. But they should be treated with decency, mostly when they are a long term and faithfull employee. Maybe the company did have a good reason to fire her. The least they could have done is ensured that she had all the help she needed on her way out. That is how a blind person should be treated fairly.
-theman2
I can go one better than that. I got paid by cheque, late, and when I went to cash it, it bounced! When I told the boss he say "Holy shit!" and immediately got on the phone to the accountant. He didn't even know that he had spent all the money. All pay cheques were delayed for a week whilst they secured more money to burn.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I assume everyone has seen Office Space? :)
I hope she got to keep her stapler!
Speaking from experience, employees sometimes have their security clearance (keycards, network login, etc) revoked before being informed of their termination to reduce the risk of retribution to the company.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
Although I was short employed with Telocity, Inc. (that is the NASDAQ symbol "TLCT" [amuzing]) I found my termination to be rather amuzing.
My position was as a Security Analyst, the direct interperetation being "Someone who analyses security", saving the company from a IPO Web Deface Hack and implementing security policies that previously did not exist.
While doing a "screen lock" check, jotting down the workstations that were not locked, I came across an office in HR, on the screen - open - in Word, was my termination letter. I printed out a copy, and took it to my Exit Interview that I found out about two hours later, along with my badge and cellphone. Needless to say, HR was rather - stunned. My boss was impressed, smirked, and stated "Hey, I hired him because he was good.", while the HR bitch just stared at me.
Funny thing, they didn't pay any of my relocation which cost me out of pocket over $7.5k and gave me none of my hiring bonus.
My boss (only other person there who did security) was terminated a couple weeks later. Leading to the "passive/reactive" approach to security.
I cannot confirm nor deny the allegation or allegations you may or may not have just made
Iwork for a company that gets its staff from a temp agency. They hire most everyone after 30 days. Last week they had a "meeting" where *everyone* (including temps) were told they could leave early with pay. Today I picked up my check and i was shorted for that time. The temp agency says they don't know anything about it. I double-checked with a coworker that said he asked the supervisor that day if temps were included, and his answer was "yes". Can I force the company to pay me for the time they "promised"? There were about 70 people there at the "meeting", so I'm sure I could find people to back up what was promised.
On a personal note, I left my University employment for the summer for an internship at IBM. They guaranteed my position, and that of the three others leaving for internships (Intel, Motorola, Alcatel). My personal mailbox is my univeristy account, so it was kind of annoying that over the summer I, and the other three guys, would receive email to those account because we were still on their group list. About a week before school started they stopped coming.
When I returned they informed us that they needed to re-interview us, and then only took one of us back. No, it's not personal, but they could not name one person working there at the time who was better qualified than I. They told me this when I showed up to work the first day of class (8am). By Three I had had two interviews. Within 24 hours I had an offer (for more $$, no less), and started 48 hours after being let go. The kicker is that it's in a sister group to the department that fired me.
The manager who let the three of us go left for some startup a month later. No one in his group (who he had hired) was qualified to take his place, so they merged our departments. Now my manager is over his old group, I get the pick of assignments. All in all, I came out on top.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
I was fired from there a year or so ago, the way I found out was an outside recruiter called me and said to pack my bags. An hour later someone from HR came down to escort me out the building. Email was cut off, couldn't even send mail telling my friends I was canned. Everyone in that company ran around like a chicken with their head cut off and yelling. Dwayne (CEO) yelled at his direct reports. They yelled at their serfs, etc etc. Thank god I was a contractor and was paid hourly. Everyone in IT was working 80 hour weeks if they were salary. People would sleep at their desks. And for what? NWCK is at $1, and their options are at $7. Eventually all the good people got out of there and the only people left are yes men/women and those that sleep with their bosses.
But.. but... they took my stapler!!
-antipop
There are some risks you run when you sign on with a dotcom.
This is one of them:
Saturday September 16th, 2000
5:30 am:
I wake up on my kitchen floor with a severe hangover and no memory of how I got there. Further investigation reveals that I have no memory of the previous 12 hours. Fuck.
6:00 am:
After downing 3 cans of Diet Mountain Dew and 8 Excedrin I stagger into the shower.
6:05 am:
36 fluid ounces of Dew and 8 partially dissolved Excedrin tablets wind up in my toilet bowl. This brings back a memory of the previous night - a memory of vomiting in a computer case at work to be precise. Fuck Fuck.
6:10 am:
I realize that since the cleaning crew only works Sun. - Thurs., my gift to the company is going to sit there for a couple of days unless I go clean it up. Fuck Fuck Fuck.
8:30 am:
I arrive at atomfilms on a vomit scrubbing mission.
9:15 am:
After dragging the case up to the roof, I hose it down and leave it to dry.
9:30 am:
Since I'm at work anyway I ought to check email.
9:45 am:
I unlock my workstation and find myself staring at the "Comment Submitted" page at http://slashdot.org/. "That's funny, I don't remember posting anything on slashdot last night," I think to myself. Then it occurs to me that I don't remember doing anything last night and that it isn't very funny.
10:00 am:
I work up the courage to read what I posted. It turns out to be an expression of carnal desire for our young, female (god be praised) sysadmin. Fortunately I posted it on a small, out of the way website that only server up 1.5 million pages/day and is only read by young sysadmins and their friends. I begin praying for the sweet release of death.
10:05 am:
It dawns on me that I'm an atheist - so I switch to merely hoping for the sweet release of death.
