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Defusing the Threat of Disgruntled IT Workers
snydeq writes "According to computer forensics expert witness Keith Jones, for every logic bomb on the network or Terry Childs case that makes it into the press, there are 98 other incidents of disgruntled IT pros damaging company assets that you never hear about. And though most IT workers are too professional to take out their grievances on the systems they've worked so hard to maintain, unless management takes note of the growing discontent in the IT workplace, it may fall victim to the unspoken 'ticking time bomb' lurking within its call for IT to do more with less, InfoWorld reports. Drastically understaffed, battered by interminable hours and impossible demands, many IT folks are being pushed to the brink by management that neither trusts nor supports them."
Ok!
Come on. If your job is that stressful, fucking find a new one. Or, sack up and learn to cope.
In 99% of cases, if you freak out and do stupid shit, it's cause you're weak, not because the workplace really is that bad.
Let us go fucking kill people!
We hired three times as many people, and only 1/3 is ever really working in IT. The other 2/3 work in a mysterious shadow IT whose work is never actually used or relied on. No one knows which group they're in, but they also know their work probably doesn't matter, so it keeps them on their toes.
Works wonders! If you are decent to the people you employ and/or manage, they will most often be really nice back. Not rocket science! Social science I guess though.
I'd like to know about the working conditions at the places were someone went haywire, my guess is that there is a very telling correlation. Guess that wouldn't be as newsworthy though :(
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I can understand where a lot of people's frustration comes from. Speaking from experience, management has a tendency to keep wanting to do more with less and keep lumping responsibility on top of us to the point where the salary paid becomes far from comensurate with the job expectations. Now go ahead and mod this down. I am sure managers will be so inclined. But remember, IT is what keeps the business in business.
is available here: http://www.infoworld.com/archives/emailPrint.jsp?R=printThis&A=/article/08/09/22/39FE-IT-management-chasm_1.html
proud caffeine whore
Keep your staff happy. If your aim is to keep staff unhappy, then don't employ copetent people. And oh, stop complaining that there are not enough qualified personnel!
[ Authority Figure ] pisses off [ slave figure ].
[ slave figure ] takes [ action ].
Management thinks they are untouchable.
IT workers know otherwise.
Respect is a two way street.
Disrespect is also a two way street.
I left a ticking code bomb on my last job, here's how it happened:
Me: The rest of today I thought we'd go over the end of year maintenance and reports, they're a little involved.
My replacement: I think I got it.
Me: You sure? It's pretty complicated. Two hours really isn't enough of a hand off for an app this complicated.
My replacement: I'm good. I've got to take my kid to the doctor this afternoon (turns to leave).
Me: Okay then.
End of FY ends in about two weeks. Guess they'll find out how ready he really was.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
IT Staff are already treated like indentured servants in most companies. Pay is insultingly low. Hours are almost illegal. Management is disrespectful, ignorant and arrogant. Jobs are moving overseas or moving "underseas" (my term for cheap H1B labor). There is no union support. There are no wage standards. There are too many unqualified people working while qualified people keep looking. Most positions require too many skill sets for not enough pay (There are many doctors who don't have as many 'medical specialties' as some administrators I know.).
These companies are lucky to get away with as little damages as are done.
They need to wake up and realize that business doesn't get done without computers.
We need to unionize.
They're using their grammar skills there.
It seems to me that this article is simultaneously drawing attention to an issue, while fueling the flames of the issue. I.e. "There is this huge problem of employees doing bad things because they are untrusted".
Yeah, OK. Thanks again slashdot editors. Like accountants whose job gives them the ability to hide wreckless risk-taking to beef up their current performance at the expense of the collapse that will happen after they have taken their bonuses and left the company, aren't a bigger threat to the businesses of the world.
I knew a former employee that left a piece of code in an app that when a user entered a certain search string, it would give Chuck Norris facts. Leave your employer laughing, not disgruntled.
string.Empty();
This surprises me, I hate to use these sort of universal qualifiers, but in a LOT of companies Systems Admins and Systems engineers are overworked. So many that it seems like "duh, everyone knows this". What's worse is that its accepted and people (managers) don't seem bothered about it in the slightest bit.
My personal experience is that I worked as a Systems Administrator and then Systems Engineer for about 9 years. I left the field because it is an exceedingly frustrating career path that invaded any sort of personal life that I may desire to have. It was normal to work much more than I should. We're raised to believe that 40-60 hours a week is reasonable along with occasional peaks. However it was normal for me to work 60-80, hours a week, I remember a 3-4 month period where I literally only went home to shower and sleep for 4 hour intervals. This sort of treatment isn't just a few companies here-or-there, but this was my experience in working at 3 different places.
I would have left the profession long ago, but as it was I found myself stifled by this statement "You need more experience" or perhaps "you need a degree". What I found was that the sheer magnitude of work that had been put on my plate was so much that it was impossible for me to get "more" experience let alone a degree.
As an aside, before you go on with the "you should have known better and had a degree before you started this line of work" rhetoric, I grew up poor, and after I graduated high school my parents still didn't have the cash to help me in college. An entry level IT job in the late 90's paid crap, so I could barely pony up rent, food, car insurance, and other basic expenses - let alone get a degree. Too bad I was a fast learner, I quickly found myself with more responsibility and not much extra money.
