Slashdot Mirror
Getting Over the Stigma of a Previous Job?
Subm asks: "Some friends-of-friends worked at a company with such a high profile downfall their past employer became a liability. They weren't involved in causing the downfall, but with the name 'Enron' on their resumes, interviews were spent defending their past employment. SCO is more focused in its industry than Enron, was and its reputation is in a downward spiral in that industry (Unix and GNU/Linux, not lawsuits, that is). SCO's staff will have to look for other jobs sooner or later, and most within the Unix/GNU/Linux community. Can good workers get over the stigma of an employer's reputation? How will working at SCO affect its staff's careers? Does anyone at SCO talk about this?"
SCO is more focused in its industry than Enron
Which industry is that? scamming and defrauding people?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
If you can do the work, and do it well - - and you're reliable and honest and willing to take what's offered in the way of starting compensation - - many doors will open.
It's only funny until someone gets hurt. Then, it's hilarious.
Perhaps that would motivate employers to quit as soon as their company starts being vastly evil, which would in itself be a motivation for companies not to be evil.
Thoughts?
At least that's something respectable.
With SCO accusing the OSS world of stealing their IP, many companies will be a bit fearful of hiring a tech. It is not beyond reason that evil axis may be trying to place programmers to introduce SCO (or someone elses) code.
The other issue that I see is anybody from Management should probably be avoided. These are the ones that took down Caldera, Unix, and SCO.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I'd imagine that pretty much the same would hold for SCO employees. If nothing else, being a former SCO employee makes the question "why did you leave your last position?" very easy to answer.
There's a big difference between leaving when you can still claim moral justification and leaving when they finally kick you out.
I wouldn't have a problem with hiring someone who worked for SCO if they were looking for a job now. But I'd have a different opinion if they were looking after SCO goes broke (or whatever happens).
- Chief Financial officer of Enron: Not hiring
- Poor grunt at Enron who had no clue what hit him: Could look past that to his real experience.
- Lower level accountant at Enron: My get some questions asked in an effort to determine their position in all the mess
Obviously many don't think that way and wouldn't touch an ex-Enron employee with a ten foot telephone pole and I really feel sorry for them.However for every door closed there's a door open, consider writing a book about the mess or posing for playboy for example (they did a women of Enron IIRC)? You get the idea there...
IMHO there's always an opportunity for you...just look....
...in bed
I'd say it depends. I worked at one company, and then several years later was applying for work at its direct competitor. The stigma didn't carry over (they offered me a job); instead, they were far more interested in what I had done and how it matched up with the job opportunity. They went out of their way not to ask me questions that tread on possible NDA (non-disclosure agreement) territory.
Unless your friends-of-friends are actively involved in upper management (director level +), they shouldn't have problems. If they are involved in upper-level management, then they already know several executive-level headhunters who will find them new jobs in a hurry. Sucks, but that's how it goes when you play at that level.
It's tough moving away from a former employer. I recently left a position to pursue better opportunities. My former employer (really the owner) was furious that I had the gaul to leave. They threatened me with lawsuites, they harrased me. They just couldn't let go.
I gave that company three long hard years, and developed some absolutely killer applications for them. Now, if an prospective employer calls them, they make me out to be some malicious, spiteful Developer who left them high and dry. Three years of stellar work... down the drain.
With that said, I guess the best advice is that employment is like a marriage, you need to check them out, just as much as they do you. Else your left with stigma of the former employer, either you on them, or them on you. Either case, it's not good.
ah yes. be careful about leaving that stint blank though (q: "what did you do for those two years?" a: "played cards. lifted weights") - i work for a company that's owned by americans and it was a bit awkward after a year of employment to confess that i wasn't allowed into the united states.
2 1337 4 u!
So is McBride looking to get out while he can and using a Ask Slashdot article for tips?
SuDZ
That is just silly.
It assumes prospective employers will look at a qualified job applicant and say, "No, I just can't hire this person because he used to work for a jerk. Even though he had no control over the legal matters of his employer, somhow I have to take it out on him."
Come on people, be realistic.
When will Windows be ready for the desktop?
Do what everybody else does: Lie. They can't check everything. Half the employers that you work for shouldn't even know your real name.
The initial reaction I always see from the zealots is "Don't hire any of them!" and that always makes me a bit sad to know that this will be the first thing that a person that has worked for a company like SCO will more then likely have to overcome.
Having been in a bit of this position, I can say that the best approach is to put things in the context of doing the job that is given to you to the best of your ability. While your job may not be popular par se (imagine trying to land something after having the tile of Asset Reclaimer at SCO), if show that you are doing it within the best of your ability in line with what the company is trying to do, then you will show that are willing to things that, while contrary to your nature (one would hope), you are willing to do the things that are necessary in a very ugly world to get the cash on the table.
And yes, I realize that in some cases these folk are evil and deserve to be shut out, and I agree with that, but for example I know a good man at SCO in a high position. He hates what is happening there, but was there before the shift to this current strategy last year, and so is doing the job. His job is of a nature that finding a new one and getting out in the name of being on the "side of righteousness" is a difficult item to do with many considerations, not least of which are small things like his house, cars, kids schooling and the like. I can see why he stays, and why he would try to keep everything on the downlow. He is also hella good at what he does, and shold SCO decides to redundant him, or they go the way of all good trash, then I would hate to see that a name on his resume would get in way of the fact that he is very competent and good at what he does.
