
Engineer claims he has been blacklisted by Chrysler for 17 years - no_flags
http://blacklistedengineer.blogspot.com/
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steven2012
Unfortunately I think this person seems mentally ill. I have a friend who in
his 30s became a paranoid schizophrenic and although he was very articulate,
he had major flaws in his logic and behaved erratically. He also filed many
lawsuits and was litigious as well.

It sounds like this person was dismissed from his job (he mentioned it in one
of his videos), and he hasn't been able to find employment because of his
mental illness.

It's sad that we don't do enough to help those with mental illness. It would
go a long way to making their lives better and the rest of our lives safer.

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ricardobeat
Don't you think there is a good chance his mental illness is actually a result
of being consumed by such an awkward situation?

The details he provides about proof of employment and wrong-doing by Chrysler
when asked to confirm it are very clear. If those are real, we can't tell -
this looks like something a good journalist would be able to uncover, and
maybe help achieving some kind of closure.

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steven2012
No I don't think so. It sounds like he was fired for at the very least strange
behavior, and all of his potential employers picked up on it. If he were
technically good, it wouldn't matter what Chrysler said. But it seems like
he's not technically good.

~~~
sliverstorm
Maybe an awesome engineer in tech can get hired even if his past employers
deny employing him. But what about a perfectly average engineer in something
more traditional like automobiles? It's my understanding tech is pretty unique
in being "less" sensitive about pedigree.

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progressive_dad
I think we've all seen a good engineer get fired because he's a pushover.

You know who doesn't get fired?

Story time: We had the most brilliant and insufferable devops engineer I've
ever met. I don't mean just your standard grump overworked sys admin. This guy
was a treasure. 1) Previously all engineers had 20% time and would work on
personal projects. We had a ton of extra servers lying around and it was
fairly simple to provision some space to work on an idea. His first week he
went to the CTO and had 20% time axed and demanded that all provisioning go
directly through him and all physical servers be nuked from orbit. 2) They got
him a personal secretary. He routinely had her go 5 blocks to get him gummy
bears, buy him a waffle iron and make him waffles in the office, and routinely
made sexist comments. 3) Op sec. We would have media come by the office once
in a while so this guy instituted a policy of "security through shame" If you
didn't have 2factor auth on your email he would send you snide comments. If
you didn't use full disk encryption you had to go to a mandatory course on
personal security. If you left your laptop unlocked at your desk to go the
bathroom it was prank emails and screwing with your settings. On the 3rd time
he would confiscate your laptop and lock it in a personal safe he had under
his desk for the day. 4) This guy would use our internal channels and slack to
shame anyone non-technical. One time the personal assistant to a VP in another
department accidentally posted a listing asking if anyone had a bed for sale
to the channel for asking about restaurants in the area. 24hours of shame
where he got the entire tech team to participate emailing everyone in the
company if they had any food shaped furniture for sale. Apparently she broke
down crying and had to go home for the day. 5) Despite the fact that we had no
QA team this guy refused to deploy hotfixes even for critical launches. You
got one day a week to launch code. You got one chance. If there was anything
wrong it was, "roll back and try next week." Unless of course the issue was
you needed a CDN cache clear or there was something wrong with the build. Then
you could email him (directly after the deployment) and have him refuse to
respond or believe you for about an hour before he would actually do anything.

These guys get promoted. They run things.

They fire the pushovers.

~~~
tekklloneer
Wouldn't have to worry about firing me, I'd quit.

~~~
progressive_dad
I stuck it out until he confiscated the personal laptop of an engineer who had
permission to use it on network.

After that I got permission to work from home for a month and used the
opportunity to find a new job.

