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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."
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.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
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 :)
but I also happen to be far too lazy to do any of that shit.
If they'd turned up on time, were cordial with their colleagues and performed better, they'd never have been caught.
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?
Well, I think those are just symptoms of some nasty disease. If you've got people like that onboard - it's important to find out the causes and do what can be done to improve their workday.
I had a boss at (insert large corporation) who disrespected me, never allowed me to be challenged, set me up on a doomed project on my second week of work with people who didn't understand the business - and generally pissed me off. I was cussed out by the CIO and his Italian mobster friend who claimed to be a business manager.
After the second month I would have fit into most of those categories - simply because of the experience I'd had. I decided that my boss didn't deserve anything other than what was in my job description. I proceeded to immerse myself in the codebase, business, and financials. After a couple of months I was answering questions in meetings which the original developers didn't even know.
There on out, I involved myself in other projects, got involved in design and generally worked my way past my boss - though he was still my boss until he was layed off.
In the end, I was one of the architects. All the people who made my life miserable were fired, left, or otherwise shown the door. They caused millions of dollars in losses - and I made the company millions.
Moral of the story: Sometimes it's management.
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
Survive or become successful? A major difference.
qz
Don't worry. I guarantee you'll regret being such an jerk to people when you're passing middle age and you've got mountains of "stuff" to your name but not a real friend in the world.
The following exerpt from the article is pretty telling:
Macleod concluded: "So as far as doing the right thing, I'd suggest that you start from the basis that your IT staff are the biggest risk to your organization's security, and if anyone of them disputes this, remember that arguing with colleagues was one of the clear signs of an impending attack."
Basically, if management accuses IT of being a huge risk, and their IT staff is actually honest and dependable, should they stand up for themselves, that's a sign that you should trust them even less??
Give me a freaking break.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
Let's see... the study shows that people who are fired generally are considered by their employers to have performed poorly...
... I have yet to meet a "gruntled" IT professional.
This is groundbreaking!
And while we're at it: How many employees who do NOT sabotage corporate systems "are disgruntled", "are paranoid", "generally show up late", and/or "argue with colleagues"?
Last time I looked:
- A large fraction of the best IT people often work late, for any or all of several reasons: They prefer it, they need to work when load is light to minimize impact on business processes, fixing what the users broke during the day skews the time of their peak workload to later than that of the mainstream users, etc.
They often work more than a normal workday - but they'd have to work two shifts every day and only take time out for sleep, in order to come in bright and early to impress the suits who read this "study". But any sane IT professional will take advantage of flex time and come in late instead.
Programmers and other IT professionals coming in late has been a stereotype since computers used vacuum tubes. (I know because I was there and was one of many who created it. B-) )
- "Argue with colleagues"? Maybe yes-maning works in the executive suite. But when a crew of experts is chasing down a problem there will be a slew of hypotheses tried and discarded, with different workers coming up with different hypotheses and evidence to falsify them. To an outsider this looks like an argument, when it's actually progress. Experts will also often have differing opinions and will discuss them - ditto.
(I recall one company where upper-level executives quietly added themselves to an engineering internal mailing list. There we discussed the latest problems - often heatedly - until they were solved. When one was solved the traffic on THAT problem stopped cold and another would take its place. To the suits it looked like a disaster, when in fact the project was on time, within budget, exceeding targets, and still looked like it would have been a quantum leap when delivered - if the company hadn't suddenly shut it down...)
- "disgruntled"? With the continuing budget shortfalls, IT resource expansion always lagging company growth, lusers opening virus email,
- "paranoid"? (I presume we're talking the folk etymology, not clinical paranoia.) IT, like other forms of engineering, is an exercise in staying at least one step ahead of Murphy's Law. If an IT professional isn't "paranoid" he's not doing his job.
Watch the suits who saw this start canning their best IT people - zero-notice style. (That's where the employee arrives at work to find his cardkey doesn't work his passwords are rescinded, and he is escorted to HR where he is handed two weeks pay in lieu of notice, a box containing anything from his desk that the company didn't think was theirs, and a threatening document in lawyerese, and then kicked out of the building.)
And of course the fired employees will be blamed when the network starts to go to hell when the remaining people can't apply duct tape and chewing gum fast enough or the next rash of malware gets past the firewall.
= = = =
This reminds me of the "profiles" of school-age mass-murderers: They're always described as loners and introverts who don't get along with others in their school. In other words, just like all the nerds who get pounded on by the jocks and snubbed by the cheerleaders and queen-bees and react by withdrawing from contact with the "beautiful people" cliques. And every time one of these "studies" come out the administrators (generally former "beautiful people" themselves) dump on the nerds and side with the jocks that much more...
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
"IT espically, they are a dime a dozen andthere is 6 of them out there waiting to take the one job."
That's because people go into IT because "they heard it was a good field to get into".
The people who are good at IT are hard to replace and are usually rewarded that way. There's no doubt that when you break into the field it's rough. But that's when you distinguish yourself. Your hard work didn't stop the day you graduated from a university... oh wait... you didn't go to a University?
Okay, let's start at the beginning:
1) The IT field is littered with has-been's, wanna-be's and never-was-es. Don't be one of those. How?
2) Show a commitment. Get a degree from a University. Doesn't matter what it is; if you're smart, you turn that to your advantage. If you want to be involved in the business, get a degree in business with a lot of programming courses. If you want to be involved primarily in the bits and bytes, get a degree more closely related to Computer Science. Information Management can be useful too, although the too are not at all similar. I have a computer science degree, my wife has an information management degree. I'm the director of architecture at a fortune 1000, she's a program manager at a fortune 2000.
3) Where's the Sysadmin paths? Unfortunately, the days of the Unix Admin with infinite knowledge have all passed. Well, not all. There are a few old timers left. God bless them, love them to death. They're really smart, and those last few guys get paid a lot. The rest? A dead end job. It puts food on the table. It's better than working at Wal-Mart.
4) All the good jobs in IT require that you start as a programmer. No exceptions. If you're not good at programming, you don't belong in IT.
5) Set your sights on moving up. You don't want to be the 45 year old programmer. Not unless you're so good that people just leave you alone to develop. If you're not sure you're that good, then you aren't. If you are that good, you can tell because your boss never hassles you about your hours, or anything. They let you alone because you're the goose laying the golden egg. God bless you. You are the heart and soul of this industry.
6) You've got to pay your dues in IT, and you may move around some. Changing jobs every 9 months guarantees you'll be a 50 year old programmer some day who knows VB6 really well and suddenly finds themselves without work.
7) Get better all the time. Read read read. Be energetic.
8) Understand the business you're in. Unless you aspire to #5. Push for ways to improve the business. And that doesn't include suggesting changes to the SCM.
9) Develop a 6th sense about what will help your career. Usually that goes hand in hand with helping the business but not always. When the two diverge, it might be time to leave. You don't want to be the 60 year old programmer who is good at FORTRAN on VAX. If I have to explain this to you, then you shouldn't be looking for a job in IT.
10) If you don't love this field, if you don't go into work in the morning because you can't imagine not doing it, then you don't belong in this field.