Flame away boys!
In most employment contracts found at such firms as SCO, these employees would be banned from working in a similar field for a specified period of time, correct?
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
The toilets around here need a good scrubbing.
"Kittens give Morbo gas!"
stigma lasts forever.
A little soda water works wonders.
KFG
The employees of SCO (everyone except for upper management) really have nothing to do with how SCO operates. McBride and his board sets the tone and the direction of the company and the employees follow. A developer who works on SCO Unix is not to blame for the Linux/SCO battle. I believe most hiring managers know that.
When your interviewer asks you what on earth a whorehouse was doing repackaging and integrating AT&T SYSV code, tell him it you were actually working at SCO back when SCO was a software company with a mediocre UNIX distribution, and that you left when you saw the writing on the wall when its then-CEO said Linux would never amount to anything.
Then say "But there's still less stigma that comes with saying you were a whorehouse piano player."
From what I can tell from the published reports, the "smoke and mirrors" approach to financial disclosure was pretty pervasive at Enron. I think anyone who has experience of that kind of trading business would regard someone who claimed to have known nothing about it with a rather skeptical eye. (I know I would. Although I'm a geek, I do also have an MBA and spent ~20 years working in IT on Wall Street. Had I worked at Enron, I feel certain I would have known something fishy was up -- there just aren't that many secrets in that culture.)
SCO/Caldera, on the other hand, did have a legitimate, although not very successful, business before they entered the litigation industry. If I were hiring, I wouldn't touch any of the management with a bargepole, but a Unix support tech who just did a competent job is a different story.
In any case, in any interview, all you can do is to tell the truth (emphasizing your good points, of course), and hope that the interviewer will take things on the merits.
Actually not everyone at SCO will have trouble finding a job after they bankrupt. I don't think their developers aren't good at theit job. It's just the hyperabitious and hypergreedy CEO who's ruining them and he'll be the one which will have real trouble finding a job.
I did work for some time for a firm that was crooked (in a big way), it took me some time to find out about it, but when it finally struck me (I was basically offered a Ferrari to look the other way), I quit.
Took some time off from working, and did a career change. In retrospect, probably the best thing I have ever done job-wise.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
Dude, I don't know if you are being serious or not. If you are, I am shocked.
I can not believe that you would put your wife at risk this way.
On the medical side of things:
HIV viral loads are more sensitive for early HIV infection. They were swabbing your various orifices because those are typical areas for gonorrhea and chlamydia that can be passed around during various sexual practices.
Davak
Yes, but
Of course, not all risks are created equal. Hiring an ex-SCO employee could be hiring a plant; someone who will be placing SCO code in their new employer's product for future litigation in exchange for financial consideration on the side, etc. This is a real risk, but a pretty remote one.
Far more likely than the possible-but-remote possibility outlined above, and far more troublesome, are the simple consiquences of having unethical people in your ranks, whether it be to moral (back-stabbing of fellow employees), effeciency (covering up one's own mistakes by shifting blame to another, resulting in incorrect corrective action being taken, etc.), or liability exposure of the company (unethical behavior towards clients to pad one's own performance, unethical behavior on behalf of the company but unbeknownst to its CEO), and so on.
Anyone still working at SCO, knowing what is widely known now, isn't someone with the kind of ethical or moral foundation I would want within my ranks. The risk of damage (to morale, to our firm's reputation, etc.) is far too high, and the possible reward (a decent employee hired on the cheap) is both not worth it (the difference between getting a cut-rate ex-SCO employee and paying someone with a less questionable resume something closer to market value doesn't begin to outweigh the risks) and far too fleeting (sooner or later that underpaid employee is going to want to be paid market value and demand a raise).
Does this mean all current SCO employees are unethical? No, it doesn't. But given the widespread knowledge within the industry of SCO's current behavior and its ethical implications, of which no employee can realistically or believably claim ignorance (and doing so would be quite telling in its own right), one can pretty much reduce their willingness to stay to a few possiblities, all negative qualities in a potential employee:
None of these possibilities bode well for the success of a potential hiree, or their contribution to the hiring firm. Indeed, they represent substantial risk to any future employer and offer no significant benefit to counterbalance that risk.
Sorry, SCO denizens. There's no work for you here, at any price.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Someone from SCO isn't going to have trouble getting a job another UNIX company. SCO is tame compared to Enron, Worldcom, Adelphia, K-Mart (ops, not retail), and Anderson consulting. Fraud gets attention, not copyright lawsuits. The person who submitted article included SCO to go along with the SCO bashing we've seen in the last few months on Slashdot, but frankly, the general public doesn't care about these esoteric hissy fits.
There are three code pieces that appear to be copied verbatim. The first is forty-two lines of packet handling code. Following the ip_vs_state_table variable is where most of the infringement takes place. Only the state transition handling seems to be original. The second is sixteen lines of VM allocation code. Five lines after CONFIG_DISCONTIGMEM, and eleven lines after VMALLOC_VMADDR. And the last is seven lines after SELFPOWER, USB specific power management code.
