Defusing the Threat of Disgruntled IT Workers 401
snydeq writes "According to computer forensics expert witness Keith Jones, for every logic bomb on the network or Terry Childs case that makes it into the press, there are 98 other incidents of disgruntled IT pros damaging company assets that you never hear about. And though most IT workers are too professional to take out their grievances on the systems they've worked so hard to maintain, unless management takes note of the growing discontent in the IT workplace, it may fall victim to the unspoken 'ticking time bomb' lurking within its call for IT to do more with less, InfoWorld reports. Drastically understaffed, battered by interminable hours and impossible demands, many IT folks are being pushed to the brink by management that neither trusts nor supports them."
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Same OLD story (Score:2, Interesting)
[ Authority Figure ] pisses off [ slave figure ].
[ slave figure ] takes [ action ].
Management thinks they are untouchable.
IT workers know otherwise.
Respect is a two way street.
Disrespect is also a two way street.
This is only going to get worse. (Score:1, Interesting)
IT Staff are already treated like indentured servants in most companies. Pay is insultingly low. Hours are almost illegal. Management is disrespectful, ignorant and arrogant. Jobs are moving overseas or moving "underseas" (my term for cheap H1B labor). There is no union support. There are no wage standards. There are too many unqualified people working while qualified people keep looking. Most positions require too many skill sets for not enough pay (There are many doctors who don't have as many 'medical specialties' as some administrators I know.).
These companies are lucky to get away with as little damages as are done.
They need to wake up and realize that business doesn't get done without computers.
We need to unionize.
Firing someone? Let them get unemployment (Score:5, Interesting)
Firing someone? For goodness sake's be sure to do it in a way that allows them to get unemployment payments. I'm been fired from several jobs over the past twenty years. I'm not a bad worker. But this industry (electronics/computers/high tech) goes through employees like rubbers in a 5 dollar whorehouse and then tosses them away like used Kleenex when they've served their purpose.
Let's see. I got fired from Hewlett-Packard for having a picture of Claudia Schiffer in a evening gown (not nude) on my PC. 'Creating an environment conducive to sexual harassment' even though I was the only person working in the room.
Hmm... I got fired from a small medical equipment company in silicon valley when my boss overheard me say that 'white smocks are for white schmucks'. The boss decided that all employees had to wear white coats to work; blue jeans and button down shirts were no longer allowed. I actually got an unemployment check when I told the hearing judge that 'forcing Asian workers to wear white smocks was an insult because in VietNam and China only corpses were wrapped in white. The boss was telling the workers that they were nothing more than dead meat."
Oh and I got fired from Tektronix when I got blasted right in the eye with melted wax from a printer. No one noticed that the drain on eye-wash safety-station directed water directly onto a power strip. Of course it was all my fault. As always.
I got fired from the German milling machine company where I had worked for six years when I demanded that the American employees get the same stock-option package as the German employees when the company went public. Since the USA branch was a subsidiary, wholly-owned by the German parent. The German manager claimed that he felt threatened and intimidated: he was six foot-eight inches and I'm five-foot seven. Ja-Ja.
My point is that in a non-unionized cowboy industry like electronics people get fired constantly for practically nothing. If it hasn't happened to you, then it will sooner or later.
If you want to seriously decrease the possibility that someone will 'go postal' when you fire them, then you must do in a way that enables them to get unemployment insurance. Believe me the weekly checks go a long way to 'smooth out the transition process'. It's a no-brainer and it doesn't cost the company any money. I can't understand why managers would pride themselves on firing someone in a way that makes it impossible to get unemployment. But they do.
Re:I left a ticking code bomb (Score:5, Interesting)
Management (particularly the paranoid ones) have an odd idea about what constitutes a 'logic bomb'.
I left a job about 5 years ago in which I was responsible for maintaining half a dozen servers. To make my job a little easier, I had set up a watchdog system which would check the health of the system periodically and page me in the event a server went down. I had it set to page me and e-mail me both at work as well as my home address.
When I was leaving, I gave my replacement instructions on what to do, including which file to edit to replace my e-mail addresses with his. To date, I still receive the occasional 'server down/server up' e-mail at home. When I ran into a fellow engineer (still with the company), I told him about the situation (in the context of how screwed up the company still is). He got a concerned look on his face and told me I should contact their IT people immediately to get the situation remedied. Or they might run across one of these messages and figure it was a part of some hack. I replied that the only thing it demonstrated was the companie's inability to follow written instructions.
