Friday, December 16th, 2022, 4:53 pm
Sirius Open Source: The Brain Drain Started Years Ago
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Summary: Around 4 years ago some of the most essential staff of Sirius Open Source suddenly left the company, even at short notice (the management was trying to hide this, but abstaining from any remarks on this matter became unsustainable); it’s probable that abusive management played a considerable role in this ongoing demolition of Sirius Open Source
THIS part (one of 4 in the corresponding long section) deals with the beginning of the end of Sirius ‘Open Source’, which began to do irrational and occasionally dubious (maybe illegal) things, leading to the collapse of the company and coinciding with the collapse of the founder’s marriage. A certain “management cabal” was covertly forming, based on perceived loyalty if not kinship, publicly insulting the former manager and former wife (who even contacted clients after the divorce) while treating longtime staff like rubbish. It was about 4 years ago. This part does not deal with anyone’s personal life, but it’s impossible to understand Sirius and its unfortunate demise without grasping that issues in the personal life of the founder triggered a whole bunch of commercial issues, and management vacuum was hurriedly filled up by incompetent bullies who lie to everybody and never admit mistakes. These people don’t know how to manage, were never trained in management, and they compensated for inner insecurities by acting aggressively against sceptics.
There’s this quasi-twofold issue: as the company employs based on nepotism, in spite of a lack of any relevant qualifications and/or experience (even managers; they don’t know “Open Source”), the company ends up with nontechnical Windows users in technical roles. This means clients cannot be wooed — or existing contracts secured/renewed — for technical tasks, so the nature of contracts becomes increasingly clerical — not technical — and as Windows has back doors among many other security problems the whole security model becomes farcical. On issues pertaining to a lack of skills and nepotism, please stay tuned until next month.
In a nutshell, as this section shall hopefully demonstrate, the management of Sirius basically destroyed and dismantled the company with years-old failures and an endless string of bad decisions, lacking any consultation with those impacted, who are also proficient. And why? Well, because to the “cabal” it is a vanity project; they know everything! And at the same time they know nothing. Sadly for them, eventually they end up without a company, without an employer, without a job of their own. So well done! Own goal.
As somebody explained to me earlier today, sometimes people are blinded, and more so if they’re upset and angry. They’re too confident and the ego is becoming way too big, and hence they wear blinders and see nothing else that may make actual sense. Due to emotions and impulses they destroyed the company. It’s too late now. They recently discovered that they had destroyed the company and now they focus on how to try to not only suppress this series but also remove anything that was published so far. This isn’t a company run by grown-ups but by cartoon-obsessed and over-confident “superheroes” (in their own minds).
Here is the first part of the section in the report. It is entitled The Bullying Era because bullying is what best sums up what was happening back then. Not bullying among staff like peers and colleagues but bullying from the management (i.e. top-down), along with false allegations, accusations, and sometimes fabrications.
In this first part we present some background about the status quo around 2018. Later we’ll show some bullying examples.
The Bullying Era
This section is essential. Without it, the sentiments of Roy and Rianne or their relationship with the company cannot be fully grasped.
Several years ago there was management change. It seems to have resulted in the company becoming a lot smaller and poorly managed. Staff did communicate some of the concerns, as those concerns were shared across teams and colleagues (unionisation is difficult in very small companies). To quote one message seen: “I’m gratified to know you’re with us in all this. We’re a lot stronger as a group. I regret to see we’re all being bullied, typically with bogus allegations and our health is affected. I did face the management over this, albeit privately.”
The management likes to think it lives in a tall tower on a hill, enjoying total control over minds and hearts. But when many people get treated very unfairly and truly badly they’re likely to talk to one another.
Preliminary research helped elucidate pertinent facts about the company. There was a list of things we know and things we would only speculate about at that point. Facts:
– When Roy joined the company his per-hour rate was higher than now (almost 12 years later). Some colleagues receive different pay for the exact same role. For instance, some years ago it could be confirmed that some overnight NOC staff received a salary of 21,000 pounds per annum, whereas colleagues got paid about 25% more. They did the exact same role.
– a key colleague no longer appeared to be in the company, as confirmed (we believe) by the VPN renewal table. Roy warned or politely cautioned management not to lose technical staff and named him specifically.
– One colleague once spoke about being “shareholder” or similar with the CEO, but this was not communicated to any of the colleagues.
– The CEO was angry at a long-serving colleague when he left, one might only suppose due to the very short notice. Managing core functions at the company became almost impossible and some clients could not be served, resulting in complaints later mis-attributed (wrong people blamed rather than those who lost the principal colleague).
– The Sirius office was, at that point, virtually empty and must have cost at least a grand a month just to rent (workers were almost sure it’s rented, as the shutdown in 2020 helped confirm). This seemed like a mis-allocation of funds or priorities.
– Company meetings were canceled without any reason given — not a positive sign at all.
– No transparency about departure of workers. One had to guess or rely on gossip.
– Some colleagues, who had more inside information (because of physical office access), decided to leave the company
– Moving to AWS was about lowering costs, but those costs have (expectedly) risen to something comparable to a salary, set aside issues associated with autonomy, privacy etc. This was short-sighted.
