Slashdot Mirror
Before You Fire the Company Geek
An anonymous reader writes "A new 'insider threat' survey by the US Secret Service and Carnegie Mellon University finds that 82 percent of people who hack their company 'exhibited unusual behavior in the workplace prior to carrying out their activities.' A somewhat amusing writeup at washingtonpost.com points to a bunch of more interesting gems hidden deep in the study, including: 'Almost all - 96 pecent - of the insiders were men, and 30 percent of them had previously been arrested, including arrests for violent offenses (18 percent), alcohol or drug-related offenses (11 percent), and non-financial-fraud related theft offenses (11 percent).' The blog post also notes that 86 percent held technical positions at the companies: '...if you're going to fire someone (particularly company geeks who have the motive, means and access to inflict pain on your computer systems) make double sure you cut off their e-mail and network access at the same time you hand them their walking papers.'
The survey went on to say that the remaining 18 percent of people 'exhibited unusual behavior in the workplace while carrying out their normal daily activities.'
Don't cha know...
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
They're assuming we already haven't taken control of everything else... who needs email when you control the elevators and doors... :)
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
'exhibited unusual behavior in the workplace prior to carrying out their activities.'
Refering to management?
Kiss my bass.
.. remember to give him a wedgie, for old times sake.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
...you don't even have to be capable of hacking anymore. Act strangely enough and you can subtlely extort your company for continued employment. What a great idea!
This is, after all, almost an order of magnitude more effective than screening for alcohol, drugs, or felony convictions.
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Don't blame me for posting like a PHB. This is how they think, and the fact that it gives them a business excuse to play Charlie with his IT Angels probably won't hurt either.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
We had a case of layoff sabotage at a company I worked for once. The best part is how we found out -- he bragged about it during an interview. The other company, being friends of ours, let us know.
I don't think he got that job, either.
'Uh, Ted, as our only IT guy, could you go ahead and disable your own e-mail and network access; we're firing you this afternoon.'
Anybody that stupid does not have to work. He can be declared mentally disabled and get disability checks paid for by all the rest of us.
9. It's copyright infringement, not stealing.
Huh. The trouble with that is, machine-gunning the HR department just kills a bunch of line employees and middle managers - it just makes your downsizing decisions easier. Sabotage actually hurts the bottom line.
-Hentai [in vita non pacem est]
My list on my resume is more along the lines of: .coms and vaporized in the bubble burst. However, one of my old bosses works at Dennys on the night shift now. You might be able to catch him there.
(Would be) future employer: May we contact your previous employers?
Me: You can try. They were all
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
I'm not always the best about documenting what I do, but every job I've ever left where it actually mattered (where I had some responsibility), I've gone above and beyond making sure they were able to do the job without me. I'm sure problems were still blamed on me, but hopefully nobody had the nerve to suggest that I deliberately caused the problems.
...because they can't accept that computers are not fully reliable, software has bugs, and that just maybe they did something they weren't supposed to do (though we did try to make that very difficult). As if I ever had the time to come by and work out how to sabotage their word document, or cause their spread sheet to crash and them to have to do it again.
When you fully come to appreciate just how irrational people are when it comes to things that they do not understand fully -- it's quite probable you were being bad mouthed for "f'ing that up" 20 minutes after you left the building.
I've had users say "You must have done something to it! It worked fine before YOU touched it!" even more amusing on systems that were off site
The same people can grasp that if their car has a defect, the boogie man probably didn't break into it the night before and sabotage their cruise control so it doesn't stay on. You will, however, never convince them the same thing about the beige box next on their desk. Unfortunately, some of these folks end up in management...
Freedom is merely privilege extended unless enjoyed by one and all.
What you SHOULD say is:
"NO! Most of them work at fast food now and would take the job I'm interviewing for with you! For less money, too! Oh god, I'll never tell you who they are!"
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]