Not just IT... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Undocumented processes... (Score:2, Interesting)
What might have taken an hour to document... ...would have taken away an hour I needed to so some other vital task. And even if I tried, it's pretty hard to concentrate on doing thorough documentation when the phone is ringing/pager is going off/emails are flowing in/tickets are being submitted.
And if you think I'm going to give up my personal time to do it at night or on the weekend, all I have to say is "HA!"
Re:This is news? (Score:1, Interesting)
My story is exactly the same. I started on the switchboard at a hospital and worked my way up to "data processing supervisor." Since I didn't have a degree, management refused to promote me to IT manager, although my duties were the same. Job opportunities were few in the small town I worked in, and I stayed for way too long - until the place went bankrupt, in fact.
My next job at an alcohol and drug rehab facility was much the same. I was expected to take over all my boss's responsibilities after just two months on the job while she left to take care of her ailing mother. I had to learn her job with *no* training, and was berated for not magically getting up to speed in a heartbeat.
Later I learned that one of my predecessors had locked everyone out of the network after being treated like shit, which came as no big surprise. When I quit, I told them I'd train a replacement, but they didn't even look for one until the week I was leaving.
In my opinion, anyone who oversees IT personnel should be a technical person, period. Administrative types who don't understand technology are even worse than the domineering ones, IMHO - they think anything's possible just by waving some kind of magic wand, and are impossible to convince otherwise.
Fortunately, I got the hell out of IT and am now happily self-employed as a freelance writer.
Re:This is only going to get worse. (Score:5, Interesting)
Insultingly low pay? Fresh out of a 4-year college, your average salary will be 50% more than a teacher, and they need a masters!
Nearly illegal hours? Care to guess how long doctors, lawyers, engineers, and managers work? I'll give you a hint, it's also a lot.
Disrespectful management? Everyone gets this from time to time. If it's that bad, quit. Not all managers are disrespectful.
Jobs moving overseas? Go tell some layed off factory workers. I'm sure they'd love to hear how much you're suffering.
Fact is, IT workers have it far, far better than the average American/citizen of (insert your country here). You make good money, and your job isn't physically dangerous. Yes, it's not all butterflies and cupcakes, but no job is, barring rockstars and whatnot. Try being more positive, and realizing just how well off you are. It goes a long way.
Re:This is news? (Score:1, Interesting)
Yes. You say no to being treated poorly and stand up for yourself. If anyone tells you you need to be credentialed to do the work you are already doing, ask them to put it in writing so you can negotiate a reduction in workload at full salary, or an immediate salary increase.
Make sure you are being paid market rates for your time. Avoid taking the first offer people give you, and never, never, never sign any contract that restricts your freedom to leave, develop your own business/IP and/or seek employment at will elsewhere. Employment at will means YOUR will as much as theirs.
I've had decent employers and no nightmares. In my experience, the most frustrating general tendency when doing tech work was seeing non-technical managers overvalue hierarchy and undervalue competence. Some people perceive status by position rather than competence. The wrong way to deal with this is to be passive aggressive or angry at mistreatment. For them it is a business decision and nothing personal.
The right way is to treat your time as a business too. If you face unreasonable demands tie execution to specific changes in workplace practices that give you greater control over development. If your boss asks you to work overtime to get things done... that's a reasonable request provided the following changes are made. Keep the focus on execution and the terms under which it will happen smoothly and people will respect you and give you space IF you have a good track record for executing. Do all of the work regardless of how much garbage gets thrown your way and you'll be walked on, simple as that.
What would an MBA do? (Score:5, Interesting)
One of my many ex brothers-in-law is an MBA. 30 years ago I was talking to him over beer about *exactly* the same problem that this article is about. No respect. No compensation for work done. No upward path in the company...
His response? Yeah, in business school they teach us that engineers are stupid. If you were a business major you would know what to do. When the boss says "do it" the correct response is "what's in it for me?" And if they don't answer with what you want you don't do the extra work.
Work 75 hours a week for a fixed salary? He thought that was just too cool. He loved the idea of getting nearly two peoples worth of work for the cost of one. So what if it ruins your health. They are planning to get rid of you before your bad health starts to raise their costs.