What I've described is not limited to my own experience, I have met countless people who have had the exact same experience. Basically it goes something like this:
1. Was planning on going to college, but couldn't
2. Left home, got an IT job
3. Learned fast, got lots of responsibility
4. Got too much responsibility, can't leave work
5. Want out, but can't because "you need more experience" or "you need a degree"
I count it a miracle that I was able to transition from one career (SE work) to another (Developer) AND work on getting both experience and a degree at the same time, but I really don't see any other way to get out of this sort of trap.
Anyone else's experiences?
-b
Firing someone? For goodness sake's be sure to do it in a way that allows them to get unemployment payments. I'm been fired from several jobs over the past twenty years. I'm not a bad worker. But this industry (electronics/computers/high tech) goes through employees like rubbers in a 5 dollar whorehouse and then tosses them away like used Kleenex when they've served their purpose.
Let's see. I got fired from Hewlett-Packard for having a picture of Claudia Schiffer in a evening gown (not nude) on my PC. 'Creating an environment conducive to sexual harassment' even though I was the only person working in the room.
Hmm... I got fired from a small medical equipment company in silicon valley when my boss overheard me say that 'white smocks are for white schmucks'. The boss decided that all employees had to wear white coats to work; blue jeans and button down shirts were no longer allowed. I actually got an unemployment check when I told the hearing judge that 'forcing Asian workers to wear white smocks was an insult because in VietNam and China only corpses were wrapped in white. The boss was telling the workers that they were nothing more than dead meat."
Oh and I got fired from Tektronix when I got blasted right in the eye with melted wax from a printer. No one noticed that the drain on eye-wash safety-station directed water directly onto a power strip. Of course it was all my fault. As always.
I got fired from the German milling machine company where I had worked for six years when I demanded that the American employees get the same stock-option package as the German employees when the company went public. Since the USA branch was a subsidiary, wholly-owned by the German parent. The German manager claimed that he felt threatened and intimidated: he was six foot-eight inches and I'm five-foot seven. Ja-Ja.
My point is that in a non-unionized cowboy industry like electronics people get fired constantly for practically nothing. If it hasn't happened to you, then it will sooner or later.
If you want to seriously decrease the possibility that someone will 'go postal' when you fire them, then you must do in a way that enables them to get unemployment insurance. Believe me the weekly checks go a long way to 'smooth out the transition process'. It's a no-brainer and it doesn't cost the company any money. I can't understand why managers would pride themselves on firing someone in a way that makes it impossible to get unemployment. But they do.
This has nothing to do with IT, per se, but everything to do with just a plain old disgruntled employee. Any employ can toss a few monkey wrenched in the gears on the way out the door. Plug a sink and let the water run, leave some doors unlocked, publish you emails, whatever. If this has become such a big deal with IT employees than perhaps it is a problem with IT employees? You think IT folks have it bad, try being the janitor!
I bet that for every malicious logic bomb, there are a hundred cases where a leaving employee takes with them the exclusive knowledge required to maintain some component of a critical system. What might have taken an hour to document will take their replacement a man-week to figure out, possibly with production services impacted, and there's no malice involved.
I suspect that properly resourcing and managing IT organizations to avoid *this* problem would prevent most of the frustration that leads to logic bombs.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
I work in a business that supports photocopiers, printers, fax machines etc. We are factory trained for brand X & brand Y. The the stupid sales genius idiots will go out and get new business, and then tell them "oh yeah, we'll wrap your brand Z machine into the contract with the new machine for servicing. Of course, do we have the parts, manuals and training on these brand Z machines? Hell no.
Someone I knew deleted the O/S from firmware on all the routers. The O/S was running happily in memory until he got fired and the network was running for several weeks after he was canned. I have been treated like shit for 20 years and I have done some IMHO coolish stuff (eg dual monitor DirectX game engine) for employers but I have never achieved an exit like that. Some places I wish I had. Some employers deserve it.
I walked out of one place two weeks before delivery due to stress/health problems and dumped everything I knew into a little manual/reference book and multiple emails to everyone I had ever spoken with. The CIO/CTO died of heart failure weeks later. The company killed him with stress like they tried to kill me.
Which jobs are the ones where they don't push you to do more with less? Downsizing, mass layoffs, reorganization, poor equipment that is maintained at the bare minimum, penny pinchers and minute monitors, these are not limited only to IT.
Twinstiq, game news
One of my many ex brothers-in-law is an MBA. 30 years ago I was talking to him over beer about *exactly* the same problem that this article is about. No respect. No compensation for work done. No upward path in the company...
His response? Yeah, in business school they teach us that engineers are stupid. If you were a business major you would know what to do. When the boss says "do it" the correct response is "what's in it for me?" And if they don't answer with what you want you don't do the extra work.
Work 75 hours a week for a fixed salary? He thought that was just too cool. He loved the idea of getting nearly two peoples worth of work for the cost of one. So what if it ruins your health. They are planning to get rid of you before your bad health starts to raise their costs.
