Emergency Fix - the fallout



  • Yesterday, I posted this about a rogue manager trying to ingratiate himself to a client at the expense of everyone else. He was fired for his inapprorpiate actions.

    I thought you might appreciate the fallout.

    MegaCorp has one of those ethics policies that says, in effect: we will only do business in an ethical manner, and that we'd rather lose an important client than damage our reputation...

    I've worked for numerous places that have similar policies, but I've never seen one be more than lip-service.

    Until now.

    MegaCorp dumped the client for attempting to do business under-the-table and in an unethical manner.

    We were told to stop doing any production runs and/or reports for this client, and to delete all of their data from our production databases to ensure that it would not be used (backups must be kept per regulatory requirements).

    Then the brass came in and loudly reiterated the company position on ethics in business.

    Don't get me wrong, MegaCorp has its problems, but I'm actually starting to like this.



  •  I belive this is one case whre the company should be named and praised.

     


  • Garbage Person

     Now I know you're making this all up.



  •  ahh but so many other WFT's that need to be hidden.



  • @ip-guru said:

    I belive this is one case whre the company should be named and praised.
     

     

     But then we'd risk remembering it when the next WTF comes around, so until the company starts having more praiseworthy moments than WTFy ones, it's best for it to stay anonymous.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @snoofle said:

    Then the brass came in and loudly reiterated the company position on ethics in business
     

    "When you're unethical, do it quietly so I don't have to find someone to blame for it."



  • Doesn't really surprise me.
    Reading all of snoofles comments for some time leads me to believe this:
    The company wants to do things right.
    The programmers and middle managers haven't had good direction.
    Given a mix of programmers that all think they are best, many WTF's come from it.

    So really the company isn't to blame much here, but rather snoofle's co-workers. Keep in mind when snoofle brings things up like this, the company seems to always do the right thing.
    I really wouldn't mind working for that company, or with snoofle himself.



  • ... is this April 1st?



  • @snoofle said:

    MegaCorp dumped the client

    Bravo to them. It's more than many companies dare to do!



  • OK, so how does this series of events reconcile with a certain questionnaire?



  • Sounds like they had no other choice since the shit hit the fan.  Imagine all of the unethical behavior you don't know about.



  • So why was the customer fired?  From their point of view, the customer did nothing wrong.  The customer merely asked that a project be given a higher priority; and your company said "sure".  The customer does not care about what other commitments your company may have to other customers.   Certainly that manager was at fault for what he did; but its not the customers fault.



  • @DrPepper said:

    So why was the customer fired?  From their point of view, the customer did nothing wrong.  The customer merely asked that a project be given a higher priority; and your company said "sure".  The customer does not care about what other commitments your company may have to other customers.   Certainly that manager was at fault for what he did; but its not the customers fault.


    Unless the customer was offering something to the project manager in order to get the task moved up, which is indeed unethical and happens quite frequently. "Hey, I hear you like football... let's talk"



  • @CodeNinja said:

    Unless the customer was offering something to the project manager in order to get the task moved up

    This does not happen frequently enough; no one has ever offered ME anything to get my work done faster.



  • @DrPepper said:

    @CodeNinja said:

    Unless the customer was offering something to the project manager in order to get the task moved up

    This does not happen frequently enough; no one has ever offered ME anything to get my work done faster.


    I got offered a steak, once. In fact, the whole team did.

    Still want my darned Steak. It's been 2 years. :(



  • @CodeNinja said:

    @DrPepper said:

    @CodeNinja said:

    Unless the customer was offering something to the project manager in order to get the task moved up

    This does not happen frequently enough; no one has ever offered ME anything to get my work done faster.


    I got offered a steak, once. In fact, the whole team did.

    Still want my darned Steak. It's been 2 years. :(

    A single two year old steak for a whole team... Now that certainly sounds tempting.



  • @toon said:

    @CodeNinja said:
    @DrPepper said:

    @CodeNinja said:

    Unless the customer was offering something to the project manager in order to get the task moved up

    This does not happen frequently enough; no one has ever offered ME anything to get my work done faster.

    I got offered a steak, once. In fact, the whole team did.

    Still want my darned Steak. It's been 2 years. :(
    A single two year old steak for a whole team... Now that certainly sounds tempting.
     

    Is this what they mean in software engineering when they talk about steakholders?

     





  • @ip-guru said:

     I belive this is one case whre the company should be named and praised.

    i believe for the sake of anonymity in the future WTFs it should be not. but praise them, on this occasion, yes.



  • @CodeNinja said:

    @DrPepper said:
    So why was the customer fired?  From their point of view, the customer did nothing wrong.  The customer merely asked that a project be given a higher priority; and your company said "sure".  The customer does not care about what other commitments your company may have to other customers.   Certainly that manager was at fault for what he did; but its not the customers fault.


    Unless the customer was offering something to the project manager in order to get the task moved up, which is indeed unethical and happens quite frequently. "Hey, I hear you like football... let's talk"

    I'm guessing that there was a certain amount of knowing connivance between the customer and the manager:

    @Snoofle said:

    It turns out that while having drinks with our customer, he promised that he could deliver the feature in his part of the system (the UI) for the customer. Then, if the underlying and backing systems didn't handle it properly, it could be put in as an emergency bug fix and it would get done ahead of the scheduled delivery date.

    i.e. The customer and the manager agreed that the manager would get the UI functionality into the product, and the customer would then start using this as leverage to get the back-end parts elevated.



  • @ip-guru said:

     I belive this is one case whre the company should be named and praised.

     

    Oh fuck no.

    It's better than the alternative, sure. However, I think the best case scenario here is that upper management do want change for the better, but they're not actually putting in the effort to make that change 99.99% of the time.



  • @DrPepper said:

    no one has ever offered ME anything to get my work done faster.
     

    Then you fall into the other category.

    The one that get shown the potential consequences of nor working faster/harder.


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