10:06 am:
I recall that our young, female sysadmin's hobby is competitive target shooting and that she has more firearms than the armed forces of Malawi - 12 to be precise. I begin hoping to avoid the sweet release of death.
10:10 am:
A sudden rush of paranoia drives me to check my "sent items" folder - there I see a message to our young, female sysadmin. The message has 34 lines. Lines 1-3 contain a delicately phrased and badly spelt expression of tender affection. Line 4 explains that the aforementioned affection should lead to the two of us knotting an coupling like frogs in a cistern. Lines 5-30 outlined the techniques and approaches that should be utilized in our impending bout(s) of carnal riot. Line 31 presented my conviction that these activities should be carried out until the bed collapsed in a pile of splinters. Lines 32 and 33 advised that our offspring would have to be named after confederate generals - even the girls. Line 34 was my signature. Betting odds began to favor my meeting the sweet release of death.
10:30 am:
I send an apology. Since the thing I'm most sorry about is my failure to use spellcheck, It's not the most touching thing ever written.
10:00 pm:
I send a dozen yellow roses with a carefully worded note expressing my heartfelt sorrow at having failed to use spellcheck.
By monday I was unemployed.
This is all 100% true.
--Shoeboy
It happened when I was in tech support. We always "punched in" by typing a code into a computer time clock. One day, the computer gave me a wierd error I had never seen. I told my manager about the error, and she said, jokingly, "maybe you got fired". I was in good standing, so we could both laugh about this. I guess she knew that the error was associated with termination, but she figured it was just a glitch and that it would resolve itself. The problem persisted, and I reported it to her again. Well, then she realized it wasn't going away and did something about it. Sure enough, I was "fired" by accident. They even paid me for my vacation hours and zeroed out my leave balance. Getting a severance check was nice, but I lost my leave which was OK because I didn't have much saved up anyway.
Anyhow, stuff happens. I took this accidential "firing" in good stride. Starting termination mechanisms before the employee is actually informed is just COLD though.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Thanks for reminding me.
One throw away comment and something like 15 responses going "uh, actually bind does hold the net together."
Slashbots crack me up at times.
--Shoeboy
IANAL (yet), but according to the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification act, companies with more than 100 employees that do mass layoffs are required to give sixty days of notice before people are laid off -- presumably so things like this don't happen. How large was this company? Is there anything to prevent employees of smaller companies (or companies experiencing smaller layoffs) from getting screwed?
http://freshmeat.net/projects/charities.cron/
I worked at a company that was so fucked up it could quite easily have been a dot com. They hired people just so they would look like they were growing so a major investor would keep giving them money (which they then blew). My job was very secure at this company and basically consisted of reading slashdot and playing The Sims. Many times I got in trouble for showing up late and my most common response of "so am I fired?" went unheard. It was a great time in my life and I was going insane following the office politics and I only hoped that things would return to normality eventually. Unfortunately, I had managed to get a friend of mine hired when I joined the company. He was not nearly as valued as I was (he spent the majority of his time warezing and was constantly getting bitched at for using too much bandwidth) and not nearly as good as avoiding the bosses. So finally one day his "three month trial period" was up and he marched into the boss' office and demanded his pay rise (off the trial period wage). They didn't want to give it to him, probably because all he did was warez all day, but they didn't want to fire him either. He came back and told me he was going to call a meeting and do everything in his power to get fired so he could get a payout and go get a real job somewhere. Well I knew this was going to be more amuzing than Sims/Slashdot so we arranged a little plan. Just before the boss' showed up in the conference room he dialed my extension and put the conference room phone on speaker phone. I then pressed the "mute" button on my end, creating a one way connection that was better than a hidden microphone. A bunch of the guys then crowded around my desk and listened to him abuse the bosses, telling them nothing but the trueth: that their company sucked and they had no idea how to make money. I quit a few months later. The strain of playing The Sims and reading Slashdot all day was just too much and I felt myself wanting to do some real work -- always a good time to quit.
How we know is more important than what we know.
We had the same sort of incident -- a member of our Help Centre staff went out for a smoke at 11:00AM and when he tried to swipe his security badge to get back in it wouldn't work. The guards cancelled his badge while he was standing on the steps. Since all his co-workers had known for days of his termination they all innocently told him to call his boss. Not a high-point in our Fortune 500 company's history...
Given the sorry record the boys at /. have for accurate reporting, a better question would be: Is this even true?
Ah, this would be a person who is flaming Taco about not reading the linked article in a given story yet doesn't check the linked article himself. Very funny.
It's people like you that have made me just about give up looking for real discussion on Slashdot. But then, I suspect that's probably the reason idiots like you post anymore; too pathetic to stop reading yourselves, so you'd rather drive everyone else away.
Jay (=
At least I know I'm still going to get a pay check...
Go not unto/. for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (but have nothing to do with the question)
Every programmer worth their salt makes enough to save some on the side - if you don't have enough money saved up to last you six months of lean living in the event of a layoff, either your expenses are too high, or you're a moron. Either way, you screwed yourself.
Pink slips happen, and anyone with a brain can see it coming by at least a month.
The only time I've ever been fired was from a big company.
:-)
I was hired in Europe, but the team didn't know exactly what its job was. The boss left the first week I was there, and it went downhill from that point on. The new boss was an american, who decided to "repurpose" the team into something we knew very little about. The idea was that we would be travelling to America quite often to work on projects because Europe didn't have the facilities. Suddenly a group of hardware engineers with very little programming experience were writing java servlets to do network management.