There's another possibility. SCO and Linux may both have legitimately copied that code from the original source when that source allowed it. In at least one case (involving memory-allocation code), the code SCO claimed was copied from them actually was legally copied from the original AT&T Unix code. SCO's code was identical because SCO also legally copied that same original code.
So let's see.
-You were paid to have sex
-with women
-and you're posting, looking for sympathy
-on Slashdot?
Talk about trying to get blood from a stone!
These days professionals don't form unions. They form associations.
Have you ever heard of the AMA? It's union for doctors but it's called the American Medical Association.
Another prominent example is the Bar Association which is a union for lawyers.
There is nothing wrong with banding together to fight for your interests.
War is necrophilia.
While that statement could be seen as inflammatory, perhaps I should share two examples to clarify my strong feelings on the subject...
My point is this: If someone comes from SCO with a skill set that I need, they'll get the gig. If they prove to fail at their skill, they're likely to loose their job.
As an employer I care about results, not politics.
Will I hire Daryl? If I need a scum-sucking-bottom-feeder - or was that a fish?
|>>?
...or high in the financing department doing the number juggling, just focus on what they actually did. There's not much else you can do. Even if they knew that their sector wasn't going that well, it's not too uncommon in a big company. Unless they were in a position to know that the entire company was tanking, well they did their job, did it well (hopefully) and are not to blame.
If they need to defend it from before it started showing up in the press, try to show that you couldn't have been in a position to know (hopefully). And if they need to defend it after it became known, well you needed to put food on the table. You hadn't done anything illegal, weren't doing anything illegal, and you were getting a paycheck.
But if they were in positions that are suspicious, that might have known or at least suspected, or that even just sound as if they'd know that much, well... no, then they're out of luck, even if they're completely innocent in all this. People will always wonder.
At least, that's how I'd attack it. It might go against the common "I was so big and important and had all this responsibility" show-off you usually do at job interviews, but in this case I'd try to make myself seem small and insignificant.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
They should simply be asked: Did you do your job to the best of your ability whether you agreed with management or not?
If they say yes, hire them, anyone that'll do a good job there will do a good one for you.
If they say no, I did my best to sabotage their antiGNU efforts show them the door and say thank you very much for taking your time to come down, then warn your buddies at lunch just in case the guy ever shows up at their business. If they have no more personal integrety than that you can't trust them enough to hire them, they'll do the same thing to you as soon as the coffee vender puts in a blend they don't like, their favorite candy is out at the machine, etc.
You hire people to get work done, not to go off on their own prima-donna crusades.
It doesn't matter what you wrap your emotions around, Reality is a brick wall specifically designed to scramble eggs
Doh!
Where the hell is that Post Anonymously button.
Fortunately it is easy to recognize a Lunix zealot in a job interview. Just ask him what he thinks of Microsoft operating systems in a company network.
;)
You'll have to be more specific than that or you may end up confusing Mac zealots with Linux zealots... similar, but different
You cannot seem to make up your mind if you use Redhat, back up the SCO claims or damn them, and what your business does, imbedded or bank software support....
7 42 943d =6709 401
Fsck'ing liar.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=75388&cid=6
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=74902&ci
(first link text)
It's time that this FUD campaign come to an end. I own a small business that deploys five Red Hat AS boxes. SCO has already sent my legal department (2 lawyers) three letters (threats) regarding our "illegal use of the Linux operating system [sic]".
Like most users of Linux, we are at the point where we are not going to stand still while SCO trashes the entire Free Software movement. I have already authorized a payment of $10,000 to the FSF, and a payment of $5,000 to the Red Hat Open Source Now fund. If you want to do all you can during this waiting period before the trial, I would urge you to sign this petition [petitiononline.com] that signifies the unity of the Free and Open source communities against SCO's outlandish claims.
(second link text)
I work for a medium sized (137 employees) company that processes customer data for many retail outlets, as well as a multi-national bank. We were one of the first companies to drop our entire line of Windows servers (workstations unchanged) for a Red Hat Linux solution in the summer of 2000. Porting our internal applications was a real pain, but the significantly increased uptime and greater ease of administration made up for all initial shortcomings.
Fast forward to end of 2002, and we had become disgusted with Red Hat's road map for its' Advanced Server license. It seemed as though we had lost all of the benefits of the GPL.
There was no way we were going back to M$, but there was a movement from higher up top to change distributions. To make a long story short, we passed on SuSe and chose the often corporately overlooked Gentoo.
The benefits of this move are stunning. We have been able to hire 16 additional employees to handle our own fork of Portage, and 22 additional employees to provide support. Not only to we do a "ghost compile" for each box (many different Pentium and Athlon systems), we also take a minimalist approach. The combination of those two choices have enabled us to increase performance per box to something like 26% faster on average.
With the obvious help of the Gentoo open source community, we have created a low cost, self-sustained IT department that can function well into the next decade. Thanks Gentoo!
Evil deeds, like paying their mortgages, feeding their kids, keeping their credit stable...
I hate to remind people - but there are a lot of unemployed people who would love a paycheck from SCO *or* Enron...
How would, say - a Java developer, have any influence on anything the bigwigs at SCO or Enron did? If anything - they are being hurt the most and the most unfairly, if not exactly by their company - by people like you who will hold it against a regular joe something that is/was decided by people who own yachts, have summer homes, and send their kids to private boarding schools.
