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How Best Buy Tried To Whip The Geek Squad Into Shape
The Consumerist site is featuring a follow-up to their Geek Squad porn collectors story, a feature we discussed back in July. According to Consumerist, Best Buy set up their own rigorous internal investigation to catch the culprits soon after these revelations became public. At that point, of course, employee morale went out the window. Draconian interrogation methods were apparently used, and innocent employees lost their jobs. "There were three Geek Squad members fired from my store including myself. The first two were fired for burning a non-copyrighted CD for another employee on a non company issued blank CD-R. I admitted in my interrogation that I was aware of this, and that I stopped these events after that occurrence. I was fired for being aware of this non copyrighted CD being copied. To quote, I did not provide the proper example of leadership. Keep in my mind I removed over 100 illegal tools and pirated discs upon my arrival as supervisor, as well as some remnants of an internal porn scandal."
Sounds like you did all the right things - I'd hire you in a snap. Don't let the micro-managers of the world get you down - their heads will be rolling down the same street soon.
- The Kessel run is for nerf herders. I can circumnavigate the entire Central Finite Curve in a lot less than 12 parse
In Canada, you might have a case for wrongful dismissal. You stopped the activity from occurring after it occurred. Your not supposed to fire employees after every small infraction occurs. You need to try remedial action first. If you fired everyone that made a small mistake, you would run out of employees pretty quickly.
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So at Best Buy you show your management potential by collecting scalps. How is this different from too many other places?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Based on the side of the story told in the article, I would guess that they couldn't find anybody "guilty enough" to fire. Maybe the one guy they caught with the illegal data and didn't fire had connections of some sort. Still, they wanted to fire somebody to make an example and their numbers came up. The CD burning incident was probably an excuse after the decision was taken.
Still, it is only one side of the story and I don't know the author of the same so I'm basing my speculation on his word.
After an embarrassing corporate incident, it's easier to look "tough on crime" and fire somebody than actually fixing the problem. "Yes, we had a security incident a while ago. 200 employees were fired as a result. We take this things seriously".
No sig
Meh. It's all about their crappy hiring practices. If you're going to have employees dealing with sensitive information, you're going to have to do more than promote morons off the sales floor, and you're going to have to pay a decent wage, and get managers who have clue, and run audits and all the crap professional shops do.
Are they going to do that? Goes without saying, the answer is no. Running a group of techies, especially bench techs, is like herding teenagers. They're all going to think they're smarter than you, they're all going to know the "right way" to do everything, and they're not going to listen to some low tech Bob whose community college associates degree entitles him to a big sexy manager job at best buy.
Just another example of a big corporation trying to expand into a field it doesn't know a damn thing about.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
No, it really can be done. You just have to train yourself.
Once you can sit at a desk with a CEO and help him format his confidential IPO document but don't read one word in the process, you have succeeded.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
No, but $100-200/hour depending on the skill levels required sounds perfectly acceptable to me.
I was priced out of the market in computer and networking repair in my area because of every Joe and Sally who'd taken a crash course, read a few books or were just "the smart computer person" in their house opening up shop and charging ridiculously low rates for repair work.
Sure, for on-site work I was billing myself out at $60/hr and they were billing out at $20/hr. Sounds great, right? Sure it does; until you realize it takes them 5 hours to perform the tasks I can perform in 1 and mine won't be a cobbled together nightmare.
Sure, a few clients realized this and called us back in to fix the problems these cheap techs caused them (usually more problems than solutions) but it simply wasn't enough. We couldn't compete with the prices, we couldn't stand (or afford) to contract ourselves out for such low rates and we wouldn't dream of resorting to the tactics these places used to ensure job security (namely "leave behinds").
I've said for years that there should be a standard body for establishing credentials for computer technicians that includes proof of skills and semi-annual retesting to ensure skills development matches the pace of the industry and that a standardized set of fees should be established by this body to be charged by its members. If an organization chooses to have their work done by a non-member they do so at their own peril.
BD Phone Home!
Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.
A very funny answer for sure, but it is a simple economics question. not how much do we pay X, but rather how do we get people to put higher value on X's services (sorry, I teach econ.) or more importantly, how to get them to opportunity cost of data loss. My school has a job shadowing program. I like to tell my students that they should not shadow jobs they might want, but rather spend time at McDonalds shadowing a burger flipper. That way, they will learn the cost of not not getting a good education. sometimes, most times, we don't really know the value (really the opportunity cost, that which we give up) of something.
I'd gather that most people who pay $15/hour for tech service have never had a major data/security failure. $350/hr tech service is cheap if your data is worth that much. I'd guess that even for most people, this holds true, though they don't realize it. when they do, it'll be to late!!
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
It doesn't work that way. Everyone's protected against discrimination on the basis of race, sex (including pregnancy status), national origin, religion. Disability, age, and I believe military status are non-reciprocal.
