July 20, 2010 at 3:53 pm
dma-669038 (7/20/2010)
I don't think enough thought has been given to the fact that the blogger DBA has left the organization while the SAN admin is still there. In 9 out of 10 cases people usually blame the person who has left, it is very rare and nearly impossible to straighten up the situation. Blaming ex employees and those who are not there is almost a way of life in most companies, one that people do to save their jobs mostly but happens almost all the time. There are many organisations in fact who would also take great offence at people blogging on something bad that happened within and perhaps casting blame on an employee they still have (in this case it is not blame but is very likely to be perceived that way). After we leave an organisation we have to expect to hear many bad things blamed upon us that are not our fault at all, it has nothign to do with who was right and who was wrong just everythign to do with the dysfunctional nature of organisations and little room people have for genuine mistakes.
Good people tend to get forced out of organizations or just get tired of the BS and leave while the incompetent stay, and in many cases end up getting promoted. The Peter Principle at its finest.. Fact of life in IT, and skill and competence has got nothing to do with it. It all comes down to personalities, and who the person is connected to in the company. The longer you are in this business the more you will realize how true this really is.. 😀
"Technology is a weird thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other. ...:-D"
July 20, 2010 at 9:45 pm
Why would you bother having a team of SAN admins on staff? Maybe a storage architect, but not disk jockeys. Bring in an outside consultancy or a contractor for the day-to-day tasks. Make sure they carry professional indemnity and then scramble the vultures - I mean lawyers - in the event of gross incompetence, negligence, or malice. With this kind of behaviour, it's certainly no wonder to me why businesses don't want to be employers.
James Stover, McDBA
July 20, 2010 at 10:00 pm
James Stover (7/20/2010)
With this kind of behaviour, it's certainly no wonder to me why businesses don't want to be employers.
Why, to listen to you, you'd think that such behavior has never been driven from the top, down...due to the competition for promotions, management incompetence that conceals itself through the sabotage of other departments, intra-divisional rivalries, etc.
To automatically peg the blame onto the grunts is to blind yourself to a more critical possibility: The possibility that the people you're paying the big bucks to are putting your business at risk.
July 20, 2010 at 10:51 pm
CirquedeSQLeil (7/20/2010)
Even a chat here could be seen as a verbal warning and would be the minimum requirement.
I disagree. It's perfectly possible to sit down with people to talk through issues without it being part of a formal disciplinary procedure. Most times, it is all that is required - though I agree with Steve that the context and any previous history would need to be taken into account.
The actions of the SAN guy in some environments could be deemed detrimental to the business and even viewed as sabotage. Actions such as that carry on to harassment with several companies here in the States. Disciplinary action would need to be taken with "possible" dismissal as one avenue. A verbal warning is the minimum but a written warning in his employee file should be done.
Yikes! Sabotage? Harassment? There doesn't seem to be anywhere near enough information to make such strong statements. Then again, I have never worked in the US, so it could be 'normal' as far as I know.
I think I would handle the situation differently, anyway.
Paul White
SQLPerformance.com
SQLkiwi blog
@SQL_Kiwi
July 20, 2010 at 11:09 pm
Paul White NZ (7/20/2010)
The actions of the SAN guy in some environments could be deemed detrimental to the business and even viewed as sabotage. Actions such as that carry on to harassment with several companies here in the States. Disciplinary action would need to be taken with "possible" dismissal as one avenue. A verbal warning is the minimum but a written warning in his employee file should be done.
Yikes! Sabotage? Harassment? There doesn't seem to be anywhere near enough information to make such strong statements. Then again, I have never worked in the US, so it could be 'normal' as far as I know.
I think I would handle the situation differently, anyway.
Understand that Americans are a very litigious society. Due to this, we have a bunch of formality and requirement to try to prevent such actions as may be deemed to qualify as harassment (which in the US, sabotaging the work of a co-worker is harassment). In this case, we have one side of the story reporting that it was documented by the vendor and agreed upon by all interested parties to configure the LUN very specifically. The SAN guy chose to configure the LUN with one drive to prove his point - albeit invalid and poor judgement. Since it is documented (for the sake of argument), the behavior is detrimental. The fireside chat with him would have to be documented (so as to provide evidence of such a discussion and that proper action was taken). From that chat it could very well be determined that he sabotaged a project. Which could cause a dismissal (I know several companies that would skip the chat and go straight to dismissal based on the documentation alone). I am not saying that a definite dismissal is the only action - but that it is possible and would be considered by several employers. Based on the documentation, it would be very difficult for this SAN architect to claim incompetence.
If the discussion with this person is not documented in any way, how do you determine what the next step should be if he does something like this again? Memory of the conversation will certainly be dulled by time and have a different recollection by the different parties.
Jason...AKA CirqueDeSQLeil
_______________________________________________
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July 21, 2010 at 1:09 am
Understand that Americans are a very litigious society.
IANAL, but I find myself forced to contemplate a class action on behalf of the American people in defense of our reputation. :hehe:
July 21, 2010 at 1:13 am
stephen k. gartrell (7/21/2010)
Understand that Americans are a very litigious society.
