I’m reading a novel (Popco, by Scarlett Thomas, in case you’re itnerested) in which the narrator presents this anecdote (paraphrased): After th 9/11 attacks, only a few employees survived from one particular company. Determined to keep the company going, the remaining employees found their efforts stymied by their inability to access their deceased colleagues’ computer files due to not knowing the passwords. So the employees embarked on a research mission, doing everything they could to try to learn the names of their colleagues’ children, pets, favorite vacation spots, etc, and eventually succeeded.
The question: did this ever happen?
Cantor Fitzgerald?
They’re the only company that I can think of that lost a significant fraction of its employees (something like 60%, IIRC). They’re still around today, undoubtedly due to some Herculean efforts, but I doubt it’s because they were able to crack their late colleagues passwords. If CF is anything like my employer (anything like all the employers I’ve had), work product is kept on company hardware which authorized company personnel can access without my own personal password.
It would have to be Cantor Fitzgerald. But of the employees who were lost, weren’t their computers generally lost too?
On Top of the World is a fascinating read about how Cantor Fitzgerald survived.