"revenge" is the wrong word, as that implies intent. This was more like a king deciding to banish their doctor during a stomach ache, and being surprised by a ruptured appendix.
Likely not - they'll either have their heads in the sand pretending they don't exist, or claim that they invented 3D printers themselves, and give it a faux-latin name so they can trademark it...
Eh, most of their lucrative customers want to play in stores or compete in official painting competitions, etc, which only accept Games Workshop products.
Arguably you can already play Warhammer 40k with any bits of plastic, but you still need the printed codexes and the setting, which is controlled by GW.
I think it would be really cool if a community formed to crowd source their own game. Have people work together on the rules, lore, and model design. That way anyone with access to a 3d printer could just print their own army.
3d printers are great for quick prototyping but they can't do the fine detail of proper sculptured/cast models which if you care about miniature gaming is presumably the point. (I mean there are people who play non-miniature wargames but it's not a big market). As for lore, I dread to think of the fights - shared-universe fiction efforts don't tend to go well.
> 3d printers are great for quick prototyping but they can't do the fine detail of proper sculptured/cast models which if you care about miniature gaming is presumably the point.
If you care about miniature collecting that's the point, and because of the willingness of collectors to pay for that, most miniatures gaming companies cater to collectors.
I think a lot of people into miniatures gaming prefer the three-dimensionalty (and, for free-movement games) freedom of miniatures as compared to other alternatives (e.g., gridded boards) and would be happy with distinguishable-but-less-detailed models.
> I think a lot of people into miniatures gaming prefer the three-dimensionalty (and, for free-movement games) freedom of miniatures as compared to other alternatives (e.g., gridded boards) and would be happy with distinguishable-but-less-detailed models.
Sounds like a rather rare combination of tastes to me. I don't see anyone selling to this niche which suggests the market is small.
> Arguably you can already play Warhammer 40k with any bits of plastic, but you still need the printed codexes and the setting, which is controlled by GW.
GW today think of themselves as a model company. They neglect game design (e.g. they won't pay for experienced designers) and rule QA. If anything I'd expect to see people playing other rulesets with GW models (they still make better models than many of their competitors).
It's hardly revenge if it wasn't preconceived. A decent lesson in due diligence however the title suggests that the Sysadmin intended for this to happen.
yeah the title is inflammatory and the story does not bear it out. The guy did his job but typical with too many organizations when they remove people with administrative authorities they tend to lock them out because of the perceived danger of leaving them their access to the site.
I don't know of any examples backing that stance up, but it is a perfect fear, uncertainty, and doubt, example that most upper management would never be called out on
"How I saved a company 100K a year after I was fired"
The employee could have debriefed his employer. Taken the moral high ground, and had an amazing story to tell at his next job interview + a lot of karma.
Or
"The importance of communication: How I implemented a quickfix without properly communicating the long term plan to anyone"
"I had great delight in telling them I knew exactly why the bill was so large and had they not made me redundant they would have not blown the whole year's IT investment budget in a single month,” James recalls. “Even better, they had gone over the cancellation period, locking them into a year's contract.”
I'd have preferred him to complain about how he was prevented from doing any knowledge transfer/communication. The above implies he'd not have told them regardless, just because they were firing him.
Given that he was terminated and marched out immediately, I feel that he owed them nothing, not even the courtesy of answering the call from the IT Director.
He gave the company an interim solution because they demanded it, before the actual solution was available. It sounds like he had every intent to switch them over once it was available.
Like some people have pointed out it's not uncommon to do so when privileged employees are fired, a rogue sysadmin can bring the organization down to it's knees out of spite and if they even remotely capable do so with sufficient plausible deniability to avoid prosecution.
The lack of an exit interview is odd, but not uncommon in many cases especially in smaller companies where your direct supervisor or line manager is not your "technical" supervisor so the exit interview is pretty much pointless.
Small organizations also tend to be less compartmentalized and they assume that knowledge transfer is unnecessary which might be the case in some cases and really not the case in others.
If he wasn't fired for gross misconduct and actually made redundant even in the UK severance is often paid, heck severance is paid even in cases where it's not warranted because employers rather to settle right away than face a unwarranted termination law suit (if you are officially made redundant there is statutory redundancy pay which employers very often increase considerably ex-gratia which is also tax exempt in the UK), the lack of notice can also point to the fact that this might not have been such a clear cut case of redundancy because although in some cases employers will just give payment in lieu of notice.