Since I was the only European with a permanent green card, I got stuck working full time on the east coast of the U.S. 11 months after being hired, and after 6 months of stressful hell and living far from my family, I was summoned back to Europe by the American VP. There I was told my performance wasn't up to their standards and to shape up or find another job. Since I had only 6 more weeks until stock options started to vest, I kept my head down and flew back to the U.S. Sometime during those few days of travel, my boss was replaced with another American, who didn't know a thing about European working laws, and decided to fire the team.
The company HR group in the U.S. has a policy to eliminate the bottom performing 5%-10% of every group each year, to clear out the slackers. This violates European work laws, but the Americans don't care. A group of 4 European engineers fucking up royally exactly equalled 5% of the division, so the decision was easy.
Nobody told the new manager about how expensive it can be to fire Europeans. I flew back to the U.S. and found out I had been fired, not from the manager, but from the security guys who came to clean out my desk. (note to stupid managers: when you have security experts working on your team, they will make friends with the local security folks) The manager just assumed the European HR people would do the dirty work for her and I would never return, but I had returned to the U.S. before the paperwork made its way across the pond. European HR assumed the American manager did her job on her end, and just mailed the required notices to my home, so I didn't see the letter for months.
With the help of a lawyer who could walk into the HR offices in Europe, I got some major concessions from the European HR, such as an additional 6 months pay on top of the guaranteed 3 months severance pay, and 50% stock options vested.
The fun part is that I was still in the U.S. with a corporate apartment paid until the end of the next month, and a company car, and an open ended return ticket to Europe. Once I was assured of a large severance package when I returned, I took off and drove all around the U.S., a nice little vacation on the company.
Even better, the whole severance package costs came out of the budget of the manager who fired us, nearly killing her budget for the whole next year. I hear she is still running around inside the company, sowing fear and fouling up projects left and right.
And even better, I still get contacted by the big company to do various odd contracting jobs for them, American companies don't count getting fired as a bad thing
And as for the comments from other about how bad it feels to be fired, I second that. I was very depressed after being fired, and quite angry, even with the nice little vacation at the end. Being fired from a big, respected company makes you feel like shit, even if you can rationalise how it is mostly their fault. If I could play corporate politics better, I probably would have been more alert to the deteriorating situation and avoided it. But I'm an engineer and a geek, and politics doesn't interest me, I leave that to the PHBs.
the AC
Any relation to any large, monopolistic, networking company is purely coincidental. And since their stock tanked recently, I'm very pissed at them.
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
This reminds me of a George Carlin bit.
"Did you ever get a pink slip? I didn't. Usually a guy would come up to my desk and say, 'GET THE FUCK OUT! GET YOUR SHIT AND GET THE FUCK OUT!'"
Apparently, we don't even get that anymore.
While I was working there I did a few things to piss him off. One was hiding his cellphone in a place he couldn't find it in his office and some coworkers and myself would call it and watch in the window while he popped up and looked for it. That was hilarious. We did a number of other things. He had installed some remote control software on his computer so I opened it to a bad webpage. Nothing pornographic because he was always worrying about things that were not politically correct and would probably have fired me if porn automatically popped up on his PC. There were a number of other pranks me and my coworkers did, even on each other. But to answer your question:
What I did when I quit that was the biggest form of revenge, was simply to leave and not give anyone documentation on what I did. I wanted my boss to know how difficult it would be to replace me, which I believe may be one of the reasons I never got a promotion. So, I don't know what else happened but I heard that the company has even more problems than when I worked there. I'm so glad I got out with a portion of my sanity and was not completely burnt out yet.
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
Once upon a time, I worked for a fscked-up little company called Ultimate Data Systems (UDS) in Wilton, Connecticut. I was working as a Programmer/Analyst, and doubling as a SysAdmin because they didn't actually have any SysAdmins on staff.
Saying that UDS was not well managed would be somewhat akin to saying that there was a tiny bit of controversy about the latest US Presidential election. As an example, the week that I was hired I was assigned to three different departments, one after another. The first two months I was there, they reorganized the company every two weeks, like clockwork. I didn't really care, since I only took the job as an interim step -- my previous company decided that they couldn't afford to pay little things (like my healthcare and salary) but they still wanted me to keep working...
I could tell lots of sad tales about UDS, but the saddest was that after working there for 6 months, they decided to layoff a third of the employees and move the company from Connecticut to Texas, presumably for some sort of cost savings. They notified everyone by holding a late night conference call, and announcing 3 rounds of layoffs, with the first 12 employees to get the axe the next morning. The next round would be in a month, with a third round a month later. In the meantime, the new company president (who coincidently lived in Texas) was coming in a couple of days to talk to the entire company and explain ALL of the transition plans to everyone...
Yeah, right. As it happened, the new president DID show up and hold a meeting; he just didn't explain anything. He tried to tell everyone that inspite of the upcoming layoffs, and the upcoming move, everyone would still have a place with UDS, even if they didn't want to move. The asshole spent 20 minutes trying to sell that load to the entire company ... and this being 1992, and the country still in a recession, these people were actually hoping that he was telling the truth.
For myself, while I was hoping to stick around for a couple more months so I could pad my savings account, I wasn't hurting for job prospects (no family to support, no mortgage, etc) ... so I did the only thing I could: when the asshole asked if anyone had any questions, I asked him questions. Every question that anyone in that room could have wanted to ask, I asked. And I didn't take "I don't know" for an answer. Which departments would move, which would stay, what order, what time schedule, what about working from (now) remote areas, what about salaries and relocation expenses, and anything else I could think of to ask. I don't think anyone else asked a single thing in that meeting.