So... about a month later my boss told our group we were going on mandatory 60 hour weeks and we would be required to work Saturdays. Don't like it? To bad. In an open meeting I asked why I should do it. He said if you don't you'll be fired. I said "OK." If you fire all of us you won't get the project done. The rest of the staff caught on to the fact that we had the power. A couple of hours later we were told we would get 50% extra pay for working 50% extra hours.
Sounds great... I was fired within a month of the end of the project.
I learned the lesson. Management loves screwing employees. They get off on it the same we techies get off on learning and making things work. The techies have the real power and the managers know it. They love the fact that we won't use our power. If you want to be treated well by management you have to organize and be willing to shut the company down.
You want to be treated fairly? Quit your bitchin' and organize. Of course, we're so tough and love that libertarian fighter jock image so we don't organize... And the managers laugh and laugh and laugh at us all the way to the bank. And we keep being treated like the idiots we are.
When I was a technical director in the game business my manager called his business plan "burning babies". You hire an out of school power fool and work them until they can't take it any more. Then they quit. You don't even have to fire them.
Stonewolf
Re:This is only going to get worse. (Score:0, Interesting)
You don't gain white collar respectability with blue collar tactics.
Re:I left a ticking code bomb (Score:1, Interesting)
I once had to leave a job because the nepotism was so intense it was literally preventing me from getting any meaningful projects finished.
Months after I left, I heard stories through the grapevine, that they we constantly getting hacked, and were blaming it on me. I was tempted to take them to court for slander, until I heard the rest of the story. They were somehow aware that most of these attacks were coming from 'Amsterdam', but they kept saying 'I dont know how, but XXX is responsible for this. I just know it.'
Once I heard the story, I knew it was best to just let them keep making a fool of themselves. Every person who told me they heard this, also told me they had to keep from lauging in the guys face who said it. For the same reason I would never 'hack' them, I let them go on running their mouth.
"People like that will do more damage to themselves, than I could ever possibly hope to accomplish without any consequences"
Re:Pussies (Score:4, Interesting)
People who need a job and can't afford to be without one don't have that luxury. I have a friend who had to go on short term disability, and the manager piled on 37 individual objectives in his annual review for him to meet. He was given 22 work days to meet that. Of those 22 days, he was already approved and scheduled 10 days off for surgery and shit.
37 individual objectives, one of which took another person over a year to work on without success.
Can you say, set up to fail?
And what about H1Bs? Oh, wait, even though they are here legally, they deserve all that shit piled on them too, right? Especially in at-will states, where they can be fired for no reason, and will be deported?
Mucking Foron.
Re:Pussies (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's also not forget the malevolently incompetent. As an example, I blew away a bit of important data through not checking my rsync flags. I immediately tracked down the data's owner and explained the situation so that we could take measures.
I didn't think much of it at the time, but a coworker later pointed out that I could have not said a word, closed the shell window, and they'd never have known who did it; the fact that I didn't showed "character." I'm not sure if I agree with that part of it, but I DO know an awful lot of people I've worked with in the past who would have hidden it and never said a word about it...
Re:Pussies (Score:3, Interesting)
"People are forced to work and often don't have the luxury of telling the boss to stuff it."
One nice thing I liked about the military is I could tell a Colonel to go to hell. All I had to do is say "Sir, with all respect for your rank - fuck you!" and that was it. The "Sir, with all respect for your rank" gave the due respect for his rank. the "fuck you!" was directed at him peronsally. So there wasn't much they could do as far as inssupordination etc... I made it over 9 years active duty before I got out. Never one article 15, never one punishment. You just had to know how to tell people off. You can't do anything like this in the business world. Most management are fucking pricks and they know it, and know they can do whatever they want and you can't do shit except put up with their crap or leave. They don't care wither way.
Re:What would an MBA do? (Score:3, Interesting)
forget organizing, just grow some balls.
I learned from another worker... just say no. Sometimes I just say yeah and then don't do it. Don't do it. Now he didn't get all the right promotions and I don't expect to either. Nonetheless. he didn't get fired and so far I haven't either.