IANAL, but I find myself forced to contemplate a class action on behalf of the American people in defense of our reputation. :hehe:
Love it 🙂
July 21, 2010 at 2:29 am
stephen k. gartrell (7/21/2010)
IANAL, but I find myself forced to contemplate a class action on behalf of the American people in defense of our reputation. :hehe:
Funny :laugh:
I had to look up IANAL - appearently it stands for "I am not a lawyer". Not heard that before.
Somewhat unfortunate acronym though.
Paul White
SQLPerformance.com
SQLkiwi blog
@SQL_Kiwi
July 21, 2010 at 3:11 am
IANAL gets used heavily over on slashdot.org; they venture into technology areas that are already rife with lawyers.
I'm so used to it, that I had (momentarily) forgotten how like a proctologist's (or whatever :rolleyes:) T-shirt slogan it sounded.
July 21, 2010 at 3:53 am
ah, ok - I must confess, I just put a space after the first "I" and thought that it made sense! :-No offence intended!!
July 21, 2010 at 6:53 am
stephen k. gartrell (7/20/2010)
James Stover (7/20/2010)
With this kind of behaviour, it's certainly no wonder to me why businesses don't want to be employers.Why, to listen to you, you'd think that such behavior has never been driven from the top, down...due to the competition for promotions, management incompetence that conceals itself through the sabotage of other departments, intra-divisional rivalries, etc.
To automatically peg the blame onto the grunts is to blind yourself to a more critical possibility: The possibility that the people you're paying the big bucks to are putting your business at risk.
I'm pretty sure in this instance the blame can be placed on the grunts. But I take your point and it convinces me even further that a business should operate with as few employees as possible. You can have people, just not employees. This way, you compete on your value (cost, expertise, capability) without the organizational baggage getting in the way. This is my ideal anyway.
James Stover, McDBA
July 21, 2010 at 7:47 am
James Stover (7/21/2010) But I take your point and it convinces me even further that a business should operate with as few employees as possible. You can have people, just not employees. This way, you compete on your value (cost, expertise, capability) without the organizational baggage getting in the way. This is my ideal anyway.
Ahhh...totally outsourced...effectively, you will be asking your customers to entrust themselves to a temp agency. It should be an interesting experiment.
July 21, 2010 at 7:51 am
Plus the sheer cost! As far as memory serves, we pay contractors about 5 times that of a permanent staff member here.
July 21, 2010 at 7:54 am
TravisDBA (7/20/2010)
dma-669038 (7/20/2010)
I don't think enough thought has been given to the fact that the blogger DBA has left the organization while the SAN admin is still there. In 9 out of 10 cases people usually blame the person who has left, it is very rare and nearly impossible to straighten up the situation. Blaming ex employees and those who are not there is almost a way of life in most companies, one that people do to save their jobs mostly but happens almost all the time. There are many organisations in fact who would also take great offence at people blogging on something bad that happened within and perhaps casting blame on an employee they still have (in this case it is not blame but is very likely to be perceived that way). After we leave an organisation we have to expect to hear many bad things blamed upon us that are not our fault at all, it has nothign to do with who was right and who was wrong just everythign to do with the dysfunctional nature of organisations and little room people have for genuine mistakes.Good people tend to get forced out of organizations or just get tired of the BS and leave while the incompetent stay, and in many cases end up getting promoted. The Peter Principle at its finest.. Fact of life in IT, and skill and competence has got nothing to do with it. It all comes down to personalities, and who the person is connected to in the company. The longer you are in this business the more you will realize how true this really is.. 😀
I agree Travis, also one more point - when we say 'competency' it has a lot to do with how much of that is needed for this organisation. I have worked very hard in places where the standards for excellence were low, they only wanted the job done somehow and i was trying to adopt best practices and do it the best way. Me and some others with me did not get compliments , we were labelled misfits and eventually some of us left and others were fired. The company continues to thrive though, not that they ever paid for not doing things the best way. Point is just that...our standards were much higher than what they wanted which was bare minimum. Look for companies that match your standards for excellence if you want to thrive, or be street smart enough to give them what they need and keep your job, that is all.
July 21, 2010 at 8:15 am
dma-669038 (7/21/2010)I agree Travis, also one more point - when we say 'competency' it has a lot to do with how much of that is needed for this organization. [...] Point is just that...our standards were much higher than what they wanted which was bare minimum. Look for companies that match your standards for excellence if you want to thrive, or be street smart enough to give them what they need and keep your job, that is all.
I came to the conclusion that the scenario you describe is precisely what most American corporations want.
The MBAs that run 'em do not want the chore of being forced to comprehend what anybody in the IT infrastructure does, they do not want to have anybody in their IT infrastructure who is so knowledgeable about their business that they can offer data-driven suggestions and corrections and potentially compete with them for advancement, and they do not want, in too many cases, IT people who are so conversant with their business that they will be able to detect...ummm...shortcuts.
So they outsource.
On the other side of the exchange, the outsourcing vendors want to make a bunch of money, and they know that their customers will never be able to discern the shortcuts that they are taking or the marginal talent that they are hiring, so that is what they do.
It works out for perfectly for everybody involved in the outsourcing exchange: With great mediocrity, but very lucratively in the short-term.
After all - tomorrow is somebody else's job, in the ethical system of today's corporations, eh? Wall Street certainly doesn't think long-term, and when the CEO is getting paid in stock...
:crazy:
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