Afterwards, the asshole made time for private meetings, and oddly enough, I was first ... heheheh. The really odd thing was, he just asked me questions, and I explained that I wasn't planning to move to Texas (I don't look good in boots and a Stetson). Then he had more one-on-one meetings with other people, left someone else in charge of the office and went back to Texas.
The next morning, as soon as I came in, the new vice president came to tell me the bad news ... I was being laidoff. I laughed and told him that I rather expected it, and that I didn't blame him for it. He didn't know what to say after that, so I started cleaning my desk out and went around and said goodbye to everyone. They were all sorry to see me go, but not sorry that I asked all those questions.
I moved to Northern Virginia, got a good job, and made a good life for myself. As for UDS ... they eventually folded and are only missed by their creditors.
Are you moderating this down because you disagree with it,
We call it art because we have names for the things we understand.
Some of the guy's at our office (web hosting) took all the porn customers because the new owner of the company didn't want to be involved in "that kind of business". They did this while they were still working at our company and made a fortune. They also did hardware sales, networking and consulting -- all in their spare time. One of the guys was fired (or quit, depending who you ask) and went to work for one of the clients that they had taken from the company and then quit there and started running the office. Recently they sold the hardware sales part of the business to our company! They also took a lot of the customers that were not porn related.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Thats not even counting the numerous businesses that are moving substantial portions of their operations to the web (like, say, every bank, bookstore, brokerage house, etc.).
Yes. I know guys who were brought in as consultants and recommended the company move all their web hosting to linux (we had some linux and some M$).. the boss declined and he quit because his recommendations were not being taken seriously (this guy was hired to work out how we can cut costs and improve uptime). He reported the company to m$ antipiracy and they came in and gave us all new licenses at a steep price.
How we know is more important than what we know.
The fact that they were making a profit means little. Thanks to the day-traders' chaotic and typically senseless affect on the market and the last five years of "impress me now, back it up later" acceptance of Internet companies, people are not satisified unless a company is making ten times what they are really worth. This is the problem in an economy where companies are valued on unfounded expectations and promises rather than facts and a history of profits.
---
seumas.com
walk into the company (if they don't have security, don't try it if they have security) and take a computer. When you are asked why you are there, say you are taking property in lieu of payment and the property will be sold. Do it fast, you have to be in and out. No one will stop you. If they try, just say "do you want a law suit too?" I've had a lawyer inform me that I was within my rights to do this, but you may wish to confirm this.
How we know is more important than what we know.
By dousing the place in gasoline and torching it. Or calling your boss a goat fucking plonker. That's an effective resignation and should be counted as such later on. If the company would fire you like this, they're probably a bunch of goat fucking plonkers anyway. Doesn't matter though, there'll always be a good supply of desperate graduates willing to take up the death march for them.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
we had a new guy (a project manager who it turned out didn't know squat) come in about the same time my friend had just been fired. We asked him "are you on a three month trial period at reduced salary?" and he replied in the affirmative. We then informed him that he would never get off it. He didn't believe us and ended up quitting after three months.
How we know is more important than what we know.
When the European companies bought out the American
majors, they gave one month per year of service,
minimum six months!
Other companies do this, too, and weirder things. A few years back I worked tier-2 tech support at the HQ of a huge multinational corporation that makes big green tractors. One peaceful Friday, my trusty keycard wouldn't let me out of the damn building. Someone else let me out with their card. I didn't find out until the next Monday that I no longer had a job. And they couldn't fire me for some simple reason, like, "upper management doesn't like the idea of a 19-year-old doing all the technical work in a 100+ user zone". Oh no. It was "breach of network security". A year later a friend of mine who started work there said that I had become a sort of example of what not to do, and my exploits ranged from "hacking a server" in South Korea to telling off users. Of course, until that Friday, all my reviews/reports had been full of glowing compliments...
End of lesson. You may press the button.
Proud of yourself aren't you? How many people that had nothing to with firing the girl, ended up out of job because you are an asshole?
--locust
moderators: go a head make my day.
I have heard about people getting laid off and being escorted out after cleaning out there desk.
:-) )
That happened to my girlfriend once (she worked as a secretary, before giving up work (temporarily) to have our baby). She was given no notice whatsoever, just called in to see her boss, to be told that she was being made redundant, effective immediately.
She cleared out her desk, said her goodbyes, and was escorted out of the building. She did get her redunancy money, though, so it wasn't all bad, just a bit sudden (and she didn't like it there anyway; she was actually quite happy about it
The weirdest thing, though, was that her boss didn't know it was going to happen until that day; the order came down from above. She and a mutual friend who also worked there put it down to the evil machinations of one of the other secrataries, who had never liked her, was generally perceived as being a cow, but seemed to be adored by the upper managers...
Aren't office politics great?
Cheers,
Tim
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Saving money for a rainy day is a noble idea. But sometimes it just don't happen like you plan.
Take my situation. I worked for a corporation called GST Telecom, a CLEC or Competitive Local Exchange Carrier in Vancouver, WA, which declared chapter 11 bankrupcy back in April, roughly a month after I had just put almost $1000-- into the employee purchase plan for some stock.
So, being the cautious type, I started looking for another job, & managed to get a new one by the end of June. However, when I left, I lost 24 hours of accrued leave (the acting CEO forbade everyone from taking more than 2 consecutive days of time off in a month), & lost several hundred dollars when I rolled my 401(k) over into an IRA. But since I was making a good deal more money, I decided not to whine about it.