You leave no room for the concept that a current employee has a job, gets up in the morning, goes to work, does their work, goes home, goes to bed just so they can get money to pay the rent.
If I worked at SCO, I don't think I'd want to work for you...
|>>?
... one can pretty much reduce their willingness to stay to a few possiblities, all negative qualities in a potential employee: Unethical: they stay because they value their income above personal ethics cowardice: they stay because they fear change more than hanging on to an ever-more untenable situation... Oh Yeah! I am sure that most of the overworked, underpaid staff who have no choice but to live from paycheck to paycheck and whose main concern is, "If I lose this job, my kids lose thier medical insurance," are just stupid, unethical or cowards. Before you jump all over this with, "I am talking about the programmers/techs, not the whole company..." Enter the real world - most people (programmers/techs/support, even admin assnt's) do not have the luxury of letting their ethics win out over a paycheck - especially when they are simply the innocent crew of a ship steered by a lunatic.
You also missed one important possible attribute that a SCO employee may have: the desire to feed his kids in a bad job market. The idea of explaining to your children why they're having to move into public housing and buy milk with coupons might be enough to make someone want to stick it out until their idiot CEO is replaced by someone more rational.
Talk about morality all you want, but given the current IT career options, it could be suicidal to quit a full-time job. If you're blind to the possibility that there may be good, talented people at SCO, then that's a shame.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Remember, the original SCO is now Tarantella, Inc., and a SCO employee of 5 years ago has absolutely nothing to do with the actions of the current SCaldera. Do such people deserve the opprobrium anyway? Similarly, should Ransom Love be blamed for the actions taken by Darl McBride?
MCI/Worldcom was one of the early corporate adopters of PHP. If you were interviewing for an IT position and wanted a forward-thinking individual, would you pass over an ex-Worldcom employee based on the ethics problems of Bernard Ebbers and his (probably small) cabal?
A single individual can rarely take credit for large corporate efforts (i.e. implementing an ERP system, etc.). Similarly, outside of situations where corporate officers are legally responsible, individuals should not be blamed for corporate wrongdoings.
It isn't working for a 'tainted' company that's the problem in the today's 'restructuring' of the tech industry, it's the former managers or bosses that can be a real obstacle to future gainful and productive work.
For example, during the 1990's I worked for a small five person company that was the North American distributor of a computer-controlled machine made by a German company. I got good performance reviews all the time. Then one partner retired and the other decided to cut back on the work. The German company sent over a guy to run the North American 'division'. After about six months he had fired all the previous employees.
Now whenever I apply for a new job, the HR people call this guy and he goes on about what a worthless jerk I was to them. I'm not sure why he continues to do this nor do I know how to get around the situation.
I suspect that it's a German:American cultural dissonance. Do your job well 99.9% of the time and the Americans will exclaim what a valuable and productive employee you were: fuck up 0.01% of the time and the Germans will focus on this forever.
The Americans of European background are usually indentical in appearance to Europeans and this often masks deep and strong cultural differences. Most of the European-Americans are decended from people who were told a hundred years ago on no uncertain terms to either get the fuck out of town or be killed. Or, they were so poor that they we just as good as dead so they had nothing to lose by moving to the other side of the world. This is the primary foundation of the deep differences between German-Americans and Germans (and European-Americans and Europeans in general).
European companies should not post managers to America for their first overseas posting because there are so many superficial simularities between the two countries that it tends to encourage blindness to the strong cultural differences beneath the surface. They should first go somewhere where the cultural differences are all on the surface. After they get experience and expertise in different business climates then they should take command of the American divisions. Of course, the other way (Americans managing European divisions) also applies equally as well.
If European-Americans and Europeans were as actually simular in culture and outlook as they are in appearance then they would have not fought two giant wars with each other in thirty years.
Anyone have any insights into this situation?
If you claim after having said why not just say, "I see some code that is identical, but I know nothing of its true origins" since there are obviously many, many more examples of identical code in Linux, BSD, and SCOwhatever. Moreover, many others have been making the same conclusions bases on the same scant evidence.
There are three code pieces that appear to be copied verbatim. The first is forty-two lines of packet handling code. Following the ip_vs_state_table variable is where most of the infringement takes place. Only the state transition handling seems to be original. The second is sixteen lines of VM allocation code. Five lines after CONFIG_DISCONTIGMEM, and eleven lines after VMALLOC_VMADDR. And the last is seven lines after SELFPOWER, USB specific power management code.
I suspect your post is nothing more than a high-class troll that somehow got modded up to +5 Interesting, but your claims are just about as fuzzy as Darl's. The symbols you mention appear in dozens for files. If you really have any such "evidence" state the file names.
Even if what you're saying is true, are you sure the code doesn't come from BSD or some other common source?
Which is why I apply for jobs I'm just barely qualified to do. But then I hear:
Frankly, it doesn't matter. An HR employee who doesn't like you, or even their job, for that matter, is going to make sure you don't get the job. They've got a list of excuses for every possible scenario:
There's no silver bullet to getting hired. Just put down what you're good at and submit your resume.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
hmmm... you are married... you have kids... and you had sex with other women both putting them and yourself at risk.
You suck. There are other ways to make money. I feel no sorrow for you. I only feel for your family, since the Dad they think they have is really a lie.
