And then, after you moved them back in house, you retired?
It all comes down to where the business wants their critical vulnerability.
They moved it from a smart guy on site to what was hopefully a decently staffed cloud service.
They were then at the mercy of the business having outages, their hardware having outages, the network connection having outages, their phone support having outages. All of these things led to a moderate chance - that came true - of a failure lasting for several hours at an embarrassing time.
So they moved it back in house to a really smart guy who knew how to maintain the hell out of very well optimized system and was willing to log in no matter whether he was on vacation, sick or whatever.
Which moved them to a single point of utterly massive failure, not a couple of hours of outage but weeks, if not semi permanent, if he got hit by a bus, into a car wreck, had a stroke, etc.
Given I'm yet to find someone who's taken over a proprietary system, without a great hand off, that hasn't cursed out the original guy... no matter how well that first guy thought he'd documented everything... recovery after that single point of failure is now hell vs a stressful few hours - if anything happens to you (or the guy you passed it on to after you retired) vs the more frequent issues with the cloud chain.
Usually, if you call 911, youâ(TM)ll sit on hold for three or four minutes.
When you do get through, if youâ(TM)re calling for something as trivial as thieves returning to your house while your wife is there alone, donâ(TM)t be so inconsiderate as to call while itâ(TM)s raining or theyâ(TM)ll tell you theyâ(TM)re not going to dispatch someone until after the rain stops and your wife should just leave the house. No. Seriously. SDPD pulled that shit.
If you call back because youâ(TM)re seriously concerned about her safety, once youâ(TM)re done holding again, expect to be told to stop calling 911 for something as trivial as a potential home invasion.
Donâ(TM)t be surprised when you can drive the 80+ miles back from Orange County and still be there an hour before the police show up after the rain stops.
The police are a revenue generation service for cities. They do not serve. They do not protect.
Itâ(TM)s not a racist thing. They donâ(TM)t care about you, regardless of your skin color.
Having phones tell them where you are and get them to you a minute faster changes a two hour response to an hour and fifty nine minutes. The criminals will be long gone, regardless.
Mind you, it might help for ambulances, once you get past the lousy 911 hold times.
I choose to pay not pirate. Those who believe they can just take for free will never be convinced why it matters to those who refuse to take. But everything else follows as an economic argument only once you accept Iâ(TM)m a paying customer and compare means to pay.
Digital copies usually cost the exact same amount as a physical copy. Except the physical copy always comes with the digital copy bundled. So itâ(TM)s the exact same price for the exact same digital copy plus free discs.
Discs are usually a lot cheaper in sales than their digital copies, if youâ(TM)re backfilling a collection.
With price matching, you pay the lowest price, whichever store youâ(TM)re at, which almost always ends up cheaper than digital.
No matter how digital licensing terms change, no matter which services cease to be profitable and close, my physical copy remains.
I never hit an arbitrary limit of maximum disc players used. I regularly bounce off Vuduâ(TM)s maximum. A few games systems, a bunch of streaming devices, some smart TVs, a couple of phones, iPads and laptops and a married couple starts getting bugged to deactivate devices rather than freely use whichever one theyâ(TM)re currently using.
The federal government has sold out users. As net neutrality collapses, as users continue to get a single choice of ISP in each zip code and it sets bandwidth caps to stop digital video use and force users back to cable... my discs use zero bandwidth. I can watch my free digital copies when it suits me but Iâ(TM)m never beholden to cable ISPs.
When the internet goes out, my UPS stays up and I keep the exact same library.
1080P is now just about as good, streaming, over a decade after blu ray showed up. Even then, it often stutters and drops quality. A disc never does. And while itâ(TM)s great that streaming is finally there with blu ray, 4K UHD discs that play on any $200 Xbox One S still beat the hell out of most attempts at 4K streams over what US ISPs laughably get to call high speed internet.
I like being a collector. That wall of discs, as a quick trigger into memories of being a kid and watching Flight of the Navigator or the first time I discovered Cabin In The Woods is awesome.
I can loan a physical disc as often as I want (so long as Iâ(TM)m happy to trust friends and accept when it fails to return). I love that I can share my love with others. I love that I can introduce rare gems that are a nightmare to track down on streaming services.