A few weeks ago, my wife & I noticed that her retirement accounts had taken a $9000-- hit since September, so I started taking a closer look at her investments. And the annual report for one bond fund came in the mail yesterday. The fund manager admits that the fund lost money due to investments in the telecommunications field. And guess which telecom corporation was singled out for mention?
Right now I can see the humor in this, but I wonder when GST will take another bite out of my earnings & savings.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
First company I was at that did the same thing was a company called CollegeBoardwalk.com/LavaSpoon.com. The CEO (Crappily Experienced Officer) was a friend of a friend of a friend of one of the investors (they were owned by the same owners of GTInterActive and Perform.com). Anyways this CEO blew through 6million in VC faster than a girl named Monica and a man named Bill.
First he let go of two or three employees in which we all knew what was coming, then he re-hired them to finish on a promise things would continue but his underlying factor was he needed them to finish some book keeping stuff first and after it was done he fired them. (what a snake) While this was going on most of us were thinking he would work things out or something and decided to give it another week or so. Instead one day we come back to have everyone's belongings packed in boxes including personal stuff in which I had to fight to get my Sun Ultra1 and routers out of there. I mean literally threaten to bust this idiots ass.
Shit happens whether or not its a dot.com or other business. Its funnier online since it reaches a larger audience but its typical business.
Firestone Tire Spoof
360 degrees of Karma
Nah, you don't even need to be a shareholder to get information. Hell, you can get so much information due to required public disclosure that it becomes a matter of filtering out information. The SEC filings are a prime source for this. If you pull a symbol lookup on Yahoo! Finance for example , click on "Research", and then in the research section on the "More Info" line up at the top click on "SEC" to get 10-Q Quarterly and 10-K annual reports. (I'm a computational chem major but I have a business minor (need easy buffer classes, and believe me if you have half a brain you can get a 4.0 in business), so I had to use this stuff for some financial accounting classes.) There are other sources of this information, like EDGAR Online, who have everything, not just 10-Q/Ks.
WRT Amazon, here's a link to their last 10-Q from Oct. 30, 2000 and archived reports. This is dry reading, as they don't try to make it easy to read like the shareholder's reports, but this is the hard data that shows where the money goes inside Amazon.
--
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
I would assume that (3) is out, but (1), (2) or both were probably invoked in this case...
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
I worked for company where that was standard policy. Instead of telling you you were terminated you were dragged down to HR told that you would be escorted back to your desk by security, given a box, told to fill it with your stuff and then you would be escorted out of the building never to return. Rarely if ever were you told a reason in person. That would follow by mail.
Oh yeah, right. Secret of My Success. He was put in the mailroom and then figured out he could do his 8 hour job in like 20 minutes and then spent the rest of the day posing as a board member.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
But back to the post, I'd be suing the management. Not for money, but to make sure that they were not allowed to be managers again after decisions like that. I'd probably first contact the better business bureau, and reporting the company. At least then it would be on some record somewhere. Next I'd contact a laywer unless I have a legal friend (I do) and ask them what I could do.
The point is that you don't want people like this leaving this failing company only to arrive at the company that you work at.
So the question is who made this decision? They are the ones that I would take legal action against.
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
>I got paid by cheque, late, and when I went to
>cash it, it bounced!
>He didn't even know that he had spent all the
>money.
In most states, this is a crime that you could have gotten the responsible individual locked up for. If I ever get a check, even a paycheck that bounces for insufficient funds, the person who should have known not to write it will do 30 days in county. I don't care how expensive of lawyers they can afford, they won't help if I have the bad check in my hand and all my p's and q's are
correct in my case to the D.A.
In Phoenix AZ, "County" is a tent city in the middle of the desert, by the way.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Well, it was a story about this girl in Norway who got fired by a dotcom because she didn't want to go out and drink beer with the guys every night. She actually had a life, the rest of the firm obviously didn't, they were jealous of course, so they fired her. She got a new job instantly and they got some very bad press....
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
I have heard of companies that once you turn in your notice they have you clean out your desk, but they tell you this. I have heard about people getting laid off and being escorted out after cleaning out there desk. I have also heard about people geting home and having a message on their answering machine saying don't come in on Monday your employment is no longer needed, but all these people were told.
This is callous, and I think I'd be suing, I am sure there is some ground for suit.
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
... my department figured out we were being canned only after we got the next year's budget out of the company vice president's computer and discovered that our department wasn't listed on it.
My question is, how many times will you let yourself get screwed, while searching for the pot of gold? You don't get no stock options if you get fired in 6 months (or if the company tanks in 3 months). Repeat as necessary. But my company has never failed to meet my payroll.
Is it all about the pot of gold? Is that why people put themselves through it? Can everybody working at a dot com right now actually *believe* in the mission of that company? Hell, some of them don't even have a mission. Many are pretty blatant about saying stuff like "Hang out and make a presence of ourselves for a year, and then get bought out." Everybody agrees that the work is hell, you're treated like crap, and you'll be lucky to ever see your stock options mature. So why do it?