So... about a month later my boss told our group we were going on mandatory 60 hour weeks and we would be required to work Saturdays. Don't like it? To bad. In an open meeting I asked why I should do it. He said if you don't you'll be fired. I said "OK." If you fire all of us you won't get the project done. The rest of the staff caught on to the fact that we had the power. A couple of hours later we were told we would get 50% extra pay for working 50% extra hours.
Sounds great... I was fired within a month of the end of the project.
I learned the lesson. Management loves screwing employees. They get off on it the same we techies get off on learning and making things work. The techies have the real power and the managers know it. They love the fact that we won't use our power. If you want to be treated well by management you have to organize and be willing to shut the company down.
You want to be treated fairly? Quit your bitchin' and organize. Of course, we're so tough and love that libertarian fighter jock image so we don't organize... And the managers laugh and laugh and laugh at us all the way to the bank. And we keep being treated like the idiots we are.
When I was a technical director in the game business my manager called his business plan "burning babies". You hire an out of school power fool and work them until they can't take it any more. Then they quit. You don't even have to fire them.
Stonewolf
All of this talk of the oppressed worker is really just a clever way of catering to self serving and paranoid managers. These security people in computers are just drumming up all sorts of fear in order to sell their so-called "services."
This is my sig.
Slashdot's sysadmins are well paid... you Anonymous Cowards!!! ;)
will go a lot to keep your programmers honest.
1. Was planning on going to college, but couldn't
2. Left home, got an IT job
3. Learned fast, got lots of responsibility
4. Got too much responsibility, can't leave work
5. Want out, but can't because "you need more experience" or "you need a degree"
I was headed down that path. I'm a very fast learner with no college education. I taught myself over 30 programming languages so far.
In my first programming job, after step 3, I could see step 4 coming. I use to get stuff done 3-4 times faster then my coworkers. Problem was, they started expecting that with every project.
So I pulled back a bit, often holding on to a completed project days after I finished. I learned how long it would take my coworkers to do the same project, and I'd turn it in a day or so before that. Got complements on how fast I worked, and laughed to myself thinking about how much goofing off I did.
I wonder if my coworkers were doing the same thing. Too bad I was the only one that knew certain languages, I still got more projects then anyone else.
"That's so plausible, I can't believe it!" - Leela
Let's see. I got fired from Hewlett-Packard for having a picture of Claudia Schiffer in a evening gown (not nude) on my PC. 'Creating an environment conducive to sexual harassment' even though I was the only person working in the room.
Yeah, I would fire you for that. Condoning any sort of objectification of half of my people on my property is not only wrong, and counterproductive, but it also exposes me to numerous lawsuits where your behavior is harrasment.
Hmm... I got fired from a small medical equipment company in silicon valley when my boss overheard me say that 'white smocks are for white schmucks'. I actually got an unemployment check when I told the hearing judge that 'forcing Asian workers to wear white smocks was an insult because in VietNam and China only corpses were wrapped in white. The boss was telling the workers that they were nothing more than dead meat
Yeah, I'd fire you for that too. You aren't in VietNam or China. You are in American culture and you play by American rules and if you don't want to wear white, that's your stupid problem.
Oh and I got fired from Tektronix when I got blasted right in the eye with melted wax from a printer. No one noticed that the drain on eye-wash safety-station directed water directly onto a power strip. Of course it was all my fault. As always.
Oh, that old printer got you in the eye. Boy, yeah, out the door. That's just retarded.
I got fired from the German milling machine company where I had worked for six years when I demanded that the American employees get the same stock-option package as the German employees when the company went public. Since the USA branch was a subsidiary, wholly-owned by the German parent. The German manager claimed that he felt threatened and intimidated: he was six foot-eight inches and I'm five-foot seven. Ja-Ja.
Dude, its America... everyone has a right to own a gun. How tall you are doesn't matter. It's not like you can go into work and threaten to kill someone as joke, because, well, in this country, everyone has a gun and everyone can kill you.
Best example of this is 911 tape I heard on Sean Hannity. A couple of burglars broke into a house, lived in by a 50 something woman and her 70+ year old mother. Well, the 50 something woman freaked out and called 911, and, as she's screaming in the background about burglars and what not downstairs, you hear a couple of gunshots, followed by what sounds to be some old lady swearing. Turns out that grandma had her late husband's rifle and she shot all of them... best line, was, the daughter yelling out..."oh my grandma, did you shoot him again...." "teach that F---- to break into my house." At least 50% of the USA thinks that that is awesome.
This is my sig.
I'll have my vengeance ...
damn slashdot form. I'll get you too!
Oh, my replacement is doing a bang up job with this 150k line Excel C# VBA abortion. He's very bright, I'm sure he'll pick it up in a day or so. I gotta go take my kid to the doctor... yeah short timing it.
This is my sig.
is to provide a portal where all staff information is handy for them and show on the home page a day count whereby the servers and infrastructure has been online, working perfectly for XX days. For me this has shown to provide a two way feedback for non-technical staff as they have no idea what I do to make things work. Obviously they only "deal" with me when they need something, this way allows me to "deal" with everyone and say, "Hey, I've been doing my job!" without the gory details. Plus managers always love to see numbers!
http://www.gibby.net.au
If your ISO standard management type sees an article about the zOMG disgruntled engineer menace!!! his response will be, rather than attempting to re-gruntle the engineers, hire the services of some creepy security outfit to protect the company(and himself, primarily) from the disgruntled.