...would you want to work at a company that allows employees doing interviews to reject potential candidates based on their personal opinions of the candidates' past employers, and, subsequently, on the candidates' moral fiber?
Unless the candidates had influence over their company's business deals, holding past employers against them is ludicrous:
- Would the interviewers who based their decisions on this criterion leave their current positions if the company they work for "took a direction" they disagreed with?
o If so, then either this employee is extremely strong-headed and/or already disgruntled with his current position. What does this say about the company that they allowed this employee to do interviews? Is this employee going accidentally drive candidates away?
o If not, then this employee is a hypocrite. And, again, what does this say about the company that they have this employee representing them.
- Why would management want to hire someone who may quit as soon as they feel the company has "taken a direction" they disagree with?
- Doesn't this line of reasoning by a interviewer implies that the candidates' ability and experience doesn't count much to the interviewer.
(Again, this only applies if the candidate had no influence at their previous employer.)
My personal ethics would put feeding my children above working for a lying, litigatious employer. Idealism only goes so far when the house and college educations are on the line. It's only been some months since SCO has started to persue its new business model, and with a job market like todays it's not easy to find a job even in that period of time. Also, It's not like SCO is killing people. SCO is not that bad.
Many software people develop deep business relationships over the years. SCO still has clients.
What if, what if, what if??? To think this issue is black and white is hopelessly nieve.
Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
I've been in the position of having to interview people with such qualifications. They ALWAYS act as if they are only there to get a salary once again (even if they say the low salary is OK -- it's only temporary to them). The second the market opens up, they're gone. This isn't sour grapes. It's a fact. Someone who's had a lot of training expects to be paid accordingly (and rightfully so, in my opinion).
Integrity is the willingness to do what is right even when no one is looking. I have deliberately made choices knowing I would lose my job and career but did so anyway because it was simply the right thing to do. So it should be with the SCO employees.
I am the CIO of my company. What do you think the chances of any post-SCO-implosion employee being hired by me? Slim to none.
I'm sick and tired of people who know only about situational ethics.
If they're looking for a job BEFORE they lose their job at SCO, that's one thing.
...Would it be MORE responsible of you to look for another job NOW or 6 months down the road?
If they're in debt that bad, they could be a risk. Do they have a gambling problem?
Health insurance is tricky. They can continue their coverage in many cases, but they'll have to pay for it.
That's why being proactive is important. I don't want some idiot who can't see what's coming because he's too busy worrying about his gambling debts.
If his life is THAT complicated (high debts, sick family member, etc) then he NEEDS to be proactive and he NEEDS to be interviewing now instead of HOPING that something good will happen with SCO.
If you have bills to pay and a sick wife to look after, and your job MIGHT be gone in 6 months....
For a company that very suddenly turns ugly, like SCO, there is only one piece of advice: get out quickly. If you get out within a reasonable amount of time, the entire defense you need is "management changed the company and I wanted no part of that." End of story. The longer you stick around, the harder you're going to be able to claim to have nothing to do with it.
Enron is more unfortunate, because management there defrauded not only investors but their own employees; in the case of SCO there is no secret to anybody what kind of shit they're pulling.
I've heard some of the same concerns about ex-Microsoft employees. Skills are skills, regardless of where one applied them. But joining, or staying at any company after they are known for a quality you don't want your company to be known for, may reveal something about a person's character if not their abilities. And character is a legitimate factor to consider in a new employee. Would you hire a brilliant coder who used to work for Sanford Wallace? Maybe, but not if there was an equally skilled worker applying who hadn't worked for the Spam King.
;-)
Personally, I think questioning the character of an ex-employee from a questionable company is one of the best ways to guard against some of the detrimental corporate activity in world. If a coder knows that participating in something which will damage the tech world, will also damage their future employment opportunities, coders will be that much less likely to go along with nefarious plans, or even remain ignorant of what their company is doing. CEO's with evil plans will be that much less likely to carry their plans to fruition if they are restricted only to coders who don't care about anyone else, or even their own job prospects when their bosses unfurl their golden parachutes.
There is nothing wrong with holding people accountable for the choices they make. And there is a great deal wrong with not doing that. In technology, as it is in life.
That said, I don't think a low-level coder for Enron should be required to answer for the same decisions the high-level "death star" programmers should. But good luck getting hired by me if you accepted any work from Halliburton or Diebold during the last 3 years.
I don't think the guy is a lost cause, but as long as he keeps this secret from his wife their relationship is a sham. Think of all the lies he had to tell her to keep this under wraps. If he thinks that lying didn't distance them then he's never had a lying partner himself before. This type of dishonesty is very destructive over the long term.
I speak from experience.
He should go to a professional counselor and talk with them about coming clean with his wife. I wish him luck as it could mean the end of their relationship. Either way, that is.
For family and boss, whatever, they don't need to know everything. But for a spouse it is critical.
Cheers.
The updated version would go something like this:
Dear Abby,
My mother, an alcoholic, is currently serving a life sentence for murdering my father after discovering that he was selling child pornography to support our family. I'm helping to raise the illegitimate child of my sister, who is in drug rehab and currently appealing a prostitution conviction. I spent most of my youth in foster homes and on the street, supporting myself and my cocaine habit by robbing the elderly. Finally I took a high school equivalency exam, enrolled in college and learned computer programming. I am now making a good salary working as a developer at Microsoft.
