Slashdot Mirror
Getting Rid of Staff With High Access?
HikingStick writes "I've been in the tech field for over 15 years. After more than nine years with the same company, I've been asked to step in and establish an IT department for a regional manufacturing firm. I approached my company early, providing four weeks notice (including a week of pre-scheduled [and pre-approved] vacation time). I have a number of projects to complete, and had planned to document some of the obscure bits of knowledge I've gleaned over the past nine years for the benefit of my peers, so I figured that would give me plenty of time. That was on a Friday. The following Monday, word came down from above that all of my privileged access was to be removed — immediately. So, here I sit, stripped of power with weeks ahead of me. From discussions with my peers in other companies, I know that cutting off high-privilege users is common, but usually in conjunction with a severance offer (to keep their hands off the network during those final weeks, especially if there is any ill-will). Should I argue for restored access, highlight the fact that I am currently a human paperweight, request a severance package, or simply become the most prolific Slashdot poster over the next few weeks? Does your company have a policy/process for dealing with high-privilege users who give notice? What is it, and do you make exceptions?"
In the early nineties, my dad was a high-privilege employee at a bank. Anyway, due to office politics, he pretty much got the boot because one of the higher ups didn't like him. (You know, how easy it is to fire someone if you really want). He had been working there for nearly 20 years, and according to local law he had 6 months notice. He was disallowed to go to the bank during those 6 months: from one day to another he sat at home.
I heard this is pretty much the rule with high-privilege employees. So, I'd suggest, sit back, enjoy yourself and troll on slashdot as if there were no tomorrow.
I spent those two weeks typing documentation on everything I did, and in training one of the junior admins to wrangle SMTP until they found a replacement. The only real benefit I got out of the deal was that I didn't have to carry a pager anymore.
The other benefit? The folks there were okay with me burning off paid sick days to arrange for the U-Haul and to tie up loose ends before the move.
Most companies that I've worked with in the past were similar - you only really lose access to the vital stuff, but there's usually plenty of non-vital stuff that still needs done until you bail.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I have a friend who is an accountant. When he turned in his notice to a Fortune 500 company (2 weeks I believe), they gave him 1 month's pay and told him (fairly politely) that he could leve immediately and good luck on his next job. However, note I said that he's an accountant.
It does seem to me that there's little point in removing access and keeping an IT guy on. If they need to remove access they should just pay you for a month and let you go. The fact that they want you to stay and took away your access says a lot of negative things about them. They don't trust you, but they want to keep you to the bitter end anyway.
Knowledge transfer as much as you wish during this time. If I was being treated this way, it sure wouldn't make me want to seek people out to give knowledge to, but I would probably help anyone who came to me with questions. I do suggest to you that you not ask for your access back. If your company wants to be a jerk about this, let it be a complete inconvenience for them and play by those rules. A company that has already shown that they don't trust you is not going to look favorably on any requests you make for restored access. In fact, they might find it suspicious that you need the access and they might suspect you of planting trojans, etc. Just live with it. In fact, you probably should fight to not get the access back and here's why. If something goes wrong after you leave, your company has shown you that they don't trust you. They might blame you for whatever happens if you get your access restored.
Most companies do not act this way. I've worked in IT for almost 22 years now (since college) and we've either just sent people packing the same day (never for IT staff, but it has happened for sales people and such) or they got to keep their access until they left.
I will second this. I had a nice job with a state department as the highest paid person (I was a consultant at the time). I was supposed to be converted to an employee with benefits, but they had a hard time getting the state to actually pay a _decent_ wage (I have 12 years as a programmer).
/.). Still, it was not good enough.
... Program! It engages my brain and makes me feel warm and cozy.
;-)
So, I spent 3 months or so picking my nose with little tiny things to do here or there. I was going nuts. I personally don't know how anyone can be at work for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week and just "browse the web". I set up a proxy server at home and use FoxyProxy so I could get to any site that was blocked (youtube, fark, but not
I brought in a USB HD with GB's of stuff on it, like... games. I still wanted to slam my face on a fork. Daily.
As a programmer I actually want and need to
So, during my many, many of hours of downtime, I just started looking for a new job on monster, etc. Then I would just leave without even needing to tell anyone, and go on interviews.
Found a new job. Now happy.
Though to be honest, with a state job, once you have about 1 year under you belt, it almost takes an amendment to the state constitution to get you fired. Which was nice from a security point-of-view. Though it also allowed a lot of under-skilled "programmers" to be permanent fixtures.
General, you are listening to a machine! Do the world a favor and don't act like one.