In the end, more money will be spent on pinkertons than on improving conditions, so people will still be disgruntled, as well as surveiled, all at great expense.
Where you can sue a shitty company for overtime if you want to. It really does pay to treat us like dirt, well, it pays me at least.
I can intellectually understand your post, but I can't wrap my head around it.
I read your description of the MBA thought process, and it comes across like those sad bastards who throw bowling balls into traffic from overpass bridges and giggle. Maybe it's the way I was raised.
I was brought up by farmers, mechanics, builders and engineers. I was taught that "You WILL go the extra mile on this brake job, 'cause you don't want it to fail and kill somebody. You will wire this correctly, 'cause you don't want it to fail and kill somebody. You will do this the right way, 'cause you don't want it to kill somebody."
"'Cause you don't want it to kill somebody," were words of power, God's Holy Truth. I was taught that when I had power over someone, I was responsible for them. I was taught that older should look out for younger.
I was raised to believe that what I did Mattered. Drive like an idiot and there will be some mother crying at a funeral. Pay attention, because that radial saw would be just as happy to cut through bone as wood.
I read your description of an MBA, and I know you're right. I've seen it with my own eyes a million times.
What I don't know is how these men sleep at night. How do they live with themselves? I don't know. Maybe they don't get it. Maybe they think it's all a game. Maybe they don't realize that other people aren't just sprites on a videogame screen. I've heard more than one psychology professor claim that psycho-and scoiopaths line our boardrooms. Maybe they're right.
Maybe it's time to bring back some of the old ideas like "blood money."
Politicians pander to the popular type. If libertarianism were more popular, politicians would (at least pretend to) pander towards that type much more.
...I've got some really bad news for you. Chefs sometimes spit in the pizza. Babysitters slap kids. CEOs steal money that could be used to save dozens of lives. There's good and bad everywhere.
Be reasonable, but not hysterical.
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Well thank the Goddess Shiva that all the jobs that require thinking went to India, China and South America. And the only people left in the States who still work in IT aren't even code crunching monkeys talented enough to fuck your systems up.
And we don't trust them either. /that's the "safe" edited version of what I almost posted.
The kind of engineer that is in a union (operating engineer) is like a sanitation engineer. A blue collar worker with little training.
If you are still making $30k after eight or so years you should take that as a sign. You are just not very good at what you are doing. Try something else.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Treating people properly would prevent 95% of what companies are worried about. No other strategy approaches that level of effectiveness. And yet there are some employers determined to try everything but.
Defending the world of IT from disgruntled IT workers is relatively simple. I am such a disgruntled person, and my ex-employer went to bizarre lengths to make sure I didn't attack them. I would not have done that, but my ex-boss was a real nut job. His strategy meant I was treated poorly. As a result, they will face an endless series of problems that will cost millions to fix. Nothing technical, nothing illegal, just business problems that did not have to exist. And now they do.
The company could have saved a TON of money by treating people better. They picked on the wrong guy.
Give them a touch of the cat every once in a while and they'll fall in line.
Terry Childs was set to be the fall guy and dumb PHB's used the law on him and the DA is just a as dumb. Ramon Pabros is the other guy who knows want he is doing as was forced to retiring after standing up to tell the truth.
Hint: Shiva is male, thus not a goddess. Maybe you were thinking of Parvati?
I like my coffee the way I like my women - roasted and ground up into little tiny pieces.
Terry Childs did not operated outside the scope of his work he set the router to a high state of lock down so you can't just do a reset to by pass the pass word and mess the router. The outside the scope came from the dumb PHB how is just as dumb as the DA who said that having a pager is a hacker tool.
Most of the places where I've worked I've been treated decently - at least as decently as the situation allowed. I also had a clueful manager at the majority of these places. At one, I had a manager who knew when to keep our noses to the grindstone when we had some slack time to fix an intermittent problem... and then took our noses off the grindstone and saw to it we got more slack when we solved the problem. Another one was the sort who, to paraphrase Heinlein's description, would look through the rulebook to find the clause that would let you get what you needed, instead of finding the clause that would keep you from getting what you deserved.
My point? Keep these people happy when you leave, by leaving cleanly. Don't leave deliberate time bombs, try to prevent accidental ones by either fixing them or by documenting the living s**t out of them, and do your best by the person they're bringing in to replace you. Leaving nasty good-bye presents only comes back to haunt you, one way or another.
I've done that at all the places I've left, and although I'm not making as much as I'd like, I sleep pretty well... and I do like my sleep.
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
"Hawaiian Shirt Fridays!" is a big hit and really lets people chill and be real.
"According to computer forensics expert witness Keith Jones, for every logic bomb on the network or Terry Childs case that makes it into the press, there are 98 other incidents of disgruntled IT pros damaging company assets that you never hear about."
Soooo, not that many?
Frankly, I think it's best to create an atmosphere of trust & openness. I don't know 100% of what happened yet in the Terry Childs case (I don't think anyone does), but it's fairly clear his bosses were a bunch of political asshats.
-Bill
SlashSig Karma: Excellent (mostly affected by moderatio
I could have been classified as a disgruntled worker, I guess.