Recently I met a really wonderful girl. She is caring and loving, and I want to have a serious relationship with her, but I am afraid that if she finds out more about me she won't want to see me again. So the question is, should I tell her that I work for Microsoft?
The poster is a SCO employee!! Burn him!!
Employees at Enron didn't know they were getting fscked until the end when they umm, got it in the end.
Enployees at SCO know at this very moment that some funky shit is going down. If they don't jump ship now they don't deserve jobs elsewhere. Unless they truly believe like some crazy jihad zealots that SCO is right, they are gambling their livelyhood on the prospect that SCO will win and be able to rape the rest of the linux world with licenses.
Of the two, Enron and the future SCO, only SCO is an organization that is publicly using lies and deception as its primary business model. Anyone still at SCO should know this and should be avoided like the plague by any employer in the industry. At the end of the day, you've got to stand for something; working for someone you know is unethical is just as bad as actively participating.
Enron and AA aren't in the same category. Enron masterminded a huge deception with the complicity of a lot of people, including their auditors and investment bankers. Fortune did a great story awhile back, but it's not available on the web for free.
At the same time, Enron was a massive company that employed many, many people who had no clue what was going on. They were people who went to work every day and did a job that they thought was valuable. This included a number of acquired start-ups that were trying to build new technologies and business models. Unless someone was working in Enron's finance department or in some of their shady energy trading operations, it shouldn't matter. (And yes, I realize that there were many who deliberately avoided the truth because they were making a lot of money.)
If you have friends defending themselves based on the behavior of Fastow and Ken Lay, then your friends need to come up with a new answer. It should be a very simple, direct answer -- I was one of thousands of employees at Enron and I wasn't privy to any of the financial decisions. And that's the end of the story.
If someone persists and wants to go down the Enron road and you have to be more aggressive, then tell them you'll be happy to answer whatever questions they've got if they can tell you what their CEO worked on before lunch today and what their CFO discussed with their investment bankers the last time they talked.
At the end of the day, this shouldn't be an issue based on paranoid fantasies like, "Ex-SCO employees might plant code." It's a simple matter of the employee's ethics -- and an employee who is willing to cross the line, legally or morally, is a time-bomb. Sooner or later, he or she is going to screw you or your customer, because life is full of little temptations and opportunities to do the right or wrong thing.
Bull. Fucking. Shit.
Define fucking "underpaid". Most fucking IT people I know make > $10/hour, and they fucking bitch relentlessly about how they live paycheck to paycheck. Guess what, pal? At $10/hour, they're making MORE MONEY than a good majority of the citizens in this country. NO FUCKING SHIT. I used to be there, making minimum wage, living in a shit-hole, eating ramen and rice. But you know what? If it came to that or being a fucking coward because my Employer was an unethical piece of shit and I knew it, I'll be back to ramen. YOU choose your lifestyle. When you realize that a stupid movie called "Fight Club" was right on several points (you are not what you own, you are not your string-bean couch, you are not what's in y our wallet) and learn to live on LESS (and you'll find you appreciate those things even more), then you don't have to worry about living "paycheck to paycheck" because you've reduced your living expenses considerably. Do you really need that $400 SUV out in the driveway? Do you really need that 1600 sq ft house with the 1 acre yard? No, you don't.
Imagine this stupid scenario: You find out your company is doing business selling 12 year old little boys and girls into the sex trade. You need your paycheck. Are you such a fucking coward that you'll stay, just so you can keep earning a paycheck? What's that? You don't care? Fuck you. You're a fucking coward.
Wake up America.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
I absolutely agree - let me say that up front. Given a such a choice, I would feed my family first.
Ethics, however, is a deeper topic than either/or in a given situation. While it is true that companies go bad (like SCO), this is somewhat rare, I think. At least, most of the companies I've worked with both as a consultant and as an employee (more than 100, easily) rarely was much more than disingenuous on the edge cases. When they were more than that, I was among many that pitched the argument in the other direction.
Truly nasty companies are easy to spot: they target a market that has a weakness they think they can exploit. SCO (at least publically) thinks it can use legal attacks against Linix; Telemarketers attempt to exploit old people; credit councillor companies prey on those in debt. Most (not all, but most) reasonable companies realize they are part of a chain of commerce. Think about how your company fits into that chain.
I believe evil employers are rare. Should you find yourself in bed with one, leave. Worse, should you be employed by one, leave quickly!
I must say, I'd be very hesitant to hire someone who tolerated, say, Enron or SCO's behavior. I've been the part of some creepy deals, and when they crossed the line, I stopped taking part. I've been involved with startups that wanted to "grow" though non-standard methods, and I have refused to take part. What "the line" is varies for various people, but one bright line is what gets reported in the news. On a personal basis, I've missed out on some things because I wouldn't be dishonest. And that's not only OK, but very important to me. Because that's important to me, someone who facillitated massive fraud would at the very least be subject to a good, hard look. At least until the EEOC comes down with the No White Collar Criminal Left Behind recomendation.