Now regarding the case he could've warned them and while he "owed them nothing" anyone with any respect for his work would've done so in such case, a better question would be why would a system which could incur such a hefty payment was setup in the first place and how it was authorized and by whom because. No one in their right mind would go into an agreement that could lead to such fees unless they are utterly incompetent as if the system misbehaved and transferred data excessively or that sysadmin would've gotten sick or otherwise incapacitated the same end result would've occurred.
If the sysadmin was in charge of the setup for this system then he was utterly incompetent for not being able to see a clear business risk regardless if this was just a quick hack that he intended to cancel a week later.
That said the whole ordeal smells funny a 100,000 connection fee for a single monthly usage even at the "dawn of the broadband age" in the UK seems utterly impossible a E1 line would not cost you that a year, so not sure how they could rack that bill over an ISDN30 line (BT Megastream probably).
I once researched trying to set up an ISP in Juneau, Alaska, and an ISDN line from Seattle, Washington was going to cost me over $2500 a week. This was around the "Dawn of the Broadband Age", too.
While that only comes to 10k a month, the connection would have gone over existing fiber cables. I can see where a custom installed point-to-point might run that high.
Personally, I wouldn't have given them the answer for free. They could hire me for a day at some exorbitant consulting rate if they really wanted a brain dump.
Corollary: if you treat your employees like disposables don't be surprised if you find out they were productive individuals after all and that you now officially hold the bag. They shouldn't even have had the guts to call him after such a termination.
An ex business friend of mine on a good Friday morning fired 3 long time employees out of the blue 'to cut costs'. Haven't been in touch since. That's just not the way to do it and if you do then all the resulting side effects are yours.
At-will employment is something that should be universally banned.
Politicians expect their population to consume stuff, to raise kids... if at-will employment were legal I'd have to save and save and save money for anything because I could not be certain to still have a job tomorrow.
Get rid of this shit, impose minimum 2 weeks (better 4) of prior notice, except of course for stuff like theft, assault etc, and watch as your in-land economy rises.
> if at-will employment were legal I'd have to save and save and save money for anything because I could not be certain to still have a job tomorrow
You're not certain to have a job next year (your company, for example, could go out of work; you could be grievously injured; war could sweep through your country). You ought to be saving, saving, saving anyway; building your own savings is the only way to have true security.
Yes, but what with employers demanding all kinds of loyalty it would be nice if that was a two-way street.
For injuries you can be insured, if your company goes out of business there is supposed to be a social contract that takes care of that and if there is a war then everybody has problems, not just you.
Savings are not a true security either, after all, if war breaks out who is to say your savings will be worth anything.
In the US, there are plenty of places that have at will employees. There is a social safety net for them called unemployment insurance, available to anyone who hasn't been fired for cause (must be well documented attempts to correct the deficient behavior). The time period differs from 26 to 72 weeks depending on the state of the economy (worse times have longer insurance periods).
I note that if you build up four weeks of savings in at-will employment, then compared to four-weeks-notice, you have the same level of security and more time to dedicate to job hunting.
(For people living paycheck to paycheck, four weeks of savings might not be easy to accumulate. But those people can't suddenly start spending more money if they get better job security. So there might be a compassionate argument, but the economic one doesn't seem to hold.)
And better yet, four weeks notice + 4 weeks savings. Split the responsibility for redundancy between employer and employee.
I worked at one job where a guy was made redundant - for economic reasons, not incompetence - just two months after he started. He'd moved to the area and literally got a mortgage that week, spending his savings on the deposit. Without the notice period he'd have potentially faced economic ruin.
Ignoring the morals of it for the moment, even speaking economically it's better for the country as a whole. How many mortgages are defaulted on in redundancy situations? The employee is bankrupted and defaults, the bank repossesses and sells the house at a loss (they generally go in quick auctions). The company itself may benefit but the overall economic harm to the country is greater imo.
And that's before you get to the compassionate side of things with people who can't afford 4 weeks savings, ie. every minimum wage job in the country.
I'm confused by your addition of "and don't know their rights". In at-will, not knowing their rights means they get fired with no notice because that's allowed. Without at-will, not knowing their rights means they potentially get fired with no notice because they don't know it's not allowed.