Either that, or get into management :P
Oh, how right you are! (Score:1, Interesting)
Treating people properly would prevent 95% of what companies are worried about. No other strategy approaches that level of effectiveness. And yet there are some employers determined to try everything but.
Defending the world of IT from disgruntled IT workers is relatively simple. I am such a disgruntled person, and my ex-employer went to bizarre lengths to make sure I didn't attack them. I would not have done that, but my ex-boss was a real nut job. His strategy meant I was treated poorly. As a result, they will face an endless series of problems that will cost millions to fix. Nothing technical, nothing illegal, just business problems that did not have to exist. And now they do.
The company could have saved a TON of money by treating people better. They picked on the wrong guy.
Re:This is news? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The Definition of Evil (Score:3, Interesting)
What I don't know is how these men sleep at night. How do they live with themselves? I don't know. Maybe they don't get it. Maybe they think it's all a game. Maybe they don't realize that other people aren't just sprites on a videogame screen. I've heard more than one psychology professor claim that psycho-and scoiopaths line our boardrooms. Maybe they're right.
I often wonder this too, then smack myself in the head with the clue stick... because while it feels unnatural when I mentally try to walk in those moccasins, I've seen it enough, both in family and work, to know something of how sociopathy works. The fact is that bullies are everywhere, in varying degrees. Many of them sleep at night through an elaborate system of denial, but some of them just feel good being cruel.
It helps to remember being young, and somewhat amoral, or at least fascinated by pain. If you've ever burned ants with a magnifier, or harassed the cat, you have an inkling---it's there in all of us, even the saints. It's an undeveloped sense of empathy.
Some of the suffering of others gets through, but inverted... it gives a kind of pleasure, the pleasure that comes from fascination, and there's the intellectual rush of pseudo-victory that pushes in on top of that.
Some of it's just plain stupid reptilian pecking order. We were supposed to grow out of it, but culture can only do so much.
On top of that, corporations are designed to be psychopaths: rights of an individual with no sense of collective responsibility. So, guess who's attracted to running them?
Re:Pussies (Score:3, Interesting)
Generally I have to agree. Even in Germany where law makers put special attention to punish you for being independent it is still better that way. At least you can save something on tax and your investments (if you still have any after all this nonsense with credit crunch) can be better placed than in government pension system. The approach of companies to consultants and external contractors is also more rewarding - of course you will not get a new 'key person' title developed by your company to keep employees happy but at least you get all your hours accounted for.
That said there are other problems associated with being independent: like late payments or tax office harassment being two examples.
Re:Undocumented processes... (Score:4, Interesting)
At that point I left for a 6 month paid sabbatical. When I came back I found my documentation had actually been read and maintained. But the "maintainers" had also stripped my name from every place in it, including the document and review history, and replaced it with their own names!
Names were taken and two people got sacked, and rightly so: you can't afford to have unethical and dishonest people working in that position. (And yes unethical behaviour was a reason cited for dismissing them: like to see them get a job in any secure site in future).
Re:Pussies (Score:5, Interesting)
...Being your own boss isn't sleeping in till noon and taking days off when you want...
From my experience it's even worse than that.
When I was contracting I didn't take *any* vacation days. I found it hard to let billable hours slip through my fingers, mostly because I was never quite sure how long the current situation would last, when the next contract contracting opportunity would arise, etc.
... nor understands ... (Score:3, Interesting)
... many IT folks are being pushed to the brink by management that neither trusts nor supports them."
I've seen a lot of evidence that the lack of trust and support is often due to a more basic lack of understanding. Management and IT speak very different languages and have a great deal of difficulty communicating. And usually, they can't admit this in public.
A minor example from a project a few years back: I was working on a bunch of stuff that ran on a server, and spent most of my time in the lab coding and debugging. During one meeting, I made an offhand comment that, since some people were starting to actually use the lab machine because the stuff on it was useful, I really should be running a second copy of the server. I didn't see much reaction, until a few weeks later, a manager came to me with help filling out purchasing forms for another server. I was startled by this, but I quickly figured out the problem.
To the manager(s), the term "server" meant a chunk of hardware. So I quietly explained that I hadn't been talking about hardware. The lab server machine (as I called it) had plenty of power to run several servers processes. I had simply configured a couple more that ran on nonstandard ports, and I was using them for most of my testing. This was better than two machines for my purposes, because being on one machine made regression testing easier. I got across the idea that to us software guys, a "server" was a program, not a machine, and we routinely ran many servers on a single machine.
