
Sysadmin marched without an exit interview had no chance to explain big savings - ohjeez
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/12/04/sysadmins_100000_revenge_after_sudden_sacking/?mt=1449218256053
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thyrsus
"revenge" is the wrong word, as that implies intent. This was more like a king
deciding to banish their doctor during a stomach ache, and being surprised by
a ruptured appendix.

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cmdkeen
For those not in the know the company in question is going to be Games
Workshop.

"Revenge" is also the wrong word for this. I'd suggest schadenfreude.

~~~
noir_lord
Used to have friends who liked Warhammer stuff apparently they are a pretty
awful company to deal with though.

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ceejayoz
They've gotta be terrified of the rise of 3D printers.

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herge
Eh, most of their lucrative customers want to play in stores or compete in
official painting competitions, etc, which only accept Games Workshop
products.

Arguably you can already play Warhammer 40k with any bits of plastic, but you
still need the printed codexes and the setting, which is controlled by GW.

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Kratisto
I think it would be really cool if a community formed to crowd source their
own game. Have people work together on the rules, lore, and model design. That
way anyone with access to a 3d printer could just print their own army.

~~~
jonesb6
Aren't board games some what popular on kick starter, and don't they have a
pretty bad history of abuse/fraud/mismanagement/underperformance?

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lmm
> Aren't board games some what popular on kick starter

Yes, very much so, and miniatures games (not really the same thing) also.

> don't they have a pretty bad history of
> abuse/fraud/mismanagement/underperformance?

No? At least not by Kickstarter standards. The category has a much better
track record than computer games or new hardware gadgets.

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jacquesm
Lousy title.

Corollary: if you treat your employees like disposables don't be surprised if
you find out they were productive individuals after all and that you now
officially hold the bag. They shouldn't even have had the guts to call him
after such a termination.

An ex business friend of mine on a good Friday morning fired 3 long time
employees out of the blue 'to cut costs'. Haven't been in touch since. That's
just not the way to do it and if you do then all the resulting side effects
are yours.

You've made your bed, now you must lie in it.

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Peroni
It's hardly revenge if it wasn't preconceived. A decent lesson in due
diligence however the title suggests that the Sysadmin intended for this to
happen.

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Shivetya
yeah the title is inflammatory and the story does not bear it out. The guy did
his job but typical with too many organizations when they remove people with
administrative authorities they tend to lock them out because of the perceived
danger of leaving them their access to the site.

I don't know of any examples backing that stance up, but it is a perfect fear,
uncertainty, and doubt, example that most upper management would never be
called out on

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ergothus
The only part that bothered me here was:

"I had great delight in telling them I knew exactly why the bill was so large
and had they not made me redundant they would have not blown the whole year's
IT investment budget in a single month,” James recalls. “Even better, they had
gone over the cancellation period, locking them into a year's contract.”

I'd have preferred him to complain about how he was prevented from doing any
knowledge transfer/communication. The above implies he'd not have told them
regardless, just because they were firing him.

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drivingmenuts
Given that he was terminated and marched out immediately, I feel that he owed
them nothing, not even the courtesy of answering the call from the IT
Director.

He gave the company an interim solution because they demanded it, before the
actual solution was available. It sounds like he had every intent to switch
them over once it was available.

~~~
dogma1138
Like some people have pointed out it's not uncommon to do so when privileged
employees are fired, a rogue sysadmin can bring the organization down to it's
knees out of spite and if they even remotely capable do so with sufficient
plausible deniability to avoid prosecution.

The lack of an exit interview is odd, but not uncommon in many cases
especially in smaller companies where your direct supervisor or line manager
is not your "technical" supervisor so the exit interview is pretty much
pointless. Small organizations also tend to be less compartmentalized and they
assume that knowledge transfer is unnecessary which might be the case in some
cases and really not the case in others.

If he wasn't fired for gross misconduct and actually made redundant even in
the UK severance is often paid, heck severance is paid even in cases where
it's not warranted because employers rather to settle right away than face a
unwarranted termination law suit (if you are officially made redundant there
is statutory redundancy pay which employers very often increase considerably
ex-gratia which is also tax exempt in the UK), the lack of notice can also
point to the fact that this might not have been such a clear cut case of
redundancy because although in some cases employers will just give payment in
lieu of notice.

Now regarding the case he could've warned them and while he "owed them
nothing" anyone with any respect for his work would've done so in such case, a
better question would be why would a system which could incur such a hefty
payment was setup in the first place and how it was authorized and by whom
because. No one in their right mind would go into an agreement that could lead
to such fees unless they are utterly incompetent as if the system misbehaved
and transferred data excessively or that sysadmin would've gotten sick or
otherwise incapacitated the same end result would've occurred. If the sysadmin
was in charge of the setup for this system then he was utterly incompetent for
not being able to see a clear business risk regardless if this was just a
quick hack that he intended to cancel a week later. That said the whole ordeal
smells funny a 100,000 connection fee for a single monthly usage even at the
"dawn of the broadband age" in the UK seems utterly impossible a E1 line would
not cost you that a year, so not sure how they could rack that bill over an
ISDN30 line (BT Megastream probably).

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Fjolsvith
I once researched trying to set up an ISP in Juneau, Alaska, and an ISDN line
from Seattle, Washington was going to cost me over $2500 a week. This was
around the "Dawn of the Broadband Age", too.

While that only comes to 10k a month, the connection would have gone over
existing fiber cables. I can see where a custom installed point-to-point might
run that high.

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Cpoll
Replace "fired" with "hit by a bus" and you can see the ex-employee was not
entirely inculpable.

~~~
x0x0
according to the article, the manager was fired immediately afterwards. He or
she may well also have been aware of this plan.

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elthran
Good old GeeDubs, it saddens me that this still sounds as applicable to now as
to then

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hasteur
I would have preferred the title "Company reaps karma for abrupt termination
of critical Sysadmin"

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mschuster91
At-will employment is something that should be universally banned.

Politicians expect their population to consume stuff, to raise kids... if at-
will employment were legal I'd have to save and save and save money for
anything because I could not be certain to still have a job tomorrow.

Get rid of this shit, impose minimum 2 weeks (better 4) of prior notice,
except of course for stuff like theft, assault etc, and watch as your in-land
economy rises.

~~~
philh
I note that if you build up four weeks of savings in at-will employment, then
compared to four-weeks-notice, you have the same level of security and more
time to dedicate to job hunting.

(For people living paycheck to paycheck, four weeks of savings might not be
easy to accumulate. But those people can't suddenly start spending more money
if they get better job security. So there might be a compassionate argument,
but the economic one doesn't seem to hold.)

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mschuster91
> For people living paycheck to paycheck, four weeks of savings might not be
> easy to accumulate.

That is the major problem: those who are poor and don't know their rights are
hit the hardest - and this is why at-will should be abolished.

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philh
I'm confused by your addition of "and don't know their rights". In at-will,
not knowing their rights means they get fired with no notice because that's
allowed. Without at-will, not knowing their rights means they potentially get
fired with no notice because they don't know it's not allowed.

I would think that giving people more rights is more helpful when they do know
their rights.

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cactux
"Instant karma" would be a better title.

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dagurp
Worse if you ask me.

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dang
We changed the title to the subtitle since people were objecting.

