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The absolute worst scenario happened

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Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#141

Post by dagw »

ghaff wrote: post #84
TrackerFF wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, for one, your work references probably won't be the best. Even if you're not responsible for the problem itself, leaving your employer in the ditch, when there's a major outage - well, it just doesn't look good (barring some scenario where your employer is completely unreasonable - like not paying you). It's kinda like a firefighter that decides to turn off the hose and go home, in the middle of a raging fire.…

In general, I agree. But if they get in a situation where management is yelling at them and demanding they work 20 hours a day until this is fixed somehow and they have no idea how to. Management won't bring in consultants, etc. That ship has already sailed.

demanding they work 20 hours a day until this is fixed

If your manager does that, you can say "No". They still can't fire you without paying you your 3 month wages.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#142

Post by 2rsf »

alistairSH wrote: post #118
ACS_Solver wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Since the same base rules apply for everyone this usually doesn't happen, plans are built accordingly and recruitments take into consideration those time scales.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#143

Post by kwhitefoot »

amachefe wrote: post #98
batch12 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing the situation does show is a lack of proper care for their most critical assets. When the dust settles, there should be hard questions for several people. One being-- when was the last time backups were tested..

The answer to the question is there >We can't access the backups. Even if we could, we noticed two years ago when trying a restore from the backups, that it doesn't work. Booting the restored server leads to a kernel panic we couldn't figure out. Management said we don't have enough money to fix any of this.

> Management said we don't have enough money to fix any of this.

It's often even worse. Many years ago I was responsible for backup a DEC Unix system. Asked for funds to conduct a disaster recover exercise to find out if our backups worked and was turned down even before we had tried to work out how much it would cost.

I often wonder what proportion of backed up files and systems are actually in a state to be restored and have the necessary tools and expertise to do it in a timely manner.

An even worse problem in some places, including the one I worked at, is a tendency for users to assume that backups are kept forever and for the management to totally neglect archiving of important documents such as specifications, drawings, and design calculations of products that have an expected lifetime of over fifty years.

I had to inform several users that I could not restore the file that they had only just noticed was missing because it was last seen more than two years ago and presumably disappeared longer ago than our longest backup cycle which was one year of monthly full backups.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#144

Post by Aeolun »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #129
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'm looking to leave my current job but if voluntarily leave in my first year I have to surrender my signing bonus. It's certainly a crushing feeling to be chained to a job. Even worse are these stupid 2 weeks or unimaginable 3 months notice. As everyone says- you'll never get notice you're being fired. It'll be quick like a mob hit.

> you'll never get notice you're being fired

In Europe you will. Or you’ll be sent home with the respective 3 months in salary anyway, but generally you work your 3 months.

To be fair, I’ve never seen a notice period longer than a month.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#145

Post by grumple »

arethuza wrote: post #41
regularfry wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's up there with "unless you test power supply failover, don't rely on that generator to save you". I know of one case where power failed, the "24 hour" generators kicked in, power company says "We'll need 12 hours" and the outage happened 6 hours later when they ran out of oil.

I contracted at one place for a bit where they shut everything down in each of their data centres once a year and power everything back up. When I was there this didn't go too well and they couldn't get one their data centres online again - failover to their other centres did work though. This was ~20 years ago in the finance sector.

That sounds like their testing worked out for them. Better than a random failure.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#146

Post by sethammons »

protomyth wrote: post #45

Well, it looks like someone better track down the people who knew how it worked and offer some serious cash. The only actual backup is one that has been tested. With the cost of hardware, buy 2 or have an agreement with your vendor to have a machine ready to receive a backup.

> The only actual backup is one that has [recently] been tested

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#147

Post by notyourday »

4e530344963049 wrote: post #90
paulz_ wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These types of situations always wind up being the most fun I have at work and leave me feeling most fulfilled. I wish I could do that all day instead of going to standups.

A "firefighting" consultancy might be fun, no? And you would give people a lot of time off!

> A "firefighting" consultancy might be fun, no?

It is... interesting. I have been doing this over last 4 years. The biggest problem, as I pointed out before, is the disconnect between what companies claim they would do to fix the problems vs. what they would actually do. So ~90% of selling is repeatedly explaining the same things to different people whose jobs are in the eminent danger of being restructured/deprioritized/eliminated if your services are successfully engaged.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#148

Post by Aeolun »

driton wrote: post #134
CaptainZapp wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I am in the Netherlands, and my current contract stipulates that should they want to get rid of me, the company has to notify me 4 months in advance, whereas should I want to leave, I need to notify them 2 months in advance. Do you have any sources on the legality of different notice periods in Europe?

I guess it’s more to the extend that the notice period from company to employee cannot be less than employee to company.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#149

Post by zikzak »

notyourday wrote: post #123
viraptor wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's the possibility that those employees are happily retired and don't care. Or they're just not available in many ways. I know of a hospital which is still refusing to migrate off of a system which is not supported for a decade. Pay more money? 3 people worked on it: Adam had a stroke, Bob retired with enough money, Charlie left the country.

I bet if the hospital is to pay Bob/Charlie $1M for 6 months, post tax to fix it they would gladly do it. Note: this does not mean "We will pay you up to a million dollars, Net 90, after an invoice is approved and signed off by fifteen people". This means "We will wire a deposit of $250,000 today. The rest will be wired every month in 24 hours after an invoice is issued" The reality is company execs like to talk abou…

I have personally turned down an offer very much like this. I could have paid my (at the time) salary and benefits with about 2 days work a week with the option to bill as much time over that as I wanted as long as I agreed to work at least 2 days a week on thier top issues.

The ERP system was a nightmare, though, and the company was difficult to work with (key, long term employees). It was a system I inherited, built out of garbage, that I tried to improve. Before I left, I found a very experienced contractor to take over, on-boarded him, and stayed as a support resource for a couple months. Six months later, he's retired and I'm getting panicked phone calls. I valued (and still do) my current job far more, even though I would probably have done better financially in the short term with the alternative.

A few years ago, I heard they migrated to a new ERP at long last.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#150

Post by lqet »

acjacobson wrote: post #126
Eremotherium wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There are certain things that you can outright be fired for - such as stealing, I believe. I think that showing up drunk for work might also be one of them?

> I think that showing up drunk for work might also be one of them?

Yes. Also if you just refuse to do any work.

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