I would think that giving people more rights is more helpful when they do know their rights.
I think this deserves some clarification. First, the article is about an employee being laid off in the UK, some years ago. In such a case (certainly back then, I'm not familiar with present day UK employment law but afaik it hasn't changed significantly), he would have received payment in lieu of notice (at least), and any such payment would also not be taxed. So at least in that particular case the situation you're describing where someone all of a sudden has no income would not have occurred.
Now, in the US there is a concept of "at will employment", but it doesn't in reality mean what you're alluding to either. IANAL but it roughly means "employees don't get to jerk employers around with random frivolous lawsuits relating to termination". In essence it means that, legally, employers do not need a reason to fire someone. It does not however in practice mean that employers randomly fire people all of a sudden with no payment beyond today, as you imply.
Perhaps for low-end jobs something like what you are worried about happens in the US, but I suspect it happens in the UK too. Certainly in my experience working in the UK then US, and now being an employer in the US, employment conditions as a practical matter are very similar. The major difference I could point to is that in the UK redundancy payments are tax-free. They aren't in the US. I suppose the other difference is that in the UK employees in technical fields tend to have quite long notice periods vs the US. Here, in theory it is possible to depart one job and be working at a new one a few days later.
I'm referencing the UK here because a) the article is about someone in the UK and b) I know about that jurisdiction and the US (only).
This most likely wasn't at will employment, they put him on garden leave or paid him in lieu of notice this isn't uncommon in cases where the employee can harm the organization, especially if the manager feels that there's a good chance they might do that.
48 comments
[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 102 ms ] thread"Revenge" is also the wrong word for this. I'd suggest schadenfreude.
Arguably you can already play Warhammer 40k with any bits of plastic, but you still need the printed codexes and the setting, which is controlled by GW.
Yes, very much so, and miniatures games (not really the same thing) also.
> don't they have a pretty bad history of abuse/fraud/mismanagement/underperformance?
No? At least not by Kickstarter standards. The category has a much better track record than computer games or new hardware gadgets.
If you care about miniature collecting that's the point, and because of the willingness of collectors to pay for that, most miniatures gaming companies cater to collectors.
I think a lot of people into miniatures gaming prefer the three-dimensionalty (and, for free-movement games) freedom of miniatures as compared to other alternatives (e.g., gridded boards) and would be happy with distinguishable-but-less-detailed models.
Sounds like a rather rare combination of tastes to me. I don't see anyone selling to this niche which suggests the market is small.
GW today think of themselves as a model company. They neglect game design (e.g. they won't pay for experienced designers) and rule QA. If anything I'd expect to see people playing other rulesets with GW models (they still make better models than many of their competitors).
http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2015/03/rick-priestley-talks-...
I don't know of any examples backing that stance up, but it is a perfect fear, uncertainty, and doubt, example that most upper management would never be called out on
"How I saved a company 100K a year after I was fired"
The employee could have debriefed his employer. Taken the moral high ground, and had an amazing story to tell at his next job interview + a lot of karma.
Or
"The importance of communication: How I implemented a quickfix without properly communicating the long term plan to anyone"
"I had great delight in telling them I knew exactly why the bill was so large and had they not made me redundant they would have not blown the whole year's IT investment budget in a single month,” James recalls. “Even better, they had gone over the cancellation period, locking them into a year's contract.”
I'd have preferred him to complain about how he was prevented from doing any knowledge transfer/communication. The above implies he'd not have told them regardless, just because they were firing him.
Inactivity is not revenge in a situation like that.
He gave the company an interim solution because they demanded it, before the actual solution was available. It sounds like he had every intent to switch them over once it was available.
The lack of an exit interview is odd, but not uncommon in many cases especially in smaller companies where your direct supervisor or line manager is not your "technical" supervisor so the exit interview is pretty much pointless. Small organizations also tend to be less compartmentalized and they assume that knowledge transfer is unnecessary which might be the case in some cases and really not the case in others.
If he wasn't fired for gross misconduct and actually made redundant even in the UK severance is often paid, heck severance is paid even in cases where it's not warranted because employers rather to settle right away than face a unwarranted termination law suit (if you are officially made redundant there is statutory redundancy pay which employers very often increase considerably ex-gratia which is also tax exempt in the UK), the lack of notice can also point to the fact that this might not have been such a clear cut case of redundancy because although in some cases employers will just give payment in lieu of notice.
