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Employee Outsourced Programming Job To China, Spent Days Websurfing
New submitter kju writes "The security blog of Verizon has the story of an investigation into unauthorized VPN access from China which led to unexpected findings. Investigators found invoices from a Chinese contractor who had actually done the work of the employee, who spent the day watching cat videos and visiting eBay and Facebook. The man had Fedexed his RSA token to the contractor and paid only about 1/5th of his income for the contracting service. Because he provided clean code on time, he was noted in his performance reviews to be the best programmer in the building. According to the article, the man had similar scams running with other companies."
Now, who is going to complain about job outsourcing? Market & economy have laws that can't be broken. No matter how hard some countries try to.
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#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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Not only was he the most effective employee in the company but he was managing a successful software consulting service providing services to several other local companies. He delivered the goods. In fact he was more successful at managing software outsourcing than most large companies are.
When corporations do it, it's efficient. When an actual human does it, it's a scam. Can this social order please collapse now? It's bankrupt.
What's the problem? Does the employee contract have a clause against subcontracting?
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
well.. and the fact the employee here was collecting a 400% markup..
employee did employer a favor.. proved his own job could be outsourced better at a fraction of his salary. fire the employee, keep the contractor.
The real (and scary) message here is that the best programmer in the building was a chinese working for 1/5th of the usual programmer's income.
Cheap, low quality asian workforce, indeed...
The major issue is handing over access keys to a corporate VPN to a random bloke in another country. Frankly, I'm quite impressed with the general concept, but introducing a huge security breach isn't going to make you popular, he should have just had the guy email him code and the ctrl-V it himself, cutting the security breach out, he'd probably never have been caught unless there was something unexpected in the code.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
my boss
I quoted the problematic part. s/boss/client/ and all is well. Independent contractors do this all the time.
Some other important things: (a) You want to get permission from your boss/client *before* making the arrangement. (b) You *don't* want to disclose the rate of your subcontractor to your boss/client. (c) You *definitely* don't want to send your *personal* RSA token and access credentials to your subcontractor.
1. Programmers in the US are worth the money corporations spend on them.
2. China and India are full of crappy programmers who can't understand specs, cannot correspond in English, let alone produce quality code.
3. The value of the US currency is a true measure of its worth in global markets.
4. US corporations are killing US jobs despite the fact outsourcing produces lesser quality goods and services.
I know the plural of anecdote is not data, but still...
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Yes, it's bad if the employee has 400% markup, but good business if the company does it.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Employee is in wrong position, if was able to successfully find / hire / manage a highly competent programmer in China.
VPN is not really the problem, since VPN access tends to be quite limited in scope.
I think that the main problem is that a random guy in China has a local copy of all the source code of the company.
If access to the code required some NDA, the company is now in pretty deep shit.
Anyway, kudos to the chinese guy, he seems to be a good coder and had to work at an unusual work schedule.
If mfg CDs is a fraction of the cost, then doing it locally in a more expensive job market won't increase the price of the CD much, will it.
Employee is in wrong position, if was able to successfully find / hire / manage a highly competent programmer in China.
I don't think you want this guy as your program manager. Look at the facts. He was paid $X and paid somebody to do his job for less. He isn't making any extra money and in fact is taking home less money than if he did the job himself (and since he isn't a business, he can't even deduct the outsourcing expense from taxable income). The guy still had to show up at work each day (where he would just surf the net), but his outsourcing activities didn't free him up to do other programming which would bring him additional revenue.
No, the only reason to do something like this is because you are incompetent at the job you were hired for and need to cover that up, or you are an idiot because you are giving away a large chunk of your pay so you can surf the net. Neither of those are qualities that I would want in a manager.
If you're only doing it at one place then you might be an idiot, but if as reported with this guy you're doing it at several jobs...? Suddenly you're taking home a lot more than you'd do if you were doing a real job yourself, and you're watching cat videos while doing it. If you have multiple clients who are all satisfied enough with the work your team does that they want to keep hiring you, what more do you need in a manager?
You mean, except for the whole "some random dude in another country now has his RSA ID and noone was the wiser", ya sure.
That's the American Dream, 2013 style. Hard work only gets you more hard work, but exploiting the hard work of others makes you rich. As others have pointed out, employers do this all the time, and not only is it accepted, it's expected. But when a peon.. whoops, excuse me, the proper term is "an employee", turns the tables on them, well, we can't have that, can we. Companies don't like it when you don't eat the shit you're given.
To me, yes, what this guy did was wrong and dishonest. But, to a lot of people, the only thing this guy did wrong was get caught. Companies that work the system (legally or not) are praised as 'innovative' and 'efficient', and the execs get huge bonuses while the people who do actual work struggle to make ends meet with their salaries that don't keep pace with inflation. And, should the companies get caught doing something that's actually illegal instead of just morally reprehensible, they pay a fine (which is generally less than the amount of savings/extra profit they realized through the illegal activity) and get a stern talking to. But, when this guy does the same thing, he loses his job, gets his reputation ruined, and may very well go to jail. God Bless America.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
People who can do outsourcing that well are very rare.
How "well" is that? He pushed a "critical infrastructure" job offshore without a full ISO security audit, putting his employer in the position where they risk losing their ISO certification and get sued into non-existance. The reason his offshoring was cheap and profitable was because he made a very, very bad job of it. He has lost his job, and the only reason he hasn't been sued into bankruptcy is the fact that his employer is sh*t-scared of anyone knowing it was them.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
When a corporation does this?
Good stewardship of shareholder investment.
Make the corporation illegal!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
In other words, he knows how to make a profit by screwing over other people and escape the consequences. Clear Wall Street material.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Because accomplishing things you consider valuable triggers the reward circuits in your brain. That's the reason people do volunteer work, have hobbies, etc.
Both you and the parent are confusing "work" and "job". They are not the same thing, altough if you're lucky they might overlap.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Sorry to hear about your loss, but why are you alone?
That was about 7 years ago...do you not have a bunch of other friends or people you can do things with? When you were married, did you not keep close friends then...or was it just you and her and no outside people?
You're near 50....hell, get out there, meet another woman, they are a dime a dozen out there. Get laid. Hell, if you want..get involved.
I know there is a period of grieving, but you're still in this world, and I doubt your wife would want you to be down forever. Get out and enjoy yourself. If you don't have to work for a living...get out and find something to do.
Have you ever been a tourist in your own town?
Once, when I was in between contracts for about 7mos...I got up each day....walked the dog, hit the gym for a couple hours...and in the afternoons, I'd hop on my motorcycle and do something different every day. I went to check out the various museums...stuff like that.
And if you like computers...tinker with those.
And start to embrace some 'alone time'. I love my alone time, make use of it to do things that having someone around all the time can distract you from, like maybe learning a new language.
And hell...TRAVEL. If you have the means, go somewhere. How about this spring, go rent a bungalow in Key West and go party on Duval street and dine out for a week? Plenty of people to meet there or anywhere else you travel.
There's not a lack of things to do in this world at all, just pick something and GO.
Good luck. Again, sorry about your wife passing, but after 7 years, you really need to be moving on and enjoying the rest of your life. Your a the midpoint now, don't waste time!!
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........