Have you guys ever known anyone to "go out with a bang" in an IT job?

At work the other day, someone jokingly said that if they were fired or quit the job on the helpdesk, they'd shutdown like 6 servers. It got me thinking. What would be said consequences if someone did that? I know that it happens by mistake, but if someone intentionally did that in their final days, could they face legal action? I mean, they don't if it were an accident so...

So have you guys ever known anyone to not go quietly or make one last boom before they left a work place?

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Comments

N2IT

I knew of a Linux admin who locked down a few servers and his own laptop. That's about it for me.

pinkydapimp

CodeBlox wrote: »

At work the other day, someone jokingly said that if they were fired or quit the job on the helpdesk, they'd shutdown like 6 servers. It got me thinking. What would be said consequences if someone did that? I know that it happens by mistake, but if someone intentionally did that in their final days, could they face legal action? I mean, they don't if it were an accident so...

So have you guys ever known anyone to not go quietly or make one last boom before they left a work place?

Yes, they could definitely face legal action. Especially if their actions resulted in financial loss.

ImTheKing

Forget legal action, good luck getting a job again.

jmasterj206

There is always the story of the San Francisco Network Engineer.

One admin's missing password leaves San Francisco in a lockdown state

blargoe

We had a guy delete a share off a file server at the location he was working at when he got wind he was getting canned

Lenniusce

We had a guy threaten to shut down our servers IF he got fired, so they fired him.

powerfool

The CFO at one of my previous companies fired one of our helpdesk people over the telephone while I was driving home and had the other helpdesk person carpooling... he called halfway there to let us know. By the time we could do anything, she had already logged into the business intelligence system (for which she was the admin) and cleared it ALL. I tracked her successful login to the VPN and the system she cleared. They didn't even attempt to do anything about it. She didn't do a good job at selecting what needed to be backed up on the system, so the restore didn't fix things entirely.

Lesson learned for the CFO, I guess... since he was a primary user of the BI system... but nobody reprimanded him or anything, obviously.

powerfool

ImTheKing wrote: »

Forget legal action, good luck getting a job again.

This.

At the same place where the helpdesk person was canned, about a year and a half later, they laid off the entire remainder of the IT department (all both of us, since we weren't able to hire a competent replacement for the first person and they had already started outsourcing some positions on the development side of the house) and outsourced it. They had a sheriffs deputy on-site and had our accounts locked down before we got to the building. Considering their miserable attempt the previous time, it was a wild swing in the other direction. The new IT manager they hired was a complete d-bag (to put it politely... many other reasons for this beyond the unfolding situation) and seemed to be enjoying himself watch us carry our stuff out to the car. I asked him if he really thought it was necessary and he claimed SOP. Considering my experience with the company, that was BS. Anyhow, I let him know he was being ridiculous... it kind of made him mad when I told him we had ample self-respect and maturity to not do anything stupid that would limit our ability for future employment. The guy tried to scam us out of our vacation and sick time. He was also very bitter about his previous termination and year and a half of unemployment before being hired by his high school buddy, the CFO.

Anyhow, as with most situations like this... while there is short-term "pain," it worked out for the best. I didn't like working with the guy anyhow, and I received a nice new job with more pay than him, better benefits, and I began managing projects that were more costly than his entire annual departmental budget. He is stuck in that job as he is essentially unemployable elsewhere, locally, and he can't move because he wouldn't be able to spend time with his son. Sounds like the bitter man got what he deserved.

Just keep that in mind if you find yourself in the unpleasant situation of job loss... it is, more often than not, a positive move. Sure, even if you end up in a better situation, it does sting to lose a job that you have put in time and effort... but new opportunities can quickly change that.

TLeTourneau

I do know of a company that terminated the only network person before making sure they had the passwords to the switches, firewalls & routers. When they asked him for them he told them to go fly a kite. No repercussions of any kind for the former employee.