Several years back during the bubble, I was part of a software dev team working on bleeding edge biometric encryption and stuff. One of the tasks I was given, was to develop a way to encrypt emails on the fly and had a dedicated reader to decrypt them.
Well, we were recently bought out and the new company didn't really have a clue, burned through hundreds of thousands of dollars for junk that wasn't needed by us, and generally hosed the investors. Needless to say, they got rid of the old owner which caused a bit of tension.
I used to work lots of hours at home (I was salaried, and before we were bought out, I enjoyed being "at home" working). Needless to say, I used my personal laptop for LOTS of development.
One morning I got a call from a co-worker saying he was terminated. Rushed into work (oops, "forgot" my laptop), and found out I was let go as well. Turned out we were the only two let go.
Several days later, the new boss had a meeting with the rest of the staff, and one of his questions was about the new email encryption that was being worked on. Silence. Finally, one of my friends spoke up and mentioned that I was the person working on it .. the only person working on it.
That company went under due to incompetence a couple months later.
Turns out that I never checked in my code that I worked on, never asked to see my laptop (that I had brought in every day for a year, sans one), or I would guess even had a clue what I was even working on. In fact, the company development computer that I was assigned had very little on it, and its version of the source tree was about 3 months out of date.
Guess I was gruntled ...
... don't mind that club he's holding.
You reap what you sow!
... is that there is no way that guy would've been fired. Give proper coworkers/underlings? Nah. Given a raise? Nope. But given a pink slip? Everyone there knew he was the demigod of IT in their little world. And he freaked out anyway. On the note of being forced to work under conditions that are not up your alley... how long will you take it before you leave or get fired? Who's forcing the deathmarch for real? If you leave yourself in that position... it's you ;)
Now they seem to do about everything else after helping Colorado completely remove a "union problem".
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
The way to fight this problem is simple: Hire a bunch of black hat hackers to break into your own systems and wreak havoc. Then you have to hire ten times the legitimate support staff to fight the problem and keep the system up and running. You don't tell your legitimate employees that the bad guys work for you, too. Now if one of your "legitimate" guys goes evil and decides to jack up the system, it'll be like business as usual for the rest of your legitimate folks, since they're used to fighting this kind of stuff on a daily basis. It'll also create jobs, expose security flaws in your system, and give everyone that adrenaline rush of working in a battle zone.
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
for every logic bomb on the network or Terry Childs case that makes it into the press, there are 98 other incidents of disgruntled IT pros damaging company assets that you never hear about.
Where the hell do they get these stats from, FFS? Garbage. Just to make you afraid of your IT staff. Honestly, how the fuck would they even measure such a stat, or claim to be able to? Again, I say garbage.
Companies should be paying more attention to the brain drain associated with a valuable employee getting pissed off and leaving than with this made up crap. Unless you're prepared to hire a vast auditing and security staff (or suspiciously, an IT consulting company that just happened to write this stuff), your IT department could have you by the balls.
Provide a constructive work force, and the rest will take care of itself.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
Hi guys,
I am used to complaining about my IT job, my company, etc. But when I read all that you say, I think I'm a lucky guy. Are you in Europe or US, or elsewhere ? Because the IT staff are not _so much_ ill treated in Europe, as far as I've been able to see.
Come along. I work in Romania currently, it rocks!
And here I thought that if you use the "nice" thing under Unix, it does what you tell it, but more slowly. (Unless you're a pushy su, of course....)
You must be new here. That's what mod points are usually used for. Note the fact that you were modded insightful rather than modding the GP back to something else.
Er, you didn't notice, I suppose, that modding someone Insightful isn't usually considered "censure"?
My guess as to why binarylarry's post doesn't get modded back up is that he's proposing using mod points for censure, so his not being modded up might indicate that the moderators which have seen his post (since the first "Troll" mod) also don't believe in using mod points for censure. Face it, the decision on whether to mod him down or up is like deciding the truth or falsity of "This statement is false".
Do I punish the company for bad treatment? For sure. Do I cause real damage? Happened once or twice. Did I do something illegal? Of course not. I am freelancing software-developer and I am good at what I do. So what is the worst thing I do to crap companies? Simple, I do not renew my contract. Can be very, very bad to lose a developer, who cannot easily and fast be replaced. Especially late in a project. Nothing beats to see an incompetent project leader beg. :-)
Do you believe me? I believe we all will be judged by a supreme intelligence and eventually everyone will see the ultimate justice: Heaven or Hell.
Until then, however everyone needs to find their serenity by doing their best in having integrity. This is not the easiest thing to do however in this world. Recharge your spiritual batteries somehow.
'nuff said.
It's been going on for a long time and usually revolves around money in one form or another. Lately you are likely to see much more of these issues crop up. Especially; since many companies have been strategically imbalanced in the finance department to make sure the CEO, CFO, share holders, et al, are all well compensated and stock prices are well reflected as overvalued to perpetuate the theme.
This particular issue also has its roots in HR since they usually are instructed to keep wages low and eliminate anything upper management thinks they no longer need. So; yea, you have a lot of people on edge these days because the meaning of hard work has been thrown out the window now in favor of making sure upper management is making as much money as possible along with all those perks such as "Golden Parachutes" and the like.
