(I figured this really belonged in MPSIMS and couldn’t find any other thread about it. If I’m late to the party, please merge with the appropriate thread)
Man privately outsourced his job to China to watch cat videos and surf the web on company time. I was particularly fascinated by the fact that he spent so much time on cat videos. I mean, isn’t it usually porn that people surf on company time?
…I think that this guy did that with an amount of chutzpah rarely seen.
In short: US employee in tech company outsourced own job to China and spent the day basically goofing off at his desk.
Additional links with the same story:
CNN – http://edition.cnn.com/2013/01/17/business/us-outsource-job-china/
The original report from Verizon (the company that did the audit that found him out):
Simply… Tremendous.
Fucking brilliant!
I have to assume this guy was a contracted worker (consultant). If in his contract to provide professional services to the client(s) he did not specifically have his name as the soul service provider, then the guy was reasonably within his right to do this. Obviously he crossed the line when he shared his user id and password with the sub-contracted servicer (China). That’s the real security no-no, IMHO.
Soul service provider? I can dig it. That programmer must be one funky cat.
:smack:
Y’know, my first thought was that this guy was brilliant, but then I started to think about it more. He still had to go to work every day, but he didn’t actually have to do any work. The times I’ve had to sit in an office with no work to do have been some of the most miserable times of my life. It’s boring. I’d much rather have something to do - like work - to pass the day if I’m going to be chained to my desk. There’s only so much web surfing I can do.
Now, given that I work from home, it’d be awesome, since I wouldn’t actually have to be here. But my clients are on to it; we all got an email today from one of the top guys saying “Don’t even think about doing this!” with a link to the article. Tongue-in-cheek, of course, he doesn’t actually think any of us would do it.
Plus, I gotta think this guy’s bosses weren’t really on top of things, either. What happens when someone asks him a question about his code, or says “Let’s sit down and fix this bug together?” If he didn’t actually write the code, he’d pretty quickly be exposed, at least in any job I’ve had.
Am I the only one who thinks this guy should be promoted? The security breach was unfortunate, but he has a real eye for improving processes.
That said, I know people who aren’t afraid to outsource a few quick work-related tasks (basic research, light proofreading, setting up meetings) to FancyHands.
Substitute “extremely bad judgment on his part” for “unfortunate,” and I’d agree with you. When you use the word “unfortunate,” you make it sound like it was just unforeseeable happenstance.
Why promote him? He proved that his job could be outsourced, it was, then he was let go. The problem takes care of itself.
I remember hearing something similar about five or six years ago, except the guy in that case outsourced his job to India.
Am I the only one wondering if the hours he spent surfing the internet just might have been spent right here at SDMB?
(nevermind) Nonetheless, there was another thread about this subject that received the replies…
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=679297
Mods, maybe these two threads should be merged?
It can be both!
This story was mostly scooped by The Onion, America’s finest news source years ago!
You’d think so, but I think if it were me, I could spend all day at a computer and not be bored at all. I could work on a novel, or study up on any number of subjects. Just making it look like work would be the hard part.
This guy thinks it’s too good to be true: http://10thmonth.net/tinstring/the-wonderful-story-of-a-man-who-outsourced-his-job-and-a-few-mundane-questions/
Merged two threads on the same subject.
Oh, sure you did, “Colibri” in “Panama”.
Part of me feels like turnabout is fair play. They don’t hesitate to outsource our jobs and put us out of work, so why shouldn’t we take advantage of the same system?
On the other hand, this is fraud, plain and simple, plus it’s a huge security breach, plus his company obviously hadn’t outsourced his job so the argument in my first paragraph really doesn’t apply in this case.
I have to wonder just how good a programmer this guy was if he wasn’t able to cover his surfing tracks. Then again, If he was going to get caught, those tracks weren’t the biggest problem, so maybe he didn’t even make an effort.
You’d think that he’d have realized that the connections from China would be a red flag. I’d have to think about it a little, but I’m thinking that there should be a way to use something like a personal 4g device to set up a VPN between the guy in china and the machine that the programmer was supposed to be doing his job on. I think maybe that could be undetectable if done right.
He makes a lot of sense. The RSA key fob thing did sound funny to me. Also, unless this programmer was just writing small apps, he would have been working in a team, meaning regular meetings and discussions with other coders, and integration of his code with that of others. Granted, if the code is modularized enough then I suppose it could be done - the coders don’t need to know the internal details of each others code - but still, it seems unlikely to me.