CodeBlox

I know it's happened on our helpdesk where a person shutdown a BES server and all hell broke loose for a few hours. It was an accident but since then, they have a strict three strike out policy. Seems like there should be a way to remove the "shutdown" option when remoting into the servers. Usually they disable the accounts before anything can happen. Funny though, one time a guy came into work and logged into his computer and got the error: Unable to log you on because your account has been locked out. He thought they fired him and locked his account over the weekend while he was gone. When he saw the error at logon, he abruptly stood up and yelled "I'm going to shake the nation!". Really what happened was that he locked his own account out the prior friday due to an incorrect password.

Seems like there should be big consequence for deleting a share off a file server though.

CodeBlox

TLeTourneau wrote: »

I do know of a company that terminated the only network person before making sure they had the passwords to the switches, firewalls & routers. When they asked him for them he told them to go fly a kite. No repercussions of any kind for the former employee.

Are you talking about this one:

jmaster wrote:

One admin's missing password leaves San Francisco in a lockdown state

I thought it was insane how they let one person have all the keys to the kingdom!

TLeTourneau

CodeBlox wrote: »

Are you talking about this one:

I thought it was insane how they let one person have all the keys to the kingdom!

Nope, this was a company local to me (at the time). The guy was a JOAT and built the systems from the ground up over an eleven year period. Then management changed and things went sideways. They terminated him without cause and then asked for passwords. I know he gave them the names of a couple of local companies that could help them recover/reset them and essentially told them to piss off.

effekted

I've joked around with my colleagues/manager/director of some logic bombs that would be epic. I personally would never do such a thing because as many others have already mentioned, GL getting another job in IT again. Too early in my career for anything like that. Maybe closer to when I retire...

cyberguypr

I remember reading about this one last year: Fired VMware admin admits virtual rampage launched from a McDonald's | ITworld

shodown

Well I seen a Team of guys go out with a bang. They got let go cause they were being paid too much (the new management said so and the current company wasn't profitable enough) and they were asked to take a pay cut. They refused, were let go, cheaper replacements were brought in. They told the PM that she would pay for this. It took some time, but 2 years later they came back with a company they formed to bid on the contract. Since they had Designed the network some 5 years prior they knew the in's and outs. They won the business, guess who was the group of people shown the door??????

alxx

Why ?

To me doing something like that(shutting down servers/causing trouble) is totally utterly unprofessional , regardless of the company or boss.

Where I currently work all central/managed id's expire at the contract end date on the dot,
its very annoying when your boss and HR are rather slow at issuing new contracts
fing frustrating that they wait until the previous contract expires before entering the new one in the system

joshmadakor

Lol some funny stories here. Me and my coworker jokingly talk about taking a medieval broadsword to the trunk (or whatever it's called) of the 150 Ethernet cables in our server room.

Actually, during a desktop roll-out contract I had, one of my coworkers did something kinda funny. We were deploying workstations across the country. We had to name the computers and enter in some other information as part of the procedure. The computer's used "Active Desktop" which is a program that displays system information on the desktop, such as the asset tag and IP address and what not.

With that said, one of my colleagues felt our PM was being a bit of a dumbass, so he entered things like "POOP" and "PEE" as part of the computer names. Obviously it wasn't long before the PM found out due to active desktop/user complaints and started drilling our team on who did it. When he asked me I just laughed and said I didn't know. The job was ridiculous as was he, so I let him figure it out on his own. My colleague was let go, yet still received his completion bonus.

joshmadakor

jmasterj206 wrote: »

There is always the story of the San Francisco Network Engineer.

One admin's missing password leaves San Francisco in a lockdown state

I love this. That guy is a true boss. He was in jail, but still getting paid by the city.

powerfool

shodown wrote: »

Well I seen a Team of guys go out with a bang. They got let go cause they were being paid too much (the new management said so and the current company wasn't profitable enough) and they were asked to take a pay cut. They refused, were let go, cheaper replacements were brought in. They told the PM that she would pay for this. It took some time, but 2 years later they came back with a company they formed to bid on the contract. Since they had Designed the network some 5 years prior they knew the in's and outs. They won the business, guess who was the group of people shown the door??????