Why do you think there are many larger companies who own a lobby in Washington pushing Congress for more H1-B visas so they can replace the tenured staff with "students" who will do the same job for them, but at 1/5th the cost. You do the math.
All content in this message is copyright (c) 2008. All rights reserved. RIAA is prohibited here.
There hasn't been anything else about Terry Childs, has there? Last news was that he didn't plant a logic bomb or hold anyone to ransom, and it's likely he wasn't guilty of anything but taking the BOFH stories too seriously.
This reminds me of the hullabaloo a few years back when the antivirus companies were trying to push AV software for Palms and Pocket PCs, despite the lack of any mechanism for a remote exploit and the lack of any viruses propagating in the wild. More people had crashes and data loss from handheld AV software than from deliberately installing the much-ballyhooed Phage malware on their Palms.
I suspect that there's going to be more damage done to productivity and the bottom line from whatever snake-oil these guys are selling than from all 98-times-zero "IT hostage" incidents they're warning about.
"When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all."
I have a friend who had to go on short term disability, and the manager piled on 37 individual objectives in his annual review for him to meet. He was given 22 work days to meet that. Of those 22 days, he was already approved and scheduled 10 days off for surgery and shit.
37 individual objectives, one of which took another person over a year to work on without success.
IANAL, but in civilized countries (you're in the USA?), that would be "constructive dismissal". The employer could find themselves at the sharp end of a tribunal. They would have to compensate the employee.
Ne mæg werig mod wyrde wiðstondan, ne se hreo hyge helpe gefremman.
That's why it's good to take a vacation at work every other week. Look important like Wally by carrying paper around, and talking about problems, but don't fix anything. Let problems small arise regularly and fix them immediately. PHB and HR will think you're amazing.
Two words: "free gruntles."
I worked @ a consultancy for 3 years. All the engineering staff were treated like crap. At 2.5 years I made my exit strategy. The great thing: Ownership treated the customers like crap also. I worked under the table for a large handful of customers that liked me and didn't like the company I worked for. The December after I left, when everyone left was supposed to get their adjustment based on the gross # of hours work, well those adjustment were summarily cut in half. Me, I made an additional $37K that year. I didn't need to sabotage anything nor anyone. I just realized were my bread was TRULY buttered.
I'm in my union and have been for a quarter-century. I can't imagine doing business with the dicks that tend to rise to positions of authority without having some sort of collective bargaining power that forces them to, at minimum, adhere to some written rules of conduct regarding how employees are treated.
Now, how does this serve me these days, when all the talk is about outsourcing and rightsizing? Being a government worker, I never really thought that stuff would impact me but it finally has. In a couple of weeks my employer is going to brief my union on how many positions they want to cut to get us to what they call "most efficient organization" status, size-wise.
Why didn't they just fire everyone they didn't want? Because I have a union.
Why are they being forced to brief the union first and give employees some advance notice? Because I have a union that fought for those work rules.
Why are they being forced to offer early retirement to those within 5 years of elgibility instead of just firing us (which would be best for them; us oldsters represent the biggest potential savings in broad-based layoffs)? Because I have a union that negotiated those work rules decades ago.
I'm going to take early retirement. It's a pittance but it's (barely) enough to live on and it comes with good life and health insurance. Toss in my investments (modest but not shamefully so) and I can kick back and spend the rest of my life in peaceful mediation or use my (now-free) time to acquire/hone skills and start a new career. I have options. I'd rather stay on my job but with the reductions in force that are coming, I know the environment around here is going to deteriorate. So I feel I'm being forced out but I still have options. All those options are thanks 100% to my union that fought for and won various "soft landing" employee separation procedures long before I ever came to work here.
All you lone-wolf libertarians out there who think unions are evil might want to revisit the topic. Yes, evil unions are evil but some, like govt unions that generally don't have a right to strike (and, therefore, must actually do their job of negotiating with management instead of getting sidetracked building corrupt kingdoms of their own), are worth their weight in gold.
Been there, done that.
I once deliberately and totally wrecked a company.
I was asked by the boss to do a blatantly illegal act; I was to violate the election laws by having every employee do a political donation equal to the legal maximum ($100), all paid by the company. My job was to cook the payroll records, namely insert invisible bonii that would appear as bonii to auditors but not on the paycheques, the bonii of course being the employees' political contribution (Here, companies are not allowed to donate to political parties, and contributions are limited to $100 per year; this insures that the richest people do not have more influence than the people).
I dragged my heels while I found the best way to trash the servers and backups, and boy did they go down in flames.
I was fired, of course (it was great to tell the boss what I did and why I did it; there was nothing they could do against me because I had them by the balls), and the company never recovered either; it went under a few weeks later.
We need classes of state licenses like lawyers, engineers, architects, CPAs, nurses, doctors, etc.
My wife is a nurse and there have been dozens of times she got away with telling management to go screw themselves because it risked her license or that of the hospital. It's nice when you have big scary regulatory bodies that can put people in jail backing you up.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
Guess which big three letter company I work for?
Burn the Caldera man!
... many IT folks are being pushed to the brink by management that neither trusts nor supports them."