~~~
d8421l01vv4r
Do you know if (m)any of your coworkers also quit?

~~~
progressive_dad
Several asked to be transferred to other departments. That's what prompted his
demand to be the sole point of provisioning. He had final say over Finance,
Analytics, internal reporting tools, if he didn't like you it didn't get a
server.

I had been with the company for four years at that point and I knew a lot of
other old timers. Overnight it went from a flat organization with a
progressive expectation that "No one is going to tell you what to do. You are
here because you kick ass and we expect great things." to a strict hierarchy
with several layers of management and influence.

Everyone who had been there as long as I had was equally unhappy with the new
direction. This was all done under the guise of, "Getting the budget under
control." when we all clearly saw the budget was fatter than ever. Where we
had a diversity projects and research going on before, now we had 1 or 2 large
money making projects. Where we had an expectation that we needed to be
competitive and lean and every aspect mattered before, now they were hiring
more and more management instead of workers.

We were doing so well that many former co-workers contacted me and other old
timers during this time and we warned them off. Many simply didn't renew their
contracts because they saw the writing on the wall.

Only one other person outright quit and that was really heartbreaking to
watch. He had just transferred from California and the bullying was so bad he
told me he was going home to stay with his sister and start going to therapy.
He couldn't stand the idea of working in tech anymore.

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bllguo
Very weird; so long and detailed that it would be hard to fake - yet I don't
understand why he's still in this position with the proof he claims to have.

I also feel like his case would be strengthened significantly if he simply
took the time to write properly - capitalize, good grammar, etc.

Anyway if true, it's an outrage; hope he receives due compensation. If not, I
don't know what to say.

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vgoh1
I do feel bad for this guy, because I feel that the majority of what he says
is true, but it just can't be true that an employer saying he didn't work
somewhere that he did is effective "blacklisting". I have worked a few places
and received several job offers that I declined, and don't know of one case
where my previous employer was contacted. I was told by HR at a fortune 200
company that I worked for as a mechanical engineer that they would not confirm
or deny to anyone that I ever even worked there. I think that contacting
previous employers doesn't happen much because so many people would lie. If
the prospective employee was a charismatic fool, the previous employer could
gloss over incompetence. If he was a great worker, but the previous employer
was sore about him leaving, they could embellish on any shortcomings. Sir, if
you are reading this, let go of the past and look inside for what needs to be
fixed.

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dontsaymyname
My experience is not directly related but one of the things I have noticed
working as an software engineer in the banking industry is how quickly
management closes ranks to protect one of their own. No matter how much a
manager fucks up, when your as an engineer tell on him/her, your ass will be
handed to you. And the blacklist is real -- informal but real.You can't
transfer out as all the managers will give you shitty references. So I can
empathize with the plight of the blacklisted engineer. Its scary and it could
happen to anyone.

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Dagwoodie
Why didn't he seek a (temporary) job in the service industry? Even flipping
burgers would be better than being homeless. His story and writing style makes
me believe he's a smart guy but possibly he unintentionally offends everyone
he meets and either doesn't realize it or can't understand why.

~~~
Tiksi
A lot of service industry jobs won't hire people that are "overqualified"
because they know those people likely won't stay long.

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Kluny
It sounds like a sad story of a guy who never learned to communicate properly.

~~~
p4wnc6
Or he was great at communicating and has just suffered extreme mental trauma
from the circumstances he was unfairly placed into.

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ck2
_and a copy of my Chrysler contractor ID badge_

How is that not the end of proof needed to a court?

Unless they are claiming he made a counterfeit badge which is silly.

There also have to be tax records on the state and federal side that a court
can order them to retrieve?

The saddest part of that whole story is what I recognize as the descent into
the mental state of homelessness, because once you are there, it's REALLY hard
to dig yourself out to start thinking normally again. He's been at it since
1999, he's not coming back out whole, maybe ever. Story starts to have
grammatical errors and paranoia at the end too, not good signs.

~~~
mod
descent*

I point it out not to be a grammar nazi, but to further a point: we all have
different writing ability and/or attention to detail. The man made many more
mistakes than you did, certainly, but I don't think it's necessarily a
reflection of mental illness.

There's a lot of armchair mental health diagnoses in this thread, and I think
they're a bit presumptuous.

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thro1237
Perhaps I am not understanding his situation properly. If Chrysler refuses to
acknowledge that he worked there, why couldn't he apply for jobs without
mentioning his experience at Chrysler?

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j3FF3ry
The last post was from April of 2015. Can we update the title?