But it really comes back to... The digital costs just as much as the physical and digital combined. If Iâ(TM)m buying anyway (sorry pirates, Iâ(TM)m a fool, I get it), why no have all the advantages of digital AND all the advantages of physical, for the same price.
What could possibly go wrong with the current model... where your hypothetical delivery driver, leaving his hypothetical truck with a hypothetical key has just given thieves dozens of packages and a tool thatâ(TM)ll back through the wall of any timber frame construction, defeating any lock you can design, just fine.
Outlier chances will always happen. But itâ(TM)s about risk vs reward.
In exchange for ten thousand less packages stolen from doorsteps, costing Amazon maybe $1m... one delivery driver is a tool and allows a string of breakins worth tens of thousands (as soon as he realizes, he calls and has the key cancelled, leaving time for one or two homes to get hit and the cops to be dispatched to whichever addresses report its use). Plus, Amazon arenâ(TM)t liable, UPS or whichever company he worked for is liable for his breaking protocol.
Cost to Amazon $0. Cost to UPS maybe $50,000. Vs $1m cost to Amazon.
I needed a car towing about a hundred miles back home. Most tow drivers need you to ride with them so you can receive your keys back at the destination. I needed to remain where the car had broken down and a two hour tow plus a slow and expensive Uber back would have sucked.
Because of home automation, I was able to send the driver with my keys, watch him pull up and unload my car, then open the door for him to drop the keys inside, watching him the whole time, before locking the door behind him.
I was out five minutes of my time vs four hours.
Yes, âoeIOT security!â Lots of panic. Systems are exploitable. You could get robbed.
But no matter how secure the locks on a house, a thief can go through the windows. Put bars on the windows and a thief can drive a stolen truck clean through your wall.
Someone determined enough is going to get in. But theft deterrent is always about making your neighbor a more appealing target and you not worth the hassle.
IOT locks donâ(TM)t change that by any perceptible amount. There will always be edge case hacks but few and far between, not the norm. Plus I have multiple other layers of security so the door is only one small part.
In exchange, I got four hours of my life back that time and have a bunch of other similar stories of the convenience that more than outweighs the very slight additional risk.
Amazon and Vudu have both been selling $30 4K copies.
Alternatively virtually every disc now comes with an Ultraviolet (Vudu/bunch of other branded services) code.
Buy a 4K movie on disc for the same price as the Vudu digital copy and you get the 4K Vudu version plus discs that never degrade quality due to bandwidth and, best of all, still play when your digital merchant of choice decides to retire their service.
Plus Vuduâ(TM)s disc to digital generally lets you stick Blu-ray copies in your drive and convert to Vudu for $1 each as soon as youâ(TM)re doing ten or more ($2 each for less than ten).
Getting the discs as well as the digital copies, for the same price as the digital copies... it amazes me anyoneâ(TM)s been buying digital only for just as high a price.
Oh... and a lot of discs come with both Vudu and iTunes codes. So you commonly get discs and two digital services for the cost of a single digital service buy.
It's important that the US government, the primary creator of forced backdoors and exploits, can make sure code doesn't have... oh.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to go and patch everything in my home due the the huge cache of zero day exploits the NSA were hoarding, rather than reporting, until they got leaked.
So the federal government should only buy American where comparable American products exist?
But you start playing the protectionist game and other countries' governments may return the favor you've shown to their economies by ordering non American whenever a comparable product exists.
How well do you think Lockheed and Boeing will do when they're shut out of all European defense contracts because EADS, British Aerospace and SAAB all make comparable products?
How much do you think the already massively cost overrunning F-35 will cost when you can only spread the development cost over US only sales? It's a project that only got off the ground because they figured in export sales to people like the U.K.
It seems ironic that one faction within the US believes that a free market with minimal government involvement to skew that market is the key to success... except when it's politically expedient to add extra federal process to avoid a free market.
It's not like America's Commander In Chief would be stupid enough to refuse a secure cell phone just so he can continue his 3am Twitter on the shitter regimen.
Why are parents insecure asshats? The answer lies in the title.
If people were secure in themselves, they wouldn't need to bring a life into this world to give their own lives meaning.
To be fair, some don't bring children into the world just to validate their existence. We call this second set "poor planners." Though, arguably, that doesn't help the demographic much.