In Belgium the first 5 years is officialy 3 weeks notice and 6 weeks for the company. Then it becomes 6 and 12 and goes up even more after 10 years.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
very true.. where i work it is policy that when you give your notice your login is turned of completely - your are then paired with someone else in the office - your e-mail box is forwardedto them with an auto reply to mailers of the contact change.
that pairing allows you to cover and discuss what you where doing and what needs to be picked up.
instead of spending your last weeks finishing your job you spend the last weeks as a source of information as someone else is trained to cover your job.
so far it has worked really well for us
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
Exactly. Screw em. If the higher up's think you are worthless and cut your access then give them what they want. A human paperweight. surf slashdot, do as little as possible, when challenged say, "I would love to, but you will not let me."
Your example is exactly why giving notice is not something you really do anymore. I got further screwed. I was nice like you and did all that, then HR came back with a letter, "All vacation is canceled" you cant take vacation after you give notice, you also forfeit all vacation and sick time accrued.
So I sat there and watched TV the last 2 weeks in my office. I was going to document all I knew, I decided that I was not going to as they wanted to be jerks about me being a good guy.
I still get calls from people there about systems that I was the only expert on. I reply with, "what is your PO number for this consulting call? I would love to help you but management and HR told me point blank that everything has to be done by the book."
So they hired another firm to help them, that firm contracts me out as the consultant. It pisses off the upper managers.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Seriously. Just be 'on call' if they have problems. Since you can't do much by physically being there, what difference does it make?
if they won't do that, ask for severence and be on your merry way enjoying the time off.
I wasn't so lucky. I was 'fired' (new management didnt' understand my role as lead network security analyst, and even worse, feared my knowledge). But because of that fear, I got a severence package and most of the bonus I was promised for helping an outsourcing initiative (no, it wasn't me who was replaced through that). I was also able to collect unemployment. The downside is that I had to explain why I was fired in all of my interviews.
When I was laid off from a previous job-- they cut off my server access immediately. Though it wasn't necessary in my case, it certainly makes sense as a basic policy when letting someone go.
EXCEPT for the fact that they didn't bother to check for running processes first. Completely unaware of the fact that I was about to be laid off, I had kicked of an elaborate SQL script on the live server just before my boss called me into his office. They killed my account with this script still running-- oops. A friend of mine who was still at the company said that the resulting zombie crashed the main Oracle server, requiring a reboot, three days after I left.
So the "safe" choice of immediately removing access caused a major crash, while the "dangerous" choice of not removing access would have caused no problem whatsoever. (I'd say something about irony, but I don't want to kick off a debate on the word's meaning and whether it applies...)
I was laid off from one large company once and they provided two months of paid time off. Once they notified me they cut off access. Their take was that my new job was to find another job. The kicker was that if you found another job during that time period then you did not get the payoff package at the end of the two months. Kind of funny, I found a new job just after the check cleared. They setup the rules, we just play by them.
I also had a situation a long time ago where a contractor that worked for me decided he was going to relocate for a new job. He gave two weeks notice. I checked his projects he had which were done and told him that he was no longer needed. I did not have any make work that justified me paying him for another two weeks. Such is the life of a contractor.
And don't forget the main rule here, no one is irreplaceable. No one! Not even you. (Yes, I even mean you there in the back with four digit
Notice is for sallies, real men just quit. After all -- do they give you notice when your going to be let go? No.
The one time I was laid off I was told it was effective in six weeks. I spent much of that time documenting and training coworkers on projects that I had worked solo on. My network access and other privileges were not affected. I asked the VP of engineering if I could take some of the source code home for reference so that I could answer questions over the phone or by email after I left. He drafted a letter stating that I was allowed to keep the source for this purpose only and that it remained company IP and could not be disclosed to anyone else. We both signed it.
This was about a 150 person company owned by a large international conglomerate. The VP was originally from the conglomerate's corporate headquarters and joined us two years earlier when we were acquired. The rest of management was local. I had been there about four years. A year after my layoff the situation at the company had improved and I was asked to return.
The moral of the story:
I don't deny that it is common to be immediately cutoff when you resign, but it is not a given.
Don't burn bridges.
It's a waste of money to pay someone who doesn't even want to be working for you. Obviously their output is going to be nill so their pay should be nill.
Myself and at least one other poster have demonstrated diligence training those who will be taking over. I think it is far more of an individual judgement call based on past projects and the individual level of trust.
If you are going to be involved in managing those family businesses I would suggest a less black and white perspective. Sorry, but management is not easy and such a black and white perspective often indicate the less capable managers or someone in an unforgiving bureaucratic/politicized environment who needs to cover their ass with policy compliance. That said, I agree that it many cases the proper decision is immediate cutoff, immediately issuing a final check, and wishing them well as you walk them out in a friendly manner. My point is merely that in some cases keeping them around for a little while can be beneficial to the company.
