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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."
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 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.
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.
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.