Now regarding the case he could've warned them and while he "owed them nothing" anyone with any respect for his work would've done so in such case, a better question would be why would a system which could incur such a hefty payment was setup in the first place and how it was authorized and by whom because. No one in their right mind would go into an agreement that could lead to such fees unless they are utterly incompetent as if the system misbehaved and transferred data excessively or that sysadmin would've gotten sick or otherwise incapacitated the same end result would've occurred. If the sysadmin was in charge of the setup for this system then he was utterly incompetent for not being able to see a clear business risk regardless if this was just a quick hack that he intended to cancel a week later. That said the whole ordeal smells funny a 100,000 connection fee for a single monthly usage even at the "dawn of the broadband age" in the UK seems utterly impossible a E1 line would not cost you that a year, so not sure how they could rack that bill over an ISDN30 line (BT Megastream probably).
While that only comes to 10k a month, the connection would have gone over existing fiber cables. I can see where a custom installed point-to-point might run that high.
Corollary: if you treat your employees like disposables don't be surprised if you find out they were productive individuals after all and that you now officially hold the bag. They shouldn't even have had the guts to call him after such a termination.
An ex business friend of mine on a good Friday morning fired 3 long time employees out of the blue 'to cut costs'. Haven't been in touch since. That's just not the way to do it and if you do then all the resulting side effects are yours.
You've made your bed, now you must lie in it.
Politicians expect their population to consume stuff, to raise kids... if at-will employment were legal I'd have to save and save and save money for anything because I could not be certain to still have a job tomorrow.
Get rid of this shit, impose minimum 2 weeks (better 4) of prior notice, except of course for stuff like theft, assault etc, and watch as your in-land economy rises.
You're not certain to have a job next year (your company, for example, could go out of work; you could be grievously injured; war could sweep through your country). You ought to be saving, saving, saving anyway; building your own savings is the only way to have true security.
For injuries you can be insured, if your company goes out of business there is supposed to be a social contract that takes care of that and if there is a war then everybody has problems, not just you.
Savings are not a true security either, after all, if war breaks out who is to say your savings will be worth anything.
[1] http://www.theallianceframework.com/
(For people living paycheck to paycheck, four weeks of savings might not be easy to accumulate. But those people can't suddenly start spending more money if they get better job security. So there might be a compassionate argument, but the economic one doesn't seem to hold.)
I worked at one job where a guy was made redundant - for economic reasons, not incompetence - just two months after he started. He'd moved to the area and literally got a mortgage that week, spending his savings on the deposit. Without the notice period he'd have potentially faced economic ruin.
Ignoring the morals of it for the moment, even speaking economically it's better for the country as a whole. How many mortgages are defaulted on in redundancy situations? The employee is bankrupted and defaults, the bank repossesses and sells the house at a loss (they generally go in quick auctions). The company itself may benefit but the overall economic harm to the country is greater imo.
And that's before you get to the compassionate side of things with people who can't afford 4 weeks savings, ie. every minimum wage job in the country.
That is the major problem: those who are poor and don't know their rights are hit the hardest - and this is why at-will should be abolished.
I would think that giving people more rights is more helpful when they do know their rights.
Now, in the US there is a concept of "at will employment", but it doesn't in reality mean what you're alluding to either. IANAL but it roughly means "employees don't get to jerk employers around with random frivolous lawsuits relating to termination". In essence it means that, legally, employers do not need a reason to fire someone. It does not however in practice mean that employers randomly fire people all of a sudden with no payment beyond today, as you imply.
Perhaps for low-end jobs something like what you are worried about happens in the US, but I suspect it happens in the UK too. Certainly in my experience working in the UK then US, and now being an employer in the US, employment conditions as a practical matter are very similar. The major difference I could point to is that in the UK redundancy payments are tax-free. They aren't in the US. I suppose the other difference is that in the UK employees in technical fields tend to have quite long notice periods vs the US. Here, in theory it is possible to depart one job and be working at a new one a few days later.
I'm referencing the UK here because a) the article is about someone in the UK and b) I know about that jurisdiction and the US (only).