My favorite was when one of our engineers left because "a buddy of his" (Joe Random Guy he knew at college) was creating a startup. What was their planned revenue stream? Didn't have one. what was the technology? NT boxen (this guy hated NT). Was there even a product? Not that he could explain to us -- something about enabling other people's web sites yadda yadda. Was he at least going as an officer or something? Nope, just a senior engineer. In other words, there was no reason at all for him to go except for the promise of some money (this was one of the ones whose plan was to simply exist until someone bought them). Within a month he was contacting other people at the company and trying to get them to join him. Within two months he was gone from that company and had joined another dot com. Of course, the new dotcom he joined was something called Akamai, so he's doing ok. :)
Duane
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
The one time I ever got fired, the manager waited around until after I left, then paged one of the junior admins and had her come back in and run a backup. Which was asinine, since a backup would have run automatically before I came in the next morning anyway.
I had left something at the office, so I dropped by to pick it up. I noticed her running the backup, and asked what was going on. She just said "I dunno, Mark said to take a backup."
So I went across the street to Wal-mart and bought some resume paper, and came back to my desk and printed a few dozen copies of my resume. Then I called my other junior admin and asked if he knew what was going on, and he said "Mark was acting all funny and asking questions about the backups".
Sure enough, next morning they fired me. I had a new job for 37% more money lined up before I got to my car.
It was about a week later when they called me asking how to recover their backups. Seems they deleted the documentation on that, and none of the junior admins remembered how to do it. I managed to stop laughing long enough to tell them it'd cost them $165 an hour if they wanted me to come recover a backup for them, and that they'd pay from the moment I left my driveway to the moment I left their office.
-
Oh one more thing.
That guy was so paranoid that he actually ripped out the whole security system (finger print ID at the door) because he was unable to only delete my profile apparantly.
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
and it wasn't a .com, but the most amuzing termination experience I had was while working as a salesman for a oil field services company.
I was asked to drive to the office (which I never did since I worked on the road or from home). When I arrived I found the place padlocked and a guy from the bank there to take my company credit cards and car. They wouldn't even give me a lift back to town. They did finally let me use a phone in the office to call a friend for a ride.
I received email that I was fired on 9/30/96, but they sent notice to their email account which they cut off and wiptes, then reinstated.
In some states, there are laws that required wages be paid while employed. Now, if you are not paid for two weeks, but not told that you are fired, then are you still employed? Are you due the wages (and multiples under the payment of wages act) until they are notified by certified mail? email? fax? armed guards and automatic weapons?
Fight Spammers!
The manner of his firing disgusted me. He was talking to his wife on his honeymoon flight about the inadequacies of the customer site he was working at, and was overheard by one of their own staff. They complained and managed to get him dismissed.
The fact that the statments he made about this third-party were 100% true had nothing to do with it.
I've been on the other side of this, and firing people really sucks. Over the last 12 years I've done it to three people for cause, and to three other people (at one shot) because of events beyond my control (reorganization).
There's no easy way to do it. On the reorg, it was done professionally and was completely out of my control. Laid-off people were met at the door when they arrived and escorted to their work areas where boxes had been set up for them to pack their things. Then they were escorted to a holding area where HR lectured them on their options. The rest of the employees were sent to a central meeting area where the layoff actions and reasons were explained.
On the cause side, I'm not proud of my first effort. The guy turned out to be incredibly strange. He interviewed well, but when he started work he didn't seem to understand instructions, and he couldn't communicate with the other employees. After a few weeks he became upset and sullen. Nobody could understand what he was upset about. He didn't seem to understand or to be able to follow verbal instructions. Finally I gave him written instructions on what to do one week, and reviewed his progress at the end of the week. There had been none. So I gently told him I would have to let him go. He did not seem to understand. I repeated this about 6 different ways, but he still didn't seem to understand. Finally after about 10 minutes of this I completely lost it and just yelled at him, "HERE IS A BOX. GO TO YOUR DESK. PACK UP YOUR THINGS. GET OUT. CALL HUMAN RESOURCES TOMORROW. GET OUT NOW. GO." This is literally true. It was as ugly as you could imagine. Everyone was horrified (although sympathetic).
The second two firings (done together) I handled better. I had taken over an Engineering organization for a turn-around effort. I gave everyone tasks, and most people responded really well with great original ideas and enthusiasm. Two guys didn't seem to "get it", though. A more experienced manager urged me to fire them immediately. He said that on a turn-around effort, the people that aren't willing to turn things around stand in the back with their hands up (figuratively), saying "Please fire me." But I didn't listen, and kept giving them more chances. Finally after two months it became clear that they simply couldn't (or wouldn't) do their jobs, and I had to fire them. I met with them individually, and explained that I couldn't keep them on because they had not been able to accomplish their objectives. It was unpleasant, but I felt that I had given them every chance possible, so I could look them in the eye without flinching. So I felt that I handled it OK from a human perspective. From a business perspective, though, I really hosed up my schedule by keeping them on the payroll, because all their work had to be tossed and re-done by others. I should have taken the advice of the more senior manager.
No matter which way you cut it, firing people is hard and ugly and messy. Also many managers are avoidant -- they don't *want* any contact with the people they are firing. I think the right thing to do is to go face to face, regardless of what happens. Even if the employees are angry, and they probably will be, at least they will respect you later for having the guts to talk to them mano a mano and explain in detail why they're being let go. And you can keep your self-respect too, for being honest.
Like anything else, one learns by doing. A lot of people become "managers" way before they're ready. It's not surprising that they fuck up the hiring/firing process -- where were they supposed to learn how to do it? Business school? Don't make me laugh.
Some people worked hard the whole year, and then, right at the end, were told that they were fired. Many of the people that got fired were good, but each company decided that sacking large numbers of employees just before bonus time was the best way to increase its profits. Real trauma resulted.
