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The absolute worst scenario happened

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Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#111

Post by Symbiote »

alistairSH wrote: post #89

Tangent Alert! I have a 3 months resignation period, so I can't even leave... Maybe it's my (US) American experience, but being unable to quit a job strikes me as a terrible policy. This guy(gal?) is really required to submit 3 months notice or face some sort of repercussions (financial, I assume)? Does this 3 month period apply in reverse (employer can't fire employees without a full 3 month warning)? Not that the A…

I once had a colleague "go on holiday" and never come back to work.

If you don't work your notice period, you obviously won't be paid for it, and any reference will state that you broke your contract.

(Unless your employer asks that you don't come into work any more. This is called "gardening leave" in Britain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_leave , and it's normal in some industries and circumstances.)

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#113

Post by mysterydip »

raverbashing wrote: post #92
rebuilder wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a reply the poster made in that thread: "So, we have backups on an encrypted drive, which we can't access (authentication is done via our custom ERP software, which is down as well - in hindsight, a very bad idea). And the backups don't work. We can rebuild the DNS servers from scratch, and the records are probably still safely stored somewhere inone of the 3 different databases our ERP software uses, but we don…

I'd say if it was such a house of cards, my best bet is that this security chain is full of holes. Maybe the ERP used a fixed password, which can be guessed/bruteforced.

honestly, "password" would be my first guess.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#114

Post by driton »

erikstarck wrote: post #46

This reminds me of when the Danish mega-corp Maersk was attacked by ransomware and had all of their computers locked and decrypted with no access. All computers except one, which due to a power failure had been offline the whole time. This computer had the critical DNS information needed to restore the network. Only problem: it was in Africa, in a country that required Visa which would take weeks to apply for and rec…

Sounds very interesting, but the story seems to be behind a paywall. I found some other articles[0][1] related to the incident, however none of them seem to mention the flying of a hard drive across continents.

0: https://www.zdnet.com/article/ransomware-the-key-lesson-maer...

1: https://portswigger.net/daily-swig/when-the-screens-went-bla...

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#115

Post by Eremotherium »

alistairSH wrote: post #89

Tangent Alert! I have a 3 months resignation period, so I can't even leave... Maybe it's my (US) American experience, but being unable to quit a job strikes me as a terrible policy. This guy(gal?) is really required to submit 3 months notice or face some sort of repercussions (financial, I assume)? Does this 3 month period apply in reverse (employer can't fire employees without a full 3 month warning)? Not that the A…

At least in Germany this goes both ways. The period can also be longer depending on your seniority. This is to give the company time to find a proper replacement for you and allow for a smoother handoff. Of course if both parties agree the grace period can be skipped or shortened.

You usually don't get stuck with duds because there's a probationary period of (max.) 6 months in the beginning in which these protections are not in place.

Also (after the probationary period) the company needs a legal reason to fire you. If they wanna fire you for incompetence oder insubordination they need to have reprimanded you at least once officially, in written form. Only after getting a 2nd reprimand for the SAME THING can they act on it. Meaning if you told the boss to go fuck themselves once and shown up drunk to work once they wouldn't have legal grounds to fire you and if they did you'd drag their ass to labour court and get some kind of compensation.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#116

Post by detaro »

CaptainZapp wrote: post #95
alistairSH wrote: post #89

Tangent Alert! I have a 3 months resignation period, so I can't even leave... Maybe it's my (US) American experience, but being unable to quit a job strikes me as a terrible policy. This guy(gal?) is really required to submit 3 months notice or face some sort of repercussions (financial, I assume)? Does this 3 month period apply in reverse (employer can't fire employees without a full 3 month warning)? Not that the A…

> Does this 3 month period apply in reverse (employer can't fire employees without a full 3 month warning)? Of course. Different notice periods for employers and employees would be outright illegal in most of Europe.

> Different notice periods for employers and employees would be outright illegal in most of Europe.

AFAIK more common is "lower notice period for employers is illegal".

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#117

Post by ptero »

ansible wrote: post #61
rebuilder wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a reply the poster made in that thread: "So, we have backups on an encrypted drive, which we can't access (authentication is done via our custom ERP software, which is down as well - in hindsight, a very bad idea). And the backups don't work. We can rebuild the DNS servers from scratch, and the records are probably still safely stored somewhere inone of the 3 different databases our ERP software uses, but we don…

> Elsewhere, they say that two years ago, they found they were unable to restore from backups... So their business actually failed a couple years ago, and they have only noticed this month.

That isn't the failure of the business; backup failure is a screwup of the IT, which I think is not that uncommon.

But the fact that after this event the management did not get it fixed (and requested that IT demo it, three times, with no failures) is an existential failure.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#118

Post by alistairSH »

ACS_Solver wrote: post #105
alistairSH wrote: post #89

Tangent Alert! I have a 3 months resignation period, so I can't even leave... Maybe it's my (US) American experience, but being unable to quit a job strikes me as a terrible policy. This guy(gal?) is really required to submit 3 months notice or face some sort of repercussions (financial, I assume)? Does this 3 month period apply in reverse (employer can't fire employees without a full 3 month warning)? Not that the A…

In my EU-centric worldview, the US system of at-will employment, and of two-week notices as the standard courtesy, is crazy. Three months is the typical notice period for tech workers and other highly-skilled jobs. One month is the legal minimum in Sweden, and certainly several other countries. Of course it goes both ways, in fact it's even more difficult for the employer to get rid of an employee. An employee doesn'…

In my EU-centric worldview, the US system of at-will employment, and of two-week notices as the standard courtesy, is crazy.

Oh, I agree. But 3 months seems crazy to me. If I have an open position and it isn't filled in ~4-6 weeks, it often gets given to some other team (on the basis that if I really needed that position filled, I'd do so). I can't plan hiring over that timeframe.

And when hiring employees in India, we've had them claim a 2-month resignation period, but they just end up using that time to find some other opportunity on the previous employer's time. It's a real mess.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#119

Post by dagw »

alistairSH wrote: post #89

Tangent Alert! I have a 3 months resignation period, so I can't even leave... Maybe it's my (US) American experience, but being unable to quit a job strikes me as a terrible policy. This guy(gal?) is really required to submit 3 months notice or face some sort of repercussions (financial, I assume)? Does this 3 month period apply in reverse (employer can't fire employees without a full 3 month warning)? Not that the A…

2-3 month notice in both directions is standard in most of Europe.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#120

Post by tadzik_ »

alistairSH wrote: post #89

Tangent Alert! I have a 3 months resignation period, so I can't even leave... Maybe it's my (US) American experience, but being unable to quit a job strikes me as a terrible policy. This guy(gal?) is really required to submit 3 months notice or face some sort of repercussions (financial, I assume)? Does this 3 month period apply in reverse (employer can't fire employees without a full 3 month warning)? Not that the A…

In Poland it scales over time: you start off with 2 weeks notice (for both sides), after a year or so this jumps to one month, and after 3 years it jumps to 3 months, or something like that. I've seen people quit right before their 3 year anniversary just so that they don't fall into the 3-months-notice period.

I haven't worked much on regular job agreements (been contracting or "contracting" most of my life), but generally if you want to quit you go to your boss and say "hey, I wanna quit" and you negotiate when, regardless of the default requirements (which only come into play if either side doesn't agree). There's no business in keeping an unproductive employee around for 3 months.

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