I started this reply joking. Having thought it through, I'm not so sure I am anymore.
Proudly hiding goatse in links, blaming Cowboy Neal, stating 640kb Will Be Enough For Anyone and wondering about Beowulf Clusters Of... on Slashdot since 1998.
The internet was always an unregulated Wild West. We were just so happy for the good it brought that the bad was worth it. Then we got used to its ubiquity, took the good for granted and the bad started getting under our skin.
I think you're confusing those nations for Saudi Arabia who, despite supplying most of the 9/11 terrorists, would be politically inconvenient to treat as harshly. Same goes for Pakistan.
Once you exclude nations that actually produce the majority of attackers of the US as the criteria for the ban, what are you left with?
Hmm. Looks mostly like nations that are sending huddled masses the US doesn't want got targeted plus a couple of others for political vendettas.
When you have a display that can handle the frame rate necessary to alternate the picture anyway... what's the cost?
By all means, stop packing 3D glasses in. Make them a separate purchase for those who want them.
But why not offer the feature for those who want it when the hardware already does everything you need and it costs essentially nothing more?
If anything, the moment for glasses is finally here. Yeah, they still suck to wear. But the next major complaint was that they darkened the picture. Yet Samsung's doubled picture brightness this year. You can have each eye blacked out half of the time and still have as bright a picture as last year's glassesless version.
So, sure, most people don't use it much. But when it's essentially free, why not check that box for the 1% who do want it?
The question lists What they're doing but barely speculates as to Why, beyond "to look good."
Most people I've seen treated this way get it because they've either badly or repeatedly screwed over colleagues.
From the description, it's an environment where people don't have much trust in management/HR helping. In such a situation, where the gaslighter may well have a legitimate issue with the victim but, in the absence of legitimate channels, taking away their ability to succeed until they go away remains an apparent only choice.
So first step is to consider if you've screwed then over. Not by your definition but by theirs. If so, start by mending bridges.
Maybe it is nothing to do with the victim. Still ask why.
Maybe they're a very insecure person, despite the rockstar talents the victim perceives.
Maybe they're scared of someone less talented but younger and hotter.
Or maybe they're hurting from other bad workplace drama, a bad manager, another bullying colleague, and lashing out where they can.
Get to know them, understand them, empathize, build their trust, make yourself an ally they want to build up not tear down.
Is that fair? Should you have to work with an unfair bully?
No. Back when mommy could talk to the teacher, it wasn't fair.
But this is the real world. In a good company, management and HR will help but this apparently isn't one. That leaves leaving (hurts you), fighting (often hurts you more) or being the bigger person to ensure you succeed.
You're going to hit lots of unfair in your career. Working out how to win anyway is at least as important a skill as any technical one.
A) Run the company in the most successful way that returns the greatest value over the long run. B) Run the company in the way that most benefits society and the employees. C) Create the greatest short term growth in stock prices so the current investors, who control their hiring, can sell and realize a profit.
Given it's the involved, activist shareholders that determine most CEO's hiring and firing - and they're looking for a dramatic change in company value over the short term...
Any CEO who chases A or B is an idiot who's going to ultimately get replaced by shareholders who want a sudden bump in value and then to get the hell out. They don't give a damn about whether the company will be worth more money in ten years because they intend to have sold, bought again when value tanks, sold after a short term solve, bought again when the value tanks... and repeated many times.
How a company does over ten years as a metric of CEO efficiency is just a demonstration of completely missing what CEOs are rewarded for.
The CEO who created a massive short term growth, then left and left the company to tank for a while, is worth that large bill to the shareholders who are trying to get just that.
Also, we don't get ponies just because we really, really want one and it's only fair!
If I'm doing my job properly as a manager, no one should ever be indispensable.
Highly valued? Sure. I want to build a team where everyone is exceptionally valued.
But if anyone ever becomes indispensable, I've failed in my job as a manager.
Why? The hit by a bus factor. That wonderful employee who loves me, who I love... can still get hit by a bus. Can still get sick. Can still have a loved one die. Can still have a relative offer to pay all expenses for a once in a lifetime six week world trip.
If I have any employee that I can't keep my team running without, even at zero notice, I'm not running my team well.
It may suck. It may be sad. It may require some juggling I'd much rather not do. But any indispensability means I've done my job badly.