I suppose I can only say that if you find yourself at an ethically challenged company now, with constraints (family, debt, whatever) that don't give you much room, the single best thing you can do for yourself is to find a local company that can use your skills, think about how you can add value to their company, and go talk to them about your situation, and how you can help their situation. Odds are many will turn you down, but you will find a job with a company that doesn't fuck people over, and still be able to feed your family. And remember, for every company that turns you down, you're learning a lot by thinking seriously about the business they do.
I forget what 8 was for.
I propose the addition of a new entry into jargon files:
Enroned (v. p. p.), To have one's rsum or reputation tarnished by a former (or current) employer.
USAGE: Man, I was totally Enroned the second it hit the news that my CTO was skimming the pot I've got no chance at a good job until this dies down a bit.
The previous sig has been removed due to
While you can stretch the truth and obfuscate on a resume, its a really bad idea to lie. Generally you will get caught out and things can get really ugly.
Especially someone technical who had nothing to do with the decision processes that led to the Enron/Worldcom/Tyco/SCO type insanity should put an accurate employment history on their resume and be prepared to bring an interview back to the correct subject: their ability to perform the job they are applying for. It would be a good idea to have answers for "questions" like: "Why did you stay there?", "Convince me that you had nothing to do with their accounting practices.", etc. These will be issues for some people so be ready for them.
Be prepared to address someone who keeps drifting back to the company and its policies directly with a "I had nothing to do with the upper management who did this stuff." This is also a good place to brown-nose a little and say that one of the things that attracted you to the company you're interviewing with is their good repuatation, etc. since this also puts your role at Enron or whoever into perspective to the person interviewing you. It should bring up for the interviewer how little control they have over such things.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
You leave no room for the concept that a current employee has a job, gets up in the morning, goes to work, does their work, goes home, goes to bed just so they can get money to pay the rent.
And what, exactly, do you think it is that Saddam Hussein's prison guards did? Or Enron's accountants? Or Darl McBride?
Unethical behavior is unethical, regardless of how the unethically obtained money is spent. A company hires an unethical person at their own risk. Hiring is as much about risk management as it is in finding the most skillful person, and a person with a proven track record of questionable ethics is, for a legitimate enterprise, a liability, and will generally be passed over for one who either has a proven track record of behaving ethically, or at the very least, a record clean of questionable behavior and associations.
SCO employees who left a year ago fall into one category (no reason to suspect their ethics or judgement). Those who remain, knowing full well what their employer is doing (or remaining willfully ignorant), fall into the other (their ethics, judgement, and quite possibly their intelligence are open to question). A competent person hiring for a legitimate company will not chose such a person over another candidate not so tainted.
Does that mean perfectly competent, ethical people who somehow kept their head in the sand these last ten months may get passed over? You bet. But it is the responsibility of those hiring to look out for the best interests of their firms, not to insure that every last, unfortunatel ex-SCO employee get the benefit of a tremendous and well-justified doubt.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
If you work for SCO (or some other scummy outfit) and feel that this will be a liability in the future THEN QUIT NOW! Don't wait any longer! The longer you stay the worse you look. Write a long resignation letter explaining why you feel you MUST RESIGN. If done tastefully that letter elevates you above [scummy company] and reinforces your image as a person of integrity. When you apply for new jobs and the topic of your past employer comes up you can demonstrate why you felt you needed to leave. A copy of that resignation letter will stand as your proclomation of values. Express in your letter the values you espouse and what you wish you could give as an employee (don't make it about what you want to GET. Prospective employers want to know what you can GIVE) and why [scummy company] isn't compatible with the contribution you wish to make. Offer to provide a copy to the interviewer if they wish to read it. That letter will have the effect of bearing testimony on your behalf. Think of it as a character whitness on paper.
Being able to demonstrate to a prospective employer that you were so uncomfortable with [scummy compay]'s practices that you had to leave voluntarily draws the line in the sand and demonstrates that you don't wish to be associated with [scummy company]. If you stay until the end it sends the message that you are more infuenced by greed than by principle, and that you were "one of them". That is a bad message to send to prospective employers. That's just my oppinion. (If you quit in protest and then can't find work don't blame me though).
-=-=-=-=- osjedi uses Debian GNU/Linux. -=-=-=-=-
Oh, don't even get me started.
Mind you I know how it goes, your in the moment: the bullets are flying, blood is spraying, intestines are spilling onto the floor along with matted gore and hair. You're hot & sweat is making your finger slip off the trigger. The screams of the begging dying ring through your ears.
Future job references dont seem important at that moment do they? JUST DONT DO IT AGAIN!!
To me, the "problems" with unions is comparable to the "problems" with democracy: if your democratic nation/union is filled with apathetic ill-informed citizenry/members, corruption will not be a surprize. However, the solution is not to install fascism or anarchy, but rather to educate the citizenry and expunge any corruption.
I'm not going to say that all union organizations in existence are pure and good in everyway, but unions have as much a purpose today as they did in the thirties.
How is ensuring that one's members benefit from the profits of the company they work for out of date? Sure, some unions are corrupt, but generally unions fight to get good employment benefits for there members, like medical and pension, which I think most of us can appreciate.
Remember, business has a heavy interest in making people think that all unions are evil, corrupt, useless, or, god-forbid, anti-capitalist.
Ask yourself, what exactly is evil about a group of free people coming together to negotiate towards their common goals, using as bargaining chips nothing more than their fundamental rights and freedoms?