This is a pretty slick story. I would actually like to meet these folks... that's the way you do it.

crypticgeek

cyberguypr wrote: »

I remember reading about this one last year: Fired VMware admin admits virtual rampage launched from a McDonald's | ITworld

Wow. How stupid do you have to be? If he had just paid with cash, or parked on the street and used someone's wifi, or used TOR, or did even the SMALLEST thing to protect his identity....

But to pay with your credit card and not realize they'd track the connection back to the store? Astounding!

CodeBlox

Hahahaha that article did make me laugh. he shutdown 88 virtual host O_O Must've taken a while. I know next to nothing about vmware, but shouldn't this guys accounts and such have been disabled after he was let go??

SteveLord

Well......who says you are obligated to provide passwords after you've been fired? Who's fault is it? And should you be responsible for anything if your employer did not ensure these were kept elsewhere or there was another person (still working) that knew them?

And this is you not using them for evil, just preferring to not communicate at all with your former employer.

crypticgeek

SteveLord wrote: »

Well......who says you are obligated to provide passwords after you've been fired? Who's fault is it? And should you be responsible for anything if your employer did not ensure these were kept elsewhere or there was another person (still working) that knew them?

And this is you not using them for evil, just preferring to not communicate at all with your former employer.

Exactly. I can see being fired for being insubordinate and refusing to reveal passwords. Fair enough there. But to be held criminally or civilly liable for refusing to reveal passwords? Crazy. What if you honestly forgot a password they deem critical?

ImTheKing

If you were wrongfully fired, well, it might be a little tempting to forget a password

Wouldn't happen here though. The systems structure is very strict.

shodown

powerfool wrote: »

This is a pretty slick story. I would actually like to meet these folks... that's the way you do it.

These type of people are all around you, they may not work in the IT industry, but they exsit. The sad part of this story was that me and the PM formed a small friendship over the time. She gave me a hug when she was leaving. She was following guidance put down to her from her company(all defence contractors BTW). She got caught up in the middle, in the end you get it how you live. So when you bark up enough tree's eventually one will fall on you. Thats why you never burn bridges or insult people cause they won't forget it. Her hands were tied, and she paid the price for representing her company.

jamesp1983

jmasterj206 wrote: »

There is always the story of the San Francisco Network Engineer.

One admin's missing password leaves San Francisco in a lockdown state

That was quite a story.

spicy ahi

I've been let go from two jobs before (my contracts expired and the company that won the contracts were severely cutting pay so I opted to pursue other jobs with my contract company at the time) and there was no animosity there. Both sites actually threw parties for the folks that were leaving! Leaving jobs is a bit different. I've left two jobs and both times were not pleasant experiences. First go around, they didn't even let me work out my last two weeks. I notified them on Friday, and everything seemed cool. I come in on Monday and can't badge in. I find out that my access was terminated after I left and my accounts were locked out. I had to be escorted to my desk so I could take my personal items home. That blew my mind.

Second go around, they locked out my accounts and refused to unlock them. I asked my supervisor what he expected me to do for the last two weeks and he said "Sit there." I called our company and told them what was going on and they said it was up to him. So I talked to the command and explained what the company was doing and they said I could go home. So I had a nice paid two week vacation before I started my new job.

Anyway, getting back on track, I figure if you did your job to the best of your ability then however you're released from a job (voluntarily or otherwise) it's best to take the high road and do what you can to ease the transition. Yeah, burning bridges and going down in a blaze of glory SOUNDS fun, and I've heard from friends that have done it but the follow-on stories of regret aren't so fun. Many of them have difficulty finding jobs because word has spread around and have had to take severe pay cuts just to get a job; in one case I have a friend who has his MCSE and CCNP but works as a tier 1 helpdesk operator because it's the only job he was able to get in a year. I'm pretty sure he regrets creating a new VTP server with the default VLANS and setting it as the vtp primary for a farm of 100+ switches and hiding the share that contained all of the backup configs...