This means, if someone quits with zero notice, I can handle it.
At that point, it's actually a good thing anyway. If they're so pissed off that they'd statement quit, I don't need them in the office, poisoning others, dragging their heels through their short timer's disease. Let's get them somewhere where they're happy and get my team of great people back doing great things. We'll live.
Strange thing? When you have a well run team that you can already be confident in, people rarely statement quit anyway. For some reason, they don't seem to feel the need. Imagine that. And when they do? You've got it handled anyway.
Does the company give at least two weeks paid notice to everyone it terminates? Then my minimum will also be two weeks notice.
Does the company usually just tell people to gather their things and pay out the minimum it's legally required to? Then my minimum will be the same.
Does the company generally give a couple of weeks severance unless for cause? Then my minimum is also two weeks unless I'm quitting due to their cause.
Does the company have a good standard severance package? Then I will also give them the option to have my work out longer.
Note: I say minimums. I'm also aware that, as poor as their behavior may be, I've also got my own reputation to watch out for. They may be a bunch of asshats. But my next employer is likely looking for reassurance that they'll get a respectful notice period and my quitting without notice, unless it's really easy to justify, just makes me look bad to future employers who background check.
"As if this isn't abusive enough, the candidates are not allowed to see nor challenge their report"
The data protection act, 1988, says they are.
You can naively write whatever you feel like into a ToS. But it won't hold us to the first even cursory legal challenge.
The ToS can say, "You grant the landlord the right to enter your apartment and invoke droit de signeur whenever you are passed out drunk." It doesn't make it true or remotely enforceable.
Slashdot Mirror
And then, after you moved them back in house, you retired?
It all comes down to where the business wants their critical vulnerability.
They moved it from a smart guy on site to what was hopefully a decently staffed cloud service.
They were then at the mercy of the business having outages, their hardware having outages, the network connection having outages, their phone support having outages. All of these things led to a moderate chance - that came true - of a failure lasting for several hours at an embarrassing time.
So they moved it back in house to a really smart guy who knew how to maintain the hell out of very well optimized system and was willing to log in no matter whether he was on vacation, sick or whatever.
Which moved them to a single point of utterly massive failure, not a couple of hours of outage but weeks, if not semi permanent, if he got hit by a bus, into a car wreck, had a stroke, etc.
Given I'm yet to find someone who's taken over a proprietary system, without a great hand off, that hasn't cursed out the original guy... no matter how well that first guy thought he'd documented everything... recovery after that single point of failure is now hell vs a stressful few hours - if anything happens to you (or the guy you passed it on to after you retired) vs the more frequent issues with the cloud chain.
From my experience in San Diego:
Usually, if you call 911, youâ(TM)ll sit on hold for three or four minutes.
When you do get through, if youâ(TM)re calling for something as trivial as thieves returning to your house while your wife is there alone, donâ(TM)t be so inconsiderate as to call while itâ(TM)s raining or theyâ(TM)ll tell you theyâ(TM)re not going to dispatch someone until after the rain stops and your wife should just leave the house. No. Seriously. SDPD pulled that shit.
If you call back because youâ(TM)re seriously concerned about her safety, once youâ(TM)re done holding again, expect to be told to stop calling 911 for something as trivial as a potential home invasion.
Donâ(TM)t be surprised when you can drive the 80+ miles back from Orange County and still be there an hour before the police show up after the rain stops.
The police are a revenue generation service for cities. They do not serve. They do not protect.
Itâ(TM)s not a racist thing. They donâ(TM)t care about you, regardless of your skin color.
Having phones tell them where you are and get them to you a minute faster changes a two hour response to an hour and fifty nine minutes. The criminals will be long gone, regardless.
Mind you, it might help for ambulances, once you get past the lousy 911 hold times.
I choose to pay not pirate. Those who believe they can just take for free will never be convinced why it matters to those who refuse to take. But everything else follows as an economic argument only once you accept Iâ(TM)m a paying customer and compare means to pay.
Digital copies usually cost the exact same amount as a physical copy. Except the physical copy always comes with the digital copy bundled. So itâ(TM)s the exact same price for the exact same digital copy plus free discs.
Discs are usually a lot cheaper in sales than their digital copies, if youâ(TM)re backfilling a collection.