"Write a long resignation letter explaining why you feel you MUST RESIGN" = BAD ADVICE
Never write a long resignation letter, especially to a company that is hyper sensitive to legal issues and dominated by pig headed lawyers. They will be sure to send you on your way with a highlighted copy of your contract restrictions. Instead, go to your boss, have a little chat about how you feel it is time to 'move on', 'find new challenges', 'change of pace'. Never be vocal about why you are leaving if it is for a negative reason or if it highlights your future employer, you are only inviting trouble. A good resignation letter should be one paragraph stating why you are leaving, the date you are leaving and how you will wrap up existing projects to your current employers satisfaction and thanking them for their help. You then need to go around and thank all the people who helped you, who worked beside you or who could help you in the future. This will allow you to leave with a warm fuzzy feeling on the part of your current managers. When they ask you about future prospects, tell them 'you haven't decided everything yet'. This allows you to leave without BURNING YOUR BRIDGES.
If you don't care about trouble, and like bad advice, just try the 'asshole' approach as exemplified in the top quote. But do it right and in a way that allows you to work as little as possible. The goal of the asshole approach is to get fired, not quit. Quitters don't get workmans comp., which is like free paid vacation. There are several techniques to getting fired, each with its own drawbacks:
1. complete stupidity and laziness topped with sarchasm
2. alchoholol/druggs....
3. display transexual nudie pictures
4. trip and fall, "my back! my back!, I'm permanently injured"
5. Accuse your manager of sexual harrasment for staring at your nudie pictures and making derogatory comments about your personal art work. This way you can sue them and get even more money without having to work at all.
6. et cetera, et cetera
Don't do what I did at my last job when I quit. The CEO asked me what I would be doing in the future. I told him I would be getting drunk under a bridge somewhere. That didn't get me anything except a sense of satisfaction I will feel the rest of my life.
In other words, they want to work for a company that provides them with the very best job that there is. And that might not be you, but they still have to pay the rent, right?
I bet you'd hire someone that didn't quite fit your needs knowing fully that you'd fire them later if a better suited individual came along if your company couldn't otherwise function without someone in the position.
So why is it o.k. for you to put your company's needs ahead of your employees and not o.k. for them to do the very same thing?
Debunking the "59 Deceits"
I am a former Anderson employee. Never had been interviewd by anyone stupid enough to think that I, in my position, had anything to do with the scandal. Unless your job is in accounting or you're the former CEO, no one is going to think you're the cause of the troubles. If they ask why you didn't immediately leave, just say that you were comited to the project you were working on and did not want to abandon your manager and team mates just because the company was going through hard times. Be sure to highlight the success of your team/division and shift the conversation from having to defend your former employer, and maybe make it sound like you have some commitment to your work in the process.
Ecce Europa - Web Design for Business
Again, here I am, the sysadmin for SCO. [...] I'm not the devil on Darl's shoulder telling him "Psst, ok, now sue these guys!". [...] would you still pass me by for a less qualified applicant.
Probably. I can teach skills. Fixing your ethical handicaps is beyond me.
SCO is a good example. Spammers are another one. I would expect people who work for them to be ethically challenged. Either that or unaware of what their employers were up to, in which case they'd be too clueless to bother with.
Why again, would hiring a kickass forward thinking ex-SCO sysadmin [...] not be in the "best interests of their firms"
The overly dramatic choice you set up, between the inadequate but nice employee or the skilled former concentration camp guard, isn't the one hiring managers face. The reality is that the manager will end up with a bunch of people who will probably be fine; the challenge is in picking the best one in the long term.
There are a few reasons I'd lean away from somebody with an ethically suspect past.
One would be that ethical problems are hard to detect. If somebody is incompetent, I'll know in pretty short order. If somebody is casing the joint for embezzlement opportunities, I might not know until the bank account is empty. Or, less dramatically, I might not realize that he's really clever about covering up shoddy work.
The second, and probably the biggest for me, would be a concern that the person won't get the big picture. A person who doesn't mind making a living spamming can't have much sympathy for the fucking colossal amount of trouble they are causing for their recipients. Why would that person care any more about the end users of the new company's products?
And the third would be simple CYA. Even if there's a relatively small chance that a person working for a corrupt company is themselves corrupt, what happens if it turns out to be true? Then suddenly not only am I the guy who hired the thief, but I'm the guy who hired the thief who used to the sysadmin for Enron's accounting department. Hindsight will make me look like a chump.
No, I did not claim that. Tell me what your family issues are so we don't end up playing "revealed knowledge". That's where I say something and you come back with some new "fact" that prevents it. So I say something that takes that new "fact" into account and you come back with another new "fact" that prevents it.
e ds /employment/
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/fortwayne/classifi
And I do NOT want to hear about "that doesn't pay enough". As long as it pays enough for basic food, shelter and clothing and it's ethical, it meets the criteria.
And THAT was the point. People will do unethical things because they're greedy. They value money and material possessions over other things.
"I cannot relocate from Fort Wayne because of family issues."
And that's another of your problems. You can relocate. You just don't want to make the sacrifices and commitments required for you to relocate.
While listing quals you don't have is lying, not listing quals you do have is not lying - if they find out you just say that you were focusing on the relevant quals.
You make the mistake of thinking you can educate the fundamental stupidity out of people. You can't.