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I got fired ("let go", "laid off") for the 2nd time this year. How do I recover?

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Re: I got fired ("let go", "laid off") for the 2nd time this year. How do I recover?

#11

Post by jacalata »

instaheat wrote: post #9
jacalata wrote: post #7

"I had a USB wireless adapter plugged in to my company PC. I was using it to access our guest network. They called it "circumventing the network" - a fire-able offense. Oh, I'm sorry - it's against the rules to Facebook on my lunch break on the guest network. Snore. Typical corporate "security policy" nonsense." Well, that would get you fired at the last two places I've worked as well, so perhaps one move could be le…

Regardless of "the policy" - it isn't as obvious as you make it out to be. I'm human. Have a conversation with me. Tell me it's wrong. It's cutthroat. What a terrible way to treat a person.

I meant 'easily see-able', sorry for the wording.

Re: I got fired ("let go", "laid off") for the 2nd time this year. How do I recover?

#12

Post by Someone »

instaheat wrote: post #5
paperclips wrote: post #3

There is no easy answer to this, but to keep trying. Buy outs stink when it comes to layoffs... it's always in the best interest of the investors - whatever that is - not the employees. At your second job though, they do have a point. It's a company computer and you should not be using your own hardware without permission (to be safe) to browse things against company policy (even as blocked on their main network). Ev…

"A point." What a sad pathetic little point they have. In fact, they said if I had done it our on issued laptops it would have been OK. But this - no - this is a crime. It's non sense. Their network wasn't at risk - it's impossible to access the internal domain from the guest network. This should have been a discussion. Not a firing.

That "it's impossible to access the internal domain from the guest network." ended the moment you added a door to the guest network. Yes, you may have intended it to be one way, but how do you know that? More importantly, how can the company verify that it is, and what gives you the right to force them to have to spend time thinking about that?

"Access our guest network" to Facebook means you can willingly or unwillingly download stuff from the internet that you can't download from the internal network.

And yes, it is not a crime, but I can see that a company can see it as a reason for dismissal, especially if they instruct their personnel in network security.

Re: I got fired ("let go", "laid off") for the 2nd time this year. How do I recover?

#13

Post by throwaway987265 »

instaheat wrote: post #5
paperclips wrote: post #3

There is no easy answer to this, but to keep trying. Buy outs stink when it comes to layoffs... it's always in the best interest of the investors - whatever that is - not the employees. At your second job though, they do have a point. It's a company computer and you should not be using your own hardware without permission (to be safe) to browse things against company policy (even as blocked on their main network). Ev…

"A point." What a sad pathetic little point they have. In fact, they said if I had done it our on issued laptops it would have been OK. But this - no - this is a crime. It's non sense. Their network wasn't at risk - it's impossible to access the internal domain from the guest network. This should have been a discussion. Not a firing.

> It's non sense. Their network wasn't at risk - it's impossible to access the internal domain from the guest network. This should have been a discussion. Not a firing.

Unless you were the person in charge of the company's network security, you have no grounds to call their rules nonsense or to judge the risks for them. You can't objectively say their network wasn't at risk, since it wasn't your job to assess how much risk was acceptable.

By connecting a USB wireless adapter to your corporate machine (which presumably was also connected to the corporate network), you created the possibility of a bridge between the two networks. It sounds like you were intentionally circumventing their corporate network filters, thus bypassing any protections they had set up against you visiting sites they knew to be honeypots, any phishing protection they may have had, etc.

Since you're posting on Hacker News, I think it's fair to assume that you knew exactly what you were doing, and that you knew it wouldn't be okay. It's obvious that if your workstation is on a locked-down network that you can't just willy-nilly connect it to a different network.

Now, I personally think it's a poor business decision for them to block Facebook (and whatever else). Thus either I wouldn't work there, or I would work there and follow policy and try hard to change it. Or, if I decided to just say "fuck policy" and do whatever the hell I wanted, I wouldn't whine when I got fired.

It'd be one thing if you were clueless and just made a mistake. But you knew you were breaking the rules. Own up to the consequences. Go work somewhere where you can enjoy yourself without breaking the rules.

Re: I got fired ("let go", "laid off") for the 2nd time this year. How do I recover?

#15

Post by brianpgordon »

throwaway987265 wrote: post #13
instaheat wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A point." What a sad pathetic little point they have. In fact, they said if I had done it our on issued laptops it would have been OK. But this - no - this is a crime. It's non sense. Their network wasn't at risk - it's impossible to access the internal domain from the guest network. This should have been a discussion. Not a firing.

> It's non sense. Their network wasn't at risk - it's impossible to access the internal domain from the guest network. This should have been a discussion. Not a firing. Unless you were the person in charge of the company's network security, you have no grounds to call their rules nonsense or to judge the risks for them. You can't objectively say their network wasn't at risk, since it wasn't your job to assess how muc…

You don't have to be "in charge of the company's network security" to know enough to be sure that you're not compromising the network... Phishing protection? If you think anyone here has ever been phished I don't know what to say.

And don't give so much credit to network admins and corporate policies. Admins often aren't as competent as you'd hope and I've been subject to some pretty senseless corporate network policies in my life. I had an internship where I was told to downgrade from Visual Studio 2012 to Visual Studio 2008 because 2012 wasn't in their security policy's approved software list. Subjecting a competent software developer to such restrictions is insulting.