I've seen a lot of evidence that the lack of trust and support is often due to a more basic lack of understanding. Management and IT speak very different languages and have a great deal of difficulty communicating. And usually, they can't admit this in public.
A minor example from a project a few years back: I was working on a bunch of stuff that ran on a server, and spent most of my time in the lab coding and debugging. During one meeting, I made an offhand comment that, since some people were starting to actually use the lab machine because the stuff on it was useful, I really should be running a second copy of the server. I didn't see much reaction, until a few weeks later, a manager came to me with help filling out purchasing forms for another server. I was startled by this, but I quickly figured out the problem.
To the manager(s), the term "server" meant a chunk of hardware. So I quietly explained that I hadn't been talking about hardware. The lab server machine (as I called it) had plenty of power to run several servers processes. I had simply configured a couple more that ran on nonstandard ports, and I was using them for most of my testing. This was better than two machines for my purposes, because being on one machine made regression testing easier. I got across the idea that to us software guys, a "server" was a program, not a machine, and we routinely ran many servers on a single machine.
That incident worked out without problems, because he had come to me in time to stop the acquisition process. It would have been a waste if they'd ordered and delivered a machine that I really didn't need, and I managed to turn it into a minor "learning opportunity". But all too often, language difficulties like this can lead to major misunderstandings and wrong actions on the part of both management and IT.
I'm not sure how to fix this. The obvious solution is to make sure that management includes people who understand IT jargon. But in many (maybe most) companies, this isn't possible. And in any case, it's not something that us IT types can impose on the management types. So the misunderstanding will continue to lead to mistrust and poor support, even when people think they're doing what the other side needs and wants.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
You just need the Nam Shub of Enki. Problem solved.
Everyone is well aware of the IT department's existence. Being that it's gubmint, nobody can do anything about it, either.
Lets see, I was fired from a job at the mall when I was 16 years old, for enrolling in a night school class that conflicted with my job.
Since then, I have always fired my employer. I can tell when things aren't going right at a company. When the layoffs come around (again) and you get to work more for the same amount of pay.
I have warned fellow employees that they are next and to look for a job NOW. This has saved some people -- as they had a job lined up right when they WERE fired.
I was once on a six month temp to perm, and at the end of six months they started drawing up the permanent contract, I told them not to bother. It is a two way street, you can fire your employer anytime.
I just cannot imagine not seeing the writing on the wall before they get ready to fire you. I have always moved on before my ire (or my employer's) reaches a breaking point. Also, I have left the employer on good terms and got a better job each time.
- I live the greatest adventure anyone could possibly desire. - Tosk the Hunted
Your point would be more easily understood if you used better grammar. I think you are missing a couple words, so we can't really understand what you are trying to say./ I assume something in favor of Terry Childs, the SF admin, but I honestly can't tell for sure.
This guy complains that bosses want improved performance for less cost (find a business that doesn't) and then uses that to justify ex-employees being douchebags?
How the fuck is it anyone's responsibility but yours that you're a douchebag?
I don't care how bad management is, you act like an idiot and it's on you, that's what happens when you start wearing the big boy pants.
And just so we're totally clear, customers keep business in business.
To quote LongNoi "QZTR was right and won't leave me alone because I called him a moron when I was wrong" FYS
So, suppose I want to leave and I don't want to be blamed for every problem that occurs after my departure? How do I get out without management blaming me for ticking time bombs?
The real "ticking time-bomb" is executives' incomprehension of the IT systems on which their business, as often as not, depends utterly.
"Dilbert" has this (like so many other things) dead right. IT employees don't need to take positive action to sabotage systems or destroy data. They could just as effectively - maybe even more effectively - keep their thoughts to themselves and refrain from informing management when its cherished schemes are impractical. After all, most of the time there is no gratitude, still less any more concrete form of appreciation.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
How much of this could be prevented by offering severance packages as a part of their signing package? Show just a little respect (like you do other professions) and you might get some back.
Excerpt:
A chief executive was beaten to death as he tried to pacify a group of workers sacked from his manufacturing plant, Indian police said today.
Lalit Kishore Choudhary, 47, bled to death inside the car parts factory yesterday after being attacked by more than 130 men.
Police have arrested 63 former employees of Graziano Transmissioni India in connection with his death. Another 73 are facing charges of disturbing the peace.
--- end excerpt ---
mark "ah, and we should be loyal to the company why?"
Since the topic has turned to bad management practices.
The worst thing about the whole practice is that once they've driven the good employees out, insane or to their deaths, is what happens to the company.
When I was young, several times I left ( opr was forced out ) of a company thinking my revenge would be their failure. Most times I was correct, not because I was so important to the company, but because they lost many others like me and replaced them with acceptable incompetents who ran the company into the ground.
It really gave me a lot of glee, but now that I am older I realize that all the jobs at the now defunct company are gone as well as the corporate taxes and employee taxes. To get whatever it was you have to go to a different company which probably has poorer employees ( and better managers ) and is therefore of lower quality and higher price.
Consider the Childs case. If the version that is most friendly to him is true, then what is the end result? They've lost the best network engineer they've had. They've probably lost others who leave fearing they would get singled out as the next Childs. Their network will eventually wear down and with the people they find to replace them, they will see the wear and tear really eatr into the performance. Who does this cost, the SF taxpayer.