Dude, they perp-walked him; he didn't do it on purpose. He started a process, and then they killed his userid, so the process went zombie and just sat around doing its thing without any control, and no one who knew to stop it.
I had a similar story; I got canned, and the second I left the building they started reformatting my equipment to make sure I hadn't left any time bombs. Due to server problem, I'd been using my desktop for development, and I had a huge code package sitting there waiting to be deployed (They fired me because I'd completed it).
So they ended up wiping out the code. Woops. The icing on the cake was that they changed all my passwords, and revoked all my access, but they didn't check for running sessions, so I got home and I was still remotely rooted in a pair of live servers. I changed the MOTD on all the machines I was still logged into to: "When terminating an employee, make sure to abort active sessions before you change the passwords." Then logged off.
I'm sure that sent them into a frenzy of paranoia, but frankly, they were acting like idiots. They went out of business in 3 or 4 months, and the guy who fired me spent a year or so after that trying to get me to do contract work for him.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
While I can agree with that assessment, there needs to be a clear cut policy. I've had two companies where they would pick and choose who got let go immediately and who finished out their two weeks. When it came time for me to leave, I didn't give them the choice. When it's a choice between being loyal to my current company by shortchanging the company I'm moving to or being loyal to the company I'm moving to and removing the choice from my current company, I'll take the latter.
Also, the first time anyone had heard that the company might let people go instead of letting them serve out their two weeks was when our supervisor (who was extremely well liked) gave his two weeks, was given a box and escorted to the door in a very humiliating manner. The company then claimed that it was standing policy in spite of the fact that multiple people of all levels had served out their two weeks. Morale tanked and it was awful for productivity.
Too bad my last employer did not think like this. When I gave notice I also had outlines how I would transfer all of my little known knowledge to my peer and the management loved that. But then they piled a couple more projects on top that they wanted me to get done and my 2 day in-depth transfer was cut to 2 1 hour sessions. Not the best way to try and fill in someone on all the little nuances.
And there is no need to say that I should have done better documenting this along the way. I did what I could, I even added time into my project estimates to allow me to do just that but when a company is hell bent on making as much money as possible and not care at all what kind of quality it pushes out the door it does not always happen.
The peer I left behind is a good friend of mine and in the months after I left he would email me from time to time asking for hints on the "little problems". I helped where I could but I was limited to memory alone, no more looking at my little notes, hints or tips and tricks stuff in the code.
Don't take it personally. Especially if you are leaving a large company.
So.. what to do with your new free time? If you really want to not burn a bridge, spend the time documenting all the little ins and outs of the stuff you really think is important, or that you have had some nagging concerning about. Find out who will be picking up your tasks, introduce them to the folks that you interact with on a routine basis. If you have direct interaction with end users, let your replacement know which end users requires a little more attention, or have difficulty with things. Give your replacement(s) a little "tour" of the more obscure tasks that you do. All systems have little quirks, transfer those bits of knowledge. Any special configurations, unusual setups, etc.
Why would you want to do this. Because it's a professional way to respond. And it is possible that years later it might come back to you. As a personal antidote, when I left my first company (after 13 years), I didn't burn any bridges. They let me keep my system authorities, but what I did was to set up a new account for my replacement and with my replacement looking over my shoulder I started to remove my old accounts, just to make sure that things would still work. I worked closely with my replacement in "cleaning up" all the little hooks that my old admin accounts had and made sure that he had the same access that I did. A few years later in the new company, I was laid off as part of a large downsizing - several hundred people (everyone was literally given notice, told not to touch any system, make one phone call, grab your personal stuff and escorted out of the building - in a very unprofessional manner). My old manager from the original company contacted me and asked if I was part of the downsizing and let me know that "there is a desk here if you need it". (As a final note in this, about 6, 7 months after I was laid off, I received a call from the company that laid me off.. asking for my skills again.. my response was "hell hasn't frozen over yet") -- so the karma works both ways..
YOu give your notice...you get to work normally till your last day.
The only thing I can think of is that they know if you do anything stupid...it is a major federal offense..and that that would be a deterrent?
But seriously, some of these systems have MUCH more valuable and sensitive info on them....and the people leaving don't get treated like shit, like many of the posters here allude to...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Besides, if you are the one giving notice, one would think that any malicious activity would be carried out before notice was given. I know that were I that type I would have some sort of "time bomb" or what have you that was doing it's thing while I was in the boss' office......but I'm not the malicious type, so it doesn't really matter.
Layne