Re: I got fired ("let go", "laid off") for the 2nd time this year. How do I recover?

#16

Post by NovemberWest »

What do you mean by "recover"? In practical terms? Get another job. In emotional terms? Cry/vent/watch cathartic movies, etc. Anger is generally an acid which corrodes the vessel which holds it. No one can make you do that to yourself.

Re: I got fired ("let go", "laid off") for the 2nd time this year. How do I recover?

#17

Post by GrinningFool »

brianpgordon wrote: post #15
throwaway987265 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's non sense. Their network wasn't at risk - it's impossible to access the internal domain from the guest network. This should have been a discussion. Not a firing. Unless you were the person in charge of the company's network security, you have no grounds to call their rules nonsense or to judge the risks for them. You can't objectively say their network wasn't at risk, since it wasn't your job to assess how muc…

You don't have to be "in charge of the company's network security" to know enough to be sure that you're not compromising the network... Phishing protection? If you think anyone here has ever been phished I don't know what to say. And don't give so much credit to network admins and corporate policies. Admins often aren't as competent as you'd hope and I've been subject to some pretty senseless corporate network polic…

I'm not sure how you can conclude it doesn't place the network at risk. If you have computer on a secure network, then simultaneously attach it to a non-secure network... well, that's pretty much the definition of a compromised node that can't be trusted any more. You have no way of knowing what kinds of data may be getting leaked in or out based on author's assertion of browsing facebook. For that matter, neither you nor the admins have any way of knowing if the USB device itself is infected.

We also don't know the author's competence and ability to use sane judgement.

And that's really the point of those kinds of policies. The admins don't know the author's ability to use sane judgement. In some environments this ok (my current job places no such restrictions). In other environments it is not - you wouldn't believe how locked down we were when I worked in financial services.

So the rules are designed for lowest common denominator. Of course if you ask any individual if he should be exempted from the rules, he will say yes - of course! And will have a perfectly valid reason.

In a similar fashion if you ask any person if he is a good driver, he will also say yes, of course!

Re: I got fired ("let go", "laid off") for the 2nd time this year. How do I recover?

#18

Post by avenger123 »

Usually its been my experience that when a company is looking at letting you go, any excuse will do.

In terms of the Director of IT position, there isn't much that can be done when outside management comes in. It's usually at the top that people bring their own team in.

With the second position and the USB wireless incident, I would say that you need to look at what led to the firing. I find it very hard to believe that a company would just fire someone without their already being an agenda for it. Did you do this before? Did you try to circumvent security before this in other ways? Were you getting along with the team? Were there issues of fit? Did you feel you were being productive? All these questions exist and should be answered.

It's very likely that you were on the chopping block and the company was waiting to get you out the door. It may have worked very nicely for them that you give them a nice easy rational for firing you without having them to pull the trigger.

It's been my experience that when a company is ready to fire you or lay you off, the time you come in the morning, when you leave, how long your lunch breaks are, etc. all become sticking points. When they find their "reason" the official company policy is used to do the deed.

So I would suggest some deep introspection to see outside yourself. If you can't do this, try to find someone in the company that will talk to you.

Re: I got fired ("let go", "laid off") for the 2nd time this year. How do I recover?

#19

Post by bfitz »

I can't say as to whether your second termination was fair or not. However, I know of cases where networks were compromised by exactly this means - using a privileged computer through a guest network, computer got trojaned, now there's something running on the inside of the privileged network, and bad stuff starts happening. Maybe the company overreacted by firing you, but it wasn't for trivial reasons.

You're not going to learn as from events if you fail to look at them openly. You absolutely need to look at events from the other side as well as your own, in order to grow. Sometimes you'll still decide that you were 100% in the right. But that's really rare.

Think about what you were doing. Why were you bypassing network policies? Why didn't you ask if you could do that? That's really the question to ask yourself - why didn't you feel like you could ask "hey, this policy makes no sense, can I, a smart person, do something else?"

Re: I got fired ("let go", "laid off") for the 2nd time this year. How do I recover?

#20

Post by moron4hire »

If you can manage it, cut your expenses to the bone (seriously, be ruthless, you'll appreciate it later) and live on cash for a few months. You'd be surprised with how long you can live happily without most of the things we accept as normal these days.

Just take a sabbatical for a little while. It has always helped me clear my mind and figure out what my priorities are. I once thought I was going to quite programming completely, but a 2 month sabbatical made me realize that I just hated "corporate culture". Now, I freelance and make art about "corporate cargo-cultism".

Use the time to try out things you've always said you wanted to do but never seemed to be able to get around to it. I made t-shirts for a while. I learned there ain't a lot of money in making t-shirts. No point in keeping that dream around, nagging at me in the back of my head. Turned out all I really wanted was a custom wardrobe. Got that, done, next.

I made props for a while. Small, independent film productions. Museums. I didn't plan it, but because of my sabbatical and my lack of plans (The Way of No Way, as Bruce Lee would call it), I was prepared to pursue an opportunity that came my way. It was a ton of fun. There is potential there, but I lack the knowledge on how to develop the contacts necessary to make it a sustainable business.

Basically, find yourself and learn what you like to do and what you don't like to do. They don't teach you that in college. Then, when you're ready to jump back in, don't take the first thing that comes along. Shop around your choices.

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