On Wall Street, these things are much disliked, but accepted with the jobs.
____________________________
"... the microkernel approach was essentially a dishonest approach aimed at receiving more dollars for research. I don't necessarily think these researchers were knowingly dishonest. Perhaps they were simply stupid. Or deluded." --Linus Torvalds on kernel research by Computer Scientists (in Open Sources)
Maybe it's being used over at that ex-NSA site mentioned previously. The actual article itself mentioned:
:)
"Paperwork in the guard shack is held in place by a stapler though no one has been inside the small building in years."
Hmmmm - they were right - very X-Files
I left my body to science, but I'm afraid they've turned it down...
At a place I used to work at a while back, we had a phrase of "They're taking a holiday..." - this meant that they were being fired. Back in the early days of the company, a couple of people had experienced the situation where, upon return from a holiday, they find a letter under their door which reads "Don't bother coming back to work..."
No shit - hell of a way to come home...
I left my body to science, but I'm afraid they've turned it down...
So whats the Worst thing you did to get back at your former boss?
1. Run up the toll free 800 phone bill?
2. Remotely reboot the servers?
3. Post the radius passwords on usenet?
4. Cut the t1 on the side of the building?
5. Use a pin and poke the t1 cable (let them find the problem)
6. Take his/hers customers?
7. Become their boss?
8. Sleep with their spouse?
9. Spam the hell out of their private email accounts?
10. Subscribe them to every mailing list you can find? (root@ webmaster@ sales@ info@)
11. Sugar in the gas tank?
12. IRS?
13. 1-888-NOPIRACY
14. Post those drunken party pictures on yahoo personals?
"Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny." -Kim Hubbard
Exactly.
:P
:)
:P
I was once fired in a similar fashion (had a message waiting on my answering machine from my temp agency and a box of my stuff sent after me), and three days later I had a better job making more money.
That doesn't excuse what happened at the previous job. And no, I didn't see it coming. The alleged reason I was let go concerned coming in late and leaving early, which I certainly hadn't made a *habit* of, though someone really anal could have made it seem that way. Here's what happened:
About a week prior, there was a loud altercation outside my window shortly after midnight. About when I had decided I might want to call 911, someone rang my bell to ask if my car was one of the ones vandalized by this strung-out teenager who was punching people's car windows out. It was. Between dealing with the police and dealing with the broken glass, I was up until about 3:30. The following morning, I overslept (not normal for me) and had to drive very slowly because I didn't have a left front window. I came in about two hours late, and no one in management noticed. I was careful to make up the time, even though a co-worker told me "don't bother, they won't care."
The following Friday, I had to get to school (about 40 minutes away from work) to pick up a parking permit before the office closed at 5. I usually worked 7:30-4:30 with a one hour lunch, and in the past there had been no problem with my taking a half-hour lunch and leaving a half-hour early. I couldn't FIND anyone in management to ask, so I just decided to do so, and recorded it on my timecard.
It was the next Monday that I came home to that message. I told the temp placement person the whole story, and a few other things about how bad that place was (like being unable to find people to sign my timecards), and like I said, had a better job with nicer people and more money in a better location three days later. And when that one ended (I was working for accountants and tax season was over), it took about a month to get another one, but I did some freelance work for an old boss and ended up in a pretty decent assignment that I can probably keep till I get sick of it.
I'm still pissed that the place I used to work let me go in that fashion, even though it was very much for the best. Money was a complete nonissue, there. But I'd never been fired before, their reasoning was a bunch of bullshit, and the way they handled it was horrible.
They did me a favor, though. Who wants to work for a place like that?
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
I'm so glad this has worked for you. Since you are volunteering that you made 50k I'm sure you will remember to report it to the IRS this year. For your convenience I'm copying this message to the IRS also. Good luck avoiding an audit!
-- Solaris Central - http://w
My mother used to work for the state Department of Labor. Apparently, a certain computer company that employed a lot of people in upstate NY had a policy of "no layoffs", so they basically manufactured reasons to fire people, then tried to get their unemployment benefits denied due to the alleged "misconduct".
:)
If this isn't illegal it should be. I know, I know, I live in an at-will employment state, but it still sucks. And I was almost offered a job at said company. I'm so glad it didn't pan out.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
One of the funniest ones I remember was when some dotcom wanted to announce their layoffs and invited their staff to a meeting at the balcony(!). Why choose such a venue is anybody's guess but this was a feeding ground for many crude and utterly funny jokes on FC.
At my job before this one, I came back from vacation, worked that friday (came back on a thurs) and then monday, my laptop was taken off my desk and my network connection pulled. Then, after I tracked down my boss, he told me they were firing me because I left a computer on over vacation. (I had 8 on my desk, you miss them sometimes) Two weeks later, an old vendor of mine calls me and tells me the 80 person company is down to 12 people.
Their stock was already plummeting, so I decided to exact revenge for such a lame layoff, and turned them in for pirating software and got them audited....they had been using a crack for their Checkpoint firewall software....all 8 firewalls. The succeeding fine and licensing fees hurt, I bet.
Companies suck.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
I have worked for a couple of places where the laid-off and fired "just vanish" and/or little or no notice is given.
When I worked doing database programming, amyone fired would just not be seen again. (This place was incredibly paranoid and for good reason. They were hypocritical bastards.) And you knew that if someone was one of the "disappeared" that you did not ask about them, or you might get the same fate.