The instant a company can undercut you by cheaper labor, they will do so. In that sense, it does not matter whether you are unionized or not. If you think you are being protected from being undercut by your refusal to unionize then you are operating under a myth that companies will not undercut complicit employees. Who knows how people end up with these weird beliefs in corporate altruism: companies explicitly declare that all they care about is profit and that's all that shareholders demand. What unions do is provide workers collective bargaining. With collective bargaining workers are able to secure better terms, possibly including protections from being undercut by cheap labor.
Not just in IT, but in labor-management relations generally, when managers start talking about "disgruntled" employees my bias detector starts ringing. The term is usually used by managers and it always seems to me to imply that the employee(s)have no valid grievances. That is, the employee is unhappy because he has some sort of fundamental character flaw. The idea that the employee is being treated unfairly seems beyond the consideration of managers who speak in terms of his being "disgruntled". Whether through union representation, or some in-house mechanism, employees should have channels through which grievances can be addressed.
I remember with some satisfaction taking some vacation time, starting Friday evening, after having expressed mild dissatisfaction with my L2 techsupport role at the company. I got a call on Sunday morning from the boss's boss's boss, offering me a pay boost and a L3 position.
Of course, that may have been partly due to the recent audit showing it would have taken five people to replace me... and that the boss^3 was very sneaky and very sharp when he needed to be.
No. Bigger stick to beat them with.
Notmysig
NOW!
because you've *already* been severed, in their minds.
--
If you want to convert leverage to being more on real-worth's side, you need this wonderful gem:
http://www.amazon.com/Feiner-Points-Leadership-People-Perform/dp/0446695750/
Whether you're committed to *making* your workplace work better, or whether you're committed only to making your life be more owned by you, it's worth very very much.
This one, however, is innervating, motivating, damn near thrilling, to a geek:
http://www.amazon.com/Corps-Business-Management-Principles-Marines/dp/0066619793/
Rules like
"Tell 'em the End State, Tell 'em WHY,
and get the hell out of their hair & let 'em do it their own way!"
or
"Find the ESSENCE"
if you haven't found the essence, of either your present situation, or of your answer, you aren't dealing with the deep reality, only the surface-details.
Finding the Essence is very very important.
or
"Orient to CAPABILITY"
most companies orient to products, or to services, or to silos, but orienting to capability means WTSHTFan, you *can* adapt, and that leaves the others ( competitors, opponents ) broken...
That rule changed the way I live my life, actually.
Good Luck, Keep on keepin' on, and NEVER give up! :)
Captain Fairly-Obvious(tm)
As machines become faster and cheaper, automation progresses, why are we forced to work longer hours for less pay? After 9/11, Wall St. replaced our project managers with guys from the military, who acted like Terminators. They used public humiliation to make us more productive, evenings & weekends were mandatory, and one day anyone who had small children or was pregnant was fired. I now work for a large IT company, a competitor of IBM, that is doing very well, yet we were told that 'because of the economy' our bonuses would be 'sharply curtailed'. Now what is a bonus, besides a portion of my salary that is set aside while the company earns interest on it, then (optionally) paid to me a month after the quarter closes? All of this finagling has not helped them. Now they need a bailout from the taxpayer, hundreds of billions of dollars. Why? Here are some vital clues: http://henrygeorge.org/
Actually, the experiments tell us that after only a few DAYS of 10+ hour days, the fatigue reduces your cognitive and decision-making skills so much that you start making mistakes.
Each mistake takes something like one hour to make and a full day to correct. Complicated mistakes that take more than an hour to make take proportionally longer to correct. When you are fatigued from too much overtime, you make mistakes at a rate of several per day. So, the extra hours are not just unproductive, they are actually anti-productive.
If you have enough self-discipline to go home before you make the mistake, it actually increases your productivity. You get MORE done in a 35-40 hour week than you do in a 60 hour week, because you avoid making at least two or three fatigue-induced mistakes.
Sometimes, the most productive thing you can do it to take a nap.
Occasional emergencies require long days to keep the company in business. But there are some useful rules to differentiate real emergencies from fake emergencies:
1. If it happens too often, it's not really an emergency;
2. If the manager has known about this for more than a few minutes, it's not an emergency; and
3. If the call comes after about 3PM on Friday, it's probably not an emergency.
I've made more then my supervisor more then once. Granted I was the tech lead and he was the 'project manager'. Technically I reported to him. He managed clients and schedules etc. I actually built the thing and coordinated the team technically.
That's even more true as an independent contractor.
BTW I've known a couple of aircraft mechanics and they are uniformly professional, diligent and hard working. Any one of them could make great IT workers (if you could get them to accept the pay cut.) Perhaps you should find a different example, these people hold other peoples lives in their hands and know it.
Much better then most of the flakes that 'wuv computers' and (unfortunately) 'know everything'.
When hiring I've backed off on looking for geeks for every job.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
They are disgruntled for a REASON: More and more we are losing our jobs, our houses and our futures to the corrupt, greedy board members. The current Wall Street situation is only a small sampling.
This is not always true, but management often deserves MUCH worse that what they get.