With price matching, you pay the lowest price, whichever store youâ(TM)re at, which almost always ends up cheaper than digital.
No matter how digital licensing terms change, no matter which services cease to be profitable and close, my physical copy remains.
I never hit an arbitrary limit of maximum disc players used. I regularly bounce off Vuduâ(TM)s maximum. A few games systems, a bunch of streaming devices, some smart TVs, a couple of phones, iPads and laptops and a married couple starts getting bugged to deactivate devices rather than freely use whichever one theyâ(TM)re currently using.
The federal government has sold out users. As net neutrality collapses, as users continue to get a single choice of ISP in each zip code and it sets bandwidth caps to stop digital video use and force users back to cable... my discs use zero bandwidth. I can watch my free digital copies when it suits me but Iâ(TM)m never beholden to cable ISPs.
When the internet goes out, my UPS stays up and I keep the exact same library.
1080P is now just about as good, streaming, over a decade after blu ray showed up. Even then, it often stutters and drops quality. A disc never does. And while itâ(TM)s great that streaming is finally there with blu ray, 4K UHD discs that play on any $200 Xbox One S still beat the hell out of most attempts at 4K streams over what US ISPs laughably get to call high speed internet.
I like being a collector. That wall of discs, as a quick trigger into memories of being a kid and watching Flight of the Navigator or the first time I discovered Cabin In The Woods is awesome.
I can loan a physical disc as often as I want (so long as Iâ(TM)m happy to trust friends and accept when it fails to return). I love that I can share my love with others. I love that I can introduce rare gems that are a nightmare to track down on streaming services.
But it really comes back to... The digital costs just as much as the physical and digital combined. If Iâ(TM)m buying anyway (sorry pirates, Iâ(TM)m a fool, I get it), why no have all the advantages of digital AND all the advantages of physical, for the same price.
System reports the door being open for longer than sixty seconds, dispatches cops.
Good luck to the delivery driver, assigned a key that logs their entry, trying to pretend they werenâ(TM)t there.
Knowing theyâ(TM)re definitely getting caught will deter all but the biggest morons.
And, yes, if you want this, install a NestCam or equivalent looking at the door to record anyone lifting anything or lingering.
What could possibly go wrong with the current model... where your hypothetical delivery driver, leaving his hypothetical truck with a hypothetical key has just given thieves dozens of packages and a tool thatâ(TM)ll back through the wall of any timber frame construction, defeating any lock you can design, just fine.
Outlier chances will always happen. But itâ(TM)s about risk vs reward.
In exchange for ten thousand less packages stolen from doorsteps, costing Amazon maybe $1m... one delivery driver is a tool and allows a string of breakins worth tens of thousands (as soon as he realizes, he calls and has the key cancelled, leaving time for one or two homes to get hit and the cops to be dispatched to whichever addresses report its use). Plus, Amazon arenâ(TM)t liable, UPS or whichever company he worked for is liable for his breaking protocol.
Cost to Amazon $0. Cost to UPS maybe $50,000. Vs $1m cost to Amazon.
I needed a car towing about a hundred miles back home. Most tow drivers need you to ride with them so you can receive your keys back at the destination. I needed to remain where the car had broken down and a two hour tow plus a slow and expensive Uber back would have sucked.
Because of home automation, I was able to send the driver with my keys, watch him pull up and unload my car, then open the door for him to drop the keys inside, watching him the whole time, before locking the door behind him.
I was out five minutes of my time vs four hours.
Yes, âoeIOT security!â Lots of panic. Systems are exploitable. You could get robbed.
But no matter how secure the locks on a house, a thief can go through the windows. Put bars on the windows and a thief can drive a stolen truck clean through your wall.
Someone determined enough is going to get in. But theft deterrent is always about making your neighbor a more appealing target and you not worth the hassle.
IOT locks donâ(TM)t change that by any perceptible amount. There will always be edge case hacks but few and far between, not the norm. Plus I have multiple other layers of security so the door is only one small part.
In exchange, I got four hours of my life back that time and have a bunch of other similar stories of the convenience that more than outweighs the very slight additional risk.
âoeWith your consent your personal data can be retrieved only by credentialed verifiersâ
However, without your consent, weâ(TM)ll share it with anyone that offers us money. And we never seek your consent.
Amazon and Vudu have both been selling $30 4K copies.
Alternatively virtually every disc now comes with an Ultraviolet (Vudu/bunch of other branded services) code.
Buy a 4K movie on disc for the same price as the Vudu digital copy and you get the 4K Vudu version plus discs that never degrade quality due to bandwidth and, best of all, still play when your digital merchant of choice decides to retire their service.
Plus Vuduâ(TM)s disc to digital generally lets you stick Blu-ray copies in your drive and convert to Vudu for $1 each as soon as youâ(TM)re doing ten or more ($2 each for less than ten).
Getting the discs as well as the digital copies, for the same price as the digital copies... it amazes me anyoneâ(TM)s been buying digital only for just as high a price.
Oh... and a lot of discs come with both Vudu and iTunes codes. So you commonly get discs and two digital services for the cost of a single digital service buy.
Maykin Amerka grate agen!!
It's important that the US government, the primary creator of forced backdoors and exploits, can make sure code doesn't have... oh.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to go and patch everything in my home due the the huge cache of zero day exploits the NSA were hoarding, rather than reporting, until they got leaked.
So the federal government should only buy American where comparable American products exist?
But you start playing the protectionist game and other countries' governments may return the favor you've shown to their economies by ordering non American whenever a comparable product exists.
How well do you think Lockheed and Boeing will do when they're shut out of all European defense contracts because EADS, British Aerospace and SAAB all make comparable products?
How much do you think the already massively cost overrunning F-35 will cost when you can only spread the development cost over US only sales? It's a project that only got off the ground because they figured in export sales to people like the U.K.
It seems ironic that one faction within the US believes that a free market with minimal government involvement to skew that market is the key to success... except when it's politically expedient to add extra federal process to avoid a free market.
I can't wait for the TSA to start scrawling on my face that I'm singled out for extra molestation.
We can't exactly explain how the human brain works, how it makes decisions, when humans drive or make medical decisions.
So I guess we're banning all the things until we can explain them fully?
If you're going to kick people out for elaborate fantasies, are they going to ban anyone that calls that admin interface user friendly? ;)
It's not like America's Commander In Chief would be stupid enough to refuse a secure cell phone just so he can continue his 3am Twitter on the shitter regimen.
Oh god. We're all doomed.
Why are parents insecure asshats? The answer lies in the title.
If people were secure in themselves, they wouldn't need to bring a life into this world to give their own lives meaning.
To be fair, some don't bring children into the world just to validate their existence. We call this second set "poor planners." Though, arguably, that doesn't help the demographic much.
I started this reply joking. Having thought it through, I'm not so sure I am anymore.
Proudly hiding goatse in links, blaming Cowboy Neal, stating 640kb Will Be Enough For Anyone and wondering about Beowulf Clusters Of... on Slashdot since 1998.
The internet was always an unregulated Wild West. We were just so happy for the good it brought that the bad was worth it. Then we got used to its ubiquity, took the good for granted and the bad started getting under our skin.
At least the title isn't:
"US President uses Mexicans to distract populace during $hit$how."
I think you're confusing those nations for Saudi Arabia who, despite supplying most of the 9/11 terrorists, would be politically inconvenient to treat as harshly. Same goes for Pakistan.
Once you exclude nations that actually produce the majority of attackers of the US as the criteria for the ban, what are you left with?
Hmm. Looks mostly like nations that are sending huddled masses the US doesn't want got targeted plus a couple of others for political vendettas.
Classy.
When you have a display that can handle the frame rate necessary to alternate the picture anyway... what's the cost?
By all means, stop packing 3D glasses in. Make them a separate purchase for those who want them.
But why not offer the feature for those who want it when the hardware already does everything you need and it costs essentially nothing more?
If anything, the moment for glasses is finally here. Yeah, they still suck to wear. But the next major complaint was that they darkened the picture. Yet Samsung's doubled picture brightness this year. You can have each eye blacked out half of the time and still have as bright a picture as last year's glassesless version.
So, sure, most people don't use it much. But when it's essentially free, why not check that box for the 1% who do want it?
The question lists What they're doing but barely speculates as to Why, beyond "to look good."
Most people I've seen treated this way get it because they've either badly or repeatedly screwed over colleagues.
From the description, it's an environment where people don't have much trust in management/HR helping. In such a situation, where the gaslighter may well have a legitimate issue with the victim but, in the absence of legitimate channels, taking away their ability to succeed until they go away remains an apparent only choice.
So first step is to consider if you've screwed then over. Not by your definition but by theirs. If so, start by mending bridges.
Maybe it is nothing to do with the victim. Still ask why.
Maybe they're a very insecure person, despite the rockstar talents the victim perceives.
Maybe they're scared of someone less talented but younger and hotter.
Or maybe they're hurting from other bad workplace drama, a bad manager, another bullying colleague, and lashing out where they can.
Get to know them, understand them, empathize, build their trust, make yourself an ally they want to build up not tear down.
Is that fair? Should you have to work with an unfair bully?
No. Back when mommy could talk to the teacher, it wasn't fair.
But this is the real world. In a good company, management and HR will help but this apparently isn't one. That leaves leaving (hurts you), fighting (often hurts you more) or being the bigger person to ensure you succeed.
You're going to hit lots of unfair in your career. Working out how to win anyway is at least as important a skill as any technical one.
A CEO's job is...
A) Run the company in the most successful way that returns the greatest value over the long run.
B) Run the company in the way that most benefits society and the employees.
C) Create the greatest short term growth in stock prices so the current investors, who control their hiring, can sell and realize a profit.
Given it's the involved, activist shareholders that determine most CEO's hiring and firing - and they're looking for a dramatic change in company value over the short term...
Any CEO who chases A or B is an idiot who's going to ultimately get replaced by shareholders who want a sudden bump in value and then to get the hell out. They don't give a damn about whether the company will be worth more money in ten years because they intend to have sold, bought again when value tanks, sold after a short term solve, bought again when the value tanks... and repeated many times.
How a company does over ten years as a metric of CEO efficiency is just a demonstration of completely missing what CEOs are rewarded for.
The CEO who created a massive short term growth, then left and left the company to tank for a while, is worth that large bill to the shareholders who are trying to get just that.
Also, we don't get ponies just because we really, really want one and it's only fair!
If I'm doing my job properly as a manager, no one should ever be indispensable.
Highly valued? Sure. I want to build a team where everyone is exceptionally valued.
But if anyone ever becomes indispensable, I've failed in my job as a manager.
Why? The hit by a bus factor. That wonderful employee who loves me, who I love... can still get hit by a bus. Can still get sick. Can still have a loved one die. Can still have a relative offer to pay all expenses for a once in a lifetime six week world trip.
If I have any employee that I can't keep my team running without, even at zero notice, I'm not running my team well.
It may suck. It may be sad. It may require some juggling I'd much rather not do. But any indispensability means I've done my job badly.
This means, if someone quits with zero notice, I can handle it.
At that point, it's actually a good thing anyway. If they're so pissed off that they'd statement quit, I don't need them in the office, poisoning others, dragging their heels through their short timer's disease. Let's get them somewhere where they're happy and get my team of great people back doing great things. We'll live.
Strange thing? When you have a well run team that you can already be confident in, people rarely statement quit anyway. For some reason, they don't seem to feel the need. Imagine that. And when they do? You've got it handled anyway.
Does the company give at least two weeks paid notice to everyone it terminates?
Then my minimum will also be two weeks notice.
Does the company usually just tell people to gather their things and pay out the minimum it's legally required to?
Then my minimum will be the same.
Does the company generally give a couple of weeks severance unless for cause?
Then my minimum is also two weeks unless I'm quitting due to their cause.
Does the company have a good standard severance package?
Then I will also give them the option to have my work out longer.
Note: I say minimums. I'm also aware that, as poor as their behavior may be, I've also got my own reputation to watch out for. They may be a bunch of asshats. But my next employer is likely looking for reassurance that they'll get a respectful notice period and my quitting without notice, unless it's really easy to justify, just makes me look bad to future employers who background check.
"As if this isn't abusive enough, the candidates are not allowed to see nor challenge their report"
The data protection act, 1988, says they are.
You can naively write whatever you feel like into a ToS. But it won't hold us to the first even cursory legal challenge.
The ToS can say, "You grant the landlord the right to enter your apartment and invoke droit de signeur whenever you are passed out drunk." It doesn't make it true or remotely enforceable.