One contract I worked on, I was told the system had crashed that morning before I got to work. I dialed in and found that the passwords had been changed. Guess what? Yep. Informed the moment I walked in the door. (I asked too many embarasing questions to the new PHMis director.)
Most places where the management is suffering from paranoia that the workers are out to get them seem to manage in this way. Those are the places that are stressful just walking in the door. (I can remember getting blamed for a system crash when I walked in the door. I had not worked there for months and they had no dial-in. Ironically, I knew who was doing it and told them repeatedly. They would not believe me because he wore a suit and played the kiss-up game. He was hacking in file pointers into the middle of kernel VM memory and crashing the machine.)
I learned a long time ago that if an employer does those kinds of things when you leave, get out on your timetable and quick. Companies that do that to employees as they leave are also willing to screw with you for other petty reasons on a whim. (To understand the reasons behind this, find a good book on primate behaviour.)
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
Speaking from experience, employees sometimes have their security clearance (keycards, network login, etc) revoked before being informed of their termination to reduce the risk of retribution to the company.
Happened to me once, too. The company profit-sharing plan was keyed to the departmental expenses and I was highly paid and had just finished my latest project at the start of the last quarter approached. So the boss who had inherited me (third since I'd been hired) dumped me. I got my first hint when my PPP link didn't work when I tried to check mail before coming in. (It wasn't a security thing - they let me clean out my account and my desk unsupervised. It was just "the way things are done".)
After the end of the year said boss quit, along with the most of the remainder of his department, and started a new company (much to the annoyance and bottom-line damage to the OLD company). A couple months later he called me up and wanted me to consult for his new enterprise. After he'd surprise-fired me at the old shop and then hadn't invited me to be among the founders of the new? Fat chance!
At an auto company's engineering department a couple decades ago I saw what happened when two consultants come to blows. Security had them off the premesis inside of ten minutes. (Took that long because it was a BIG site.) They were permanently banned from the company and their desk contents were packed and shipped to 'em. You DON'T lay hands on co-workers in that industry.
Funniest one was the time Amdahl pulled the plug on Key Labs. Came in that morning to find a sign on the door: "Will build mainframes for food." (Amdahl let the people at Key keep their offices and email for a month or so while they job-hunted.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
2? Unforseeable? Anyone who didn't see the dot-com crash coming had his head stuck up where the sun don't shine. Do any of these companies have a business plan that involves taking in enough money to meet expenses?
No doubt they'll try to invoke 1) or 2), but who'd believe it?
And the brethren went away edified.
The worst part, though, is that one of the employees laid off was BLIND. Yes, BLIND. They fired a blind lady. She had worked for the company 13 years. Fired her dog, too.
She had text-to-speech software on her machine that was owned by her personally and had taken me quite a while to install. It had a floppy disk copy-protection scheme that required you to move the key back on to the disk when uninstalling it, so I had to go up to her desk and remove the key for her. They had called her a cab, but NO ONE was around to carry her things, which included a braille scanner (heavy as hell) and several boxes of books and papers. So it fell to me to go get a cart, load it with her stuff, and escort the blind woman and her dog outside and wait for her cab.
I'd like to say I went right back inside and quit on principle, but I waited two weeks so I could take all my vacation time and get my bonus.
--
PaxTech
All movements for social change begin as missions, evolve into businesses, and end up as rackets.
I thought I had heard of these guys - "Network Commerce, Inc" - recently.
They just acquired the domain registrar Registrars.com last week, per this press release.
According to Network Commerce chairman and CEO Dwayne Walker:
"We believe this is an important addition to our technology infrastructure business. We also believe this will be another avenue for expanding our database of registered customers."
Wonder what it'll do for their database of employees...
hire yourself without telling. There was a hysterical article in the New Yorker a while ago, about this guy who waltzed into a .com company, got past the security guard, and picked out a cubicle for himself. Over the next few days, he got himself setup with a phone extension and a computer, despite never being hired or knowing anyone. Acording to him, nobody there knew what was going on, and people showing up, and vanishing with no explaination was completely normal. He wasn't getting paid for his time there, but he got a productive setting to do his own work, and he got free food. The article sounded so bizzare that I wondered if it was true, but a week later I saw a small note in the paper, that the author of that article had been called to task, because he made up one encounter in the story, and he didn't disclose that his mother had previously been an employee of that company, so I assume the rest of it was true.
------ Work is so much easier when you don't
IIRC, Amazon still hasn't turned a profit and is still riding on the fact that it provides a really good service. But stockholders won't wait forever.
Yahoo is valued greater than GM, that bubble's gonna burst.
Ebay's starting to realize that people can circumvent them and deal directly with each other.
AOL is just so big, it ain't going nowhere.
CDNow, which I frequent as a customer is in big trouble from what I've heard.
So three out of these 4 companies are on potentially shaky ground, and even if they and other well-established businesses continue to succeed, for each success story there are a thousand failures.
A lot of those businesses that are pouring massive resources into a Web presence are going to learn the hard way that once the novelty wears off (and it hasn't yet), they might be saddled with an expensive operation that isn't paying off.
Companies are starting to run out the leeway they had from the buoyant market and are now facing the reality that ad revenue, upon which many, many content providers rely just isn't there.
I think the Internet bubble burst is just starting. Many will die, a few will survive. The stock market may tank more (at least the stocks... and there's the supposed Economic Slowdown (TM) looming).
The Internet won't go away, but how it works economically might change drastically in the next few years. I think it will be very interesting to see what happens. To paraphrase Terry Pratchett by way of the Chinese: We are living in interesting times.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.