If you're fired because you're white, you have a claim, just as you would if you were fired because you're black. If you're fired because you're a man, you have a claim, just as you would if you were fired because you're a woman. If you're fired because you're not pregnant (that'd be an interesting situation), you have a claim, just as you would if you were fired because you were pregnant. If you're fired because you're Christian, you have a claim, just as you would if you were fired because you're Discordian.
On the other hand, discrimination on the basis of age is only actionable for any age over 50 (so if you were fired because the company preferred to have 60 year olds instead, you'd have a claim, but not if you were fired because of your youth below the age of 50). The ADA only covers the disabled, so there's no recourse there if you're fired because you're not disabled, and while I haven't dealt with military discrimination in the past, I believe the law is structured in a similar manner (it would depend on whether it was written as barring "discrimination on the basis of military status" or something similar, or if it was written as barring discrimination against people because of their current status in the armed forces).
More on-topic, at-will employment does indeed suck.
I'm a lawyer, but not yours. I wouldn't represent someone who thinks taking legal advice from Slashdot is a good idea.
You mean something like CompTIA?
I've mentioned this guy before; he had graduated from a local technical school and was even a card-carrying A+ tech. As this school had the reputation of "pay to pass", I decided to test him, and pointing at an open box, asked him to point at the motherboard.
No, I specifically avoided mentioning them because I firmly believe their organization and the certificates they provide aren't worth the paper they're printed on (even if they provided PDF files). It's also widely known amongst the technically literate which "schools" are little more than diploma factories (if you pay your $8 grand, hell, here's your diploma! You're now educated!) I've dealt with way too many "I have ${cert} so I'm qualified to make six figures! Hire me or your company will wither and die!" types to mention.
My boss informed one of them that he should be a garbage man. See, he was trying to string together an ethernet LAN without using a hub or switch (because that's wrong, or something) but instead by installing two network cards in each of the fifteen computers and cabling them one to the next to the next in a lovely bastardization of, I dunno, token ring with ethernet with thinnet with ...
What we need is a professional standards body that actually measures skills and mandates periodic skills reviews to maintain certification according to accepted industry guidelines. Practical examinations as well as an apprenticeship period would be preferable to ensure capability.
If I'm not mistaken, one can still go out and buy a CompTIA A+ certification book, schedule a time to take the test and be certified without ever actually opening the case on a computer, which was also the cause of the complete industry-wide invalidation of the MCSE certification when it came out.
Take for example Cisco certs (yeah yeah); the CCNA means nothing in a practical sense, but it does indicate that you have some grounding in networking fundamentals. Ok. So you can assist our network techs and troubleshoot problems at the LAN level. After a couple years experience you write the CCNP test. Now you're able to move into the bigger office and assist our WAN techs and touch the real routers. A few years of this and you enroll in the CCIE program. Combine that with 10+ years in the trenches and suddenly four letters mean you can pretty much write your own ticket.
However if you somehow do manage to aquire even a CCIE but don't have a decades worth of relevant experience you may as well have saved yourself the few grand and just written your CCNA because, hey, you're our new tape switcher.
Combine all this certification nonsense with HR people and management who don't understand anything about the computer industry but who do recognize "industry recognized certification body" and associate it with "skilled professional" and make the leap to "qualified for this position" and you have a very large disconnect from reality, compound that a million fold and welcome to today.
BD Phone Home!
Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.
Do we really want $350/hr computer technicians?
As a computer technician I say yes, absolutely.
I don't. It is for the same reason we don't use $100/hour TV repairmen. It's cheaper to replace it than fix it. I used to fix VCR's and Camcorders when they were well over $500 items. Now that many of them can be replaced for about 2 hours of labor or less, I have found other employment. Be careful what you wish for. You might get it and have no work.
The truth shall set you free!
If you're going to lose your job anyways over something you didn't do, take the time to put a black mark on their record as well. If you don't get fired (as you've put them in a place where all eyes are looking to see if they do the right thing), it's the last time anyone will accuse you of anything you didn't do. Ever.
These type of people are bullies, and they get away with whatever they want until someone calls their bluff and one-ups them. They always pull you aside since they have no authority in a group; the more public you make the whole ordeal, the less power they have. Even if it's a crap job, the experience will pay off later down the road.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
That's like saying that Webcor employs steelworkers and not their facilities guy to construct their skyscrapers even though hey they both know something about welding. The average home that geek squad goes into probably isn't running a 5,000 user Exchange server or optical switches for their SAN fabric.
I don't know about you, but adherence to moral principles is worth a whole lot more to me than a measly $1-2k extra annually. You misrepresent the anti-union group's arguments by casting the issue in purely financial terms.
Anyway, $100 a month ($1200 annually) for $1000 return would be a rather poor deal even without considering the strong moral and ethical arguments against coercing others out of work for your own benefit.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat