Study Show Link Between IT Sabotage, Work Behavior

narramissic writes "According to recent research by the U.S. military and CERT, workers who sabotage corporate systems are almost always IT workers who are disgruntled, paranoid, generally show up late, argue with colleagues, and generally perform poorly."

Comments

Blindingly Obvious Research Concludes Blindingly O

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

I think that this 'study' needs to be included on this list.

obligatory

[User 956]

workers who sabotage corporate systems are almost always IT workers who are disgruntled, paranoid, generally show up late, argue with colleagues, and generally perform poorly.

Maybe they just want their red stapler back.

You are so fired, Joe...

[aborchers]

So fired...

Bias?

[TheSuperlative]

Let's see... the study shows that people who are fired generally are considered by their employers to have performed poorly...

This is groundbreaking!

Straight from the "No sh*t Sherlock" Department:

[All_One_Mind]

Wow. That's odd. I would've figured IT workers who sabotage corporate systems would be the workers who are happy, secure, generally show up on time, work well with colleagues, and generally perform superbly. Goes to show you that logic doesn't always pay off. (I'm ready for the Troll/Flamebait mod guys :)

Well, all that may be true...

[varmint jerky]

but I also happen to be far too lazy to do any of that shit.

half sight

[glas_gow]

If they'd turned up on time, were cordial with their colleagues and performed better, they'd never have been caught.

Yeah, so?

[LibertineR]

"almost always IT workers who are disgruntled, paranoid, generally show up late, argue with colleagues, and generally perform poorly."

Disgrutled = Forced to install Notes
Paranoid = Forced to sit next to Notes Server all day waiting for the memory leak to take over
Late = Due to sleep deprevation from having to go in at 2am to reboot the Notes Server
Argumentative = Caught whispering "Exchange, bitches." under his breath
Poor Performer = Changed Cert ID password to "Fuck Notes"

Whats not to understand?

Re:Yeah, so?

[eebly]

Disgruntled = Forced to install Exchange.
Paranoid = Forced to recheck Exchange database
Late = Had to stay up all night while Exchange tested databases
Argumentative = Caught whispering 'Postfix, bitches'
Poor Performer = Changed Exchange password to 'kill me now'

What's not to understand?

(I've never worked with Notes, so it could be as bad as you say, but I've worked with Exchange 2K and 2K3, and yup, it's painful).

Re:Yeah, so?

[davecarlotub]

Executive VP: My Lotus Notes is slow
Me: You have a 16 gigabyte mail file with 20,000 unread messages in your inbox and 100+ folders
Executive VP: What's a gigabyte?

All day, everyday

Re:Yeah, so?

[Architect_sasyr]

Disgruntled = Forced to use Exchange
Paranoid = Afraid Someone will find out about said exchange
Late = Lack of sleep due to World Of Warcraft / Late night programming session
Argumentative = "We don't need a new gazillion dollar server"
Poor Performer = Did 30 jobs in a week and missed the KPI level by 1 as each job was bigger than the beancounters.

I would have thought these were the traits of a GOOD sysadmin...

Oh really?

[EXMSFT]

And I said, I don't care if they lay me off either, because I told, I told Bill that if they move my desk one more time, then, then I'm, I'm quitting, I'm going to quit. And, and I told Don too, because they've moved my desk four times already this year, and I used to be over by the window, and I could see the squirrels, and they were married, but then, they switched from the Swingline to the Boston stapler, but I kept my Swingline stapler because it didn't bind up as much, and I kept the staples for the Swingline stapler and it's not okay because if they take my stapler then I'll set the building on fire...

Mandatory Holy Grail

[Critical Facilities]

BEDEVERE:
Quiet! Quiet! Quiet! Quiet! There are ways of telling whether she is a witch.

VILLAGER #1:
Are there?
VILLAGER #2:
Ah?
VILLAGER #1:
What are they?
CROWD:
Tell us! Tell us!...
BEDEVERE:
Tell me. What do you do with witches?
VILLAGER #2:
Burn!
VILLAGER #1:
Burn!
CROWD:
Burn! Burn them up! Burn!...
BEDEVERE:
And what do you burn apart from witches?
VILLAGER #1:
More witches!

Security huh!

[EmbeddedJanitor]

I got pissed off with what someone said so I deleted that blue 'e' on my computer. Now the whole internet has been destroyed.

Re:Work with both, then post

[LibertineR]

Notes: The only application for which there is not enough RAM on Planet Earth.

Oh so true.

[twitter]

Careful, making cynical comments like that may negatively affect your career prospects. Don't want to get labled as a whiner, people might think your planning to nuke the servers and fire you.

Especially if your bosses who are disgruntled, paranoid, generally show up late, argue with colleagues, and generally perform poorly.

Oh no!

This story really needs to be filed under, "The best way to improve moral is to fire all the unhappy people."

Re:An ounce of prevention

[kimvette]

Oh, you must be one of those new SCO employees!

http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/0 6/21/1537215

Interesting, I can think of a few more.....

[krunk7]

I would be willing to bet the following are also true:

1. Auto mechanics are the most likely to swindle you out of money for unnecessary auto repairs
2. Cashiers are the most likely to steal from cash registers
3. Doctors are, by a vast majority, the most likely culprits of malpractice
4. And, of course, killers are almost assuredly responsible for most murders

Well...

[catdevnull]

At the risk of being obvious or redundant--

Aren't the IT people the only ones who smart enough to sabotage IT systems?

I mean, those smug assholes up on the 42nd floor don't give a shit about how hard we work just to help them print their e-mail. We'll see how smug they are when....

oh...wait...

[BOFH]

Re:Article is pointless and obvious

[MichaelSmith]

Only skillful sysadmins can screw up your systems beyond recovery

But if there is a nine year old girl who understands UNIX handy you should be ok.

Who says you have to be smart to sabotage?

[beerdini]

Sure if you're talking about sabotage as in taking time to plan out something that causes harm to the system, you probably have to be in IT and pretty smart, or you can take a basic approach. You know that owner/supervisor or whatever higher up that thinks that they are so important that they need full system access...give it to them. I've had to recover a system after one of the higher ups decided that they didn't need want a system directory folder anymore and decided to delete it. Needless to say after that an audit was performed on the system to see who had rights to things that they shouldn't have, and I finally had the approval to apply the restricted rights policy that I'd been advocating for months.

Re:An ounce of prevention

[Opie812]

You can't take your friends with you, either.

I am. (Don't tell them that though...they may not go for the idea)