That incident worked out without problems, because he had come to me in time to stop the acquisition process. It would have been a waste if they'd ordered and delivered a machine that I really didn't need, and I managed to turn it into a minor "learning opportunity". But all too often, language difficulties like this can lead to major misunderstandings and wrong actions on the part of both management and IT.
I'm not sure how to fix this. The obvious solution is to make sure that management includes people who understand IT jargon. But in many (maybe most) companies, this isn't possible. And in any case, it's not something that us IT types can impose on the management types. So the misunderstanding will continue to lead to mistrust and poor support, even when people think they're doing what the other side needs and wants.
The Word "Disgruntled" Sets Up Red Flags for Me (Score:3, Interesting)
Not just in IT, but in labor-management relations generally, when managers start talking about "disgruntled" employees my bias detector starts ringing. The term is usually used by managers and it always seems to me to imply that the employee(s)have no valid grievances. That is, the employee is unhappy because he has some sort of fundamental character flaw. The idea that the employee is being treated unfairly seems beyond the consideration of managers who speak in terms of his being "disgruntled". Whether through union representation, or some in-house mechanism, employees should have channels through which grievances can be addressed.
Re:Pussies (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been an incorporated consultant for a very long time.
Incorporation is great under certain circumstances, it can also be a hell of a lot of stress.
When you switch from salaried work to independent consulting, you're trading one sort of stress for another. Each person has to ask them self which type of stress they're more willing to accept.
There's good times and there's bad times, and contractors don't generally get much work in the bad times.
Neither do salaried workers. Many, many companies have no trouble at all laying off their best people during recessions. The difference is that with consulting, you'll usually see it coming and can plan for it. With salaried employment, the employees are the last to know.
Your skill set has to be sufficiently in demand to either guarantee you pretty close to full time work, or for you to get paid sufficiently above permanent rates to make up for the time you're not working. This demand is often substantially higher than the demand necessary to get a regular job.
Over the last 10 years, if you add up all the time I've been out of work, it adds up to about six weeks. This includes the dotcom crash. Typically for me, one contract ends on friday, the next one starts on monday. There's nothing spectacular about my experience, except that I have a lot of it. I do both c#/.net/sqlserver and c++/unix/oracle development.
If you're a salaried employee, you need to be just as concerned about the marketability of your skillset. If you don't because your job is "safe" you're a fool.
You have to have either a really flexible financial situation, or a partner with an income you can live on.
My wife is a stay-at-home mom. And you make your own flexible financial situation. Regardless of your working arrangement, you need to be getting ahead of your cashflow. Live on 80% of your takehome pay and save the rest. This will mean a standard of living reduction. It's necessary.
Most companies are perfectly willing to throw extra work at a contractor because, well they're paying for it, so you often end up more stressed.
More work equals more stress? As a consultant, there's nothing forcing you to accept more work. If you hate your contract, find a new one.
If you want stress, try being forced to work 50 hours a week at a salaried job where they don't pay you for overtime. As a consultant, they're forced to respect your time, because, well, they're paying for it.
Add to that the fact that in a lot of countries if you work as a contractor for one company for too long you're considered legally a full time employee and have to pay all the relevant payroll taxes anyway.
In the US, if you have an article-C corporation, you have to pay payroll taxes on any money that flows out of the corp to you personally. I'm not sure how it works in other countries.
Also, that works both ways. It's far more troublesome for the employer when you're classified as an employee. They have to pay your taxes.
I'm always amused by people who use taxes to justify not being a consultant. This is like saying you don't want to win the lottery because you don't want to pay taxes on the money.
For my two cents, if you're young, and single, or financially stable on your wife/husband's income. If your skill set is really hot at the moment, or if your specialty is in a field where generally you're only needed for a small portion of the project life cycle, then go ahead and contract.
I'm just the opposite of everything you listed. I'm older. I have nine kids. My wife doesn't work. My skills aren't rare or unusual. And I work throughout the entire project lifecycle.
I guess I'm financially stable. But I wasn't during the dotcom crash.
If these things aren't true, it can be a hell of a lot worse than doing a regular old job, even if the pay during the good times is better. Be