"we require an AI solution to read mail, look at a spreadsheet figure out what we want, and parse the information and aggregate what we want as people will modify the columns and sheet structure"  "we need magic to happen since we are inept"  

Um, how about rejecting any formatting changes, or even locking format with a password? Or even not using freaking spreadsheets and email. its 2023. not 1999. 

Idiots. 

Rumor now is that there is an outside company looking at our badge readers ( both garage and coming and going on our floor ), and our time sheets, and productivity, and analyzing it all. "for an upcoming discussion about work from home policy"

How invasive. May be time to retire early.That is If they dont use it as an excuse to fire us all and outsource the entire thing to a contractor. 

I know one thing if they bitch too much i wont be donating a second of my time. It all gets 'billed back' so to speak. Especially if they make is go in all the time.  i lose 2 hours a day in the commute + cost of gas/maintenance. i wont be looking at anything after hours unless i'm on call and get called. and they get that billed for.. 

oh i have seen outsource cases too, where they just hire everyone, then later fire the worst of the bunch. In this case its purely an audit firm of some sort doing this. Not another IT firm looking to take over. This is being done to ALL the business units ( 30K+ employees ). and not just us.

While its true we all cant be outsourced across the board ( some practical reasons, some legal reasons ) it could be sent to management of each area 'you dont need all these employees, get rid of x % and contract it out'. And of course IT is a good candidate for a high %, even on a good day.

Sun Nov 12 2023 06:50:30 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

I know someone who had that happen. He ended up working for the contractor.
Ultimately it was a better experience.

I guess this spring they are cutting off VPN access to anything they dont manage. They already cut them off the wire. If your device inst managed, you plug in, the best you can get ( if you are not blocked totally ) is public internet only. 

Been talked about a bit, now its got a hard date. 

Well that was interesting.

I wont get into which BU it was, or where he went to.. but one BU had a guy go home for holidays or something, out of the country. Took his company laptop with him. My assumption is 'in case of emergency at the office i could login'. ( something a lot of us would do without thinking really )  Hooked up for whatever reason, my guess email, laptop checked in, instantly detected was not where it should be, wiped itself, bricked itself, and he was instantly fired...

I guess we do offer an option of 'over seas travel machines' of some sort, but he didnt go that route. 

I dont know the guy and heard this 3rd hand. So I cant say it was malicious or not, but if i was going to do that and had nefarious intent, its trivial to hide my tracks. I can only assume it was a honest ( but career fatal ) mistake.. 

Now that's a case of wrongful termination.  Like srsly wtf?

Thu Nov 30 2023 11:32:18 EST from Nurb432

Well that was interesting.

I wont get into which BU it was, or where he went to.. but one BU had a guy go home for holidays or something, out of the country. Took his company laptop with him. My assumption is 'in case of emergency at the office i could login'. ( something a lot of us would do without thinking really )  Hooked up for whatever reason, my guess email, laptop checked in, instantly detected was not where it should be, wiped itself, bricked itself, and he was instantly fired...

I guess we do offer an option of 'over seas travel machines' of some sort, but he didnt go that route. 

I dont know the guy and heard this 3rd hand. So I cant say it was malicious or not, but if i was going to do that and had nefarious intent, its trivial to hide my tracks. I can only assume it was a honest ( but career fatal ) mistake.. 

 

No, its in the contract that you agree not to take our property out of the country, security reasons.

Thu Nov 30 2023 13:20:46 EST from LadySerenaKitty

Now that's a case of wrongful termination.  Like srsly wtf?

Thu Nov 30 2023 11:32:18 EST from Nurb432

Well that was interesting.

I wont get into which BU it was, or where he went to.. but one BU had a guy go home for holidays or something, out of the country. Took his company laptop with him. My assumption is 'in case of emergency at the office i could login'. ( something a lot of us would do without thinking really )  Hooked up for whatever reason, my guess email, laptop checked in, instantly detected was not where it should be, wiped itself, bricked itself, and he was instantly fired...

I guess we do offer an option of 'over seas travel machines' of some sort, but he didnt go that route. 

I dont know the guy and heard this 3rd hand. So I cant say it was malicious or not, but if i was going to do that and had nefarious intent, its trivial to hide my tracks. I can only assume it was a honest ( but career fatal ) mistake.. 

 

 

Oh and to add, we have a clause that intentional misuse of equipment can = fines and jail time, via actual law. ( i think its up to 10k + 5 years )  I do suspect it was an honest mistake on his part, but we all know the drill: Before you do anything like that you ask ...

While it could save money by replacing 2 lesser with one better. It does increase your risk, especially if that is the entire team..

"We need your plan to retire legacy scrips and api calls"  on a system we are retiring in a year, that we dont have a clue what the new one can do yet, or what features we are buying,  but in theory does 90% of it out of box?

umm.. Let me get out my crystal ball.

Yay.. so another dept. one of their scripts freaked out.  has opened up 13,000 calls in my system today so far..  should have been ~2000...  its looping.  Now my system has 200k emails to send out, and its all jammed up as you can only send so many emails at a time...

lol

like most people in IT i have account with linked in, that mostly is ignored.

Got the daily spam and happened to blink before i deleted.  "People with your role" The top job was "retail sales at lowes hardware" ( no, not sysadmin or something which would make sense.. but sales )  i hope that is not a prediction of some sort.. that is sad.. but i guess its better than greeter at walmart. 

I remember that name. not sure why.

Tue Dec 19 2023 21:37:07 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

 "that guy who was really awful and ruined everything" (Curly Surmudgeon).

Customer Solutions Necrowomancer.

Wed Dec 20 2023 16:38:25 EST from fandarel

Customer Solutions Wizard. I wonder if I could get away with that.

At least in your case it makes sense, your title isn't representative of what you do for a living. In my case, while its generic, its 100% clearly IT..  

Wed Dec 20 2023 16:35:46 EST from fandarel

Got the daily spam and happened to blink before i deleted.  "People
with your role" The top job was "retail sales at lowes hardware" (

I'm having a closely related problem in the job hunt. My formal title is "Director of Customer Service". On job sites, including StinkedIn, "Customer Service" = the guy at Lenscrafters that helps you pick out new lenses, or the lady at AT&T who helps you find a new phone. It's not a technical position.
I'm a BSEE with 26 years of experience, but you'd never know it from my title or business card. I'm also much more on the IT side of the house than traditional EE stuff like circuits.
I've been trying to think of a replacement title to put on the sites & on my resume. Not something so far off that I could be accused of misrepresentation, but something that much more clearly defines what I do day to day. "Director of Customer Engineering" just sounds squirrely as heck. "Electrical Engineer" is too generic. Still thinking on it.
My subordinates have the title "Customer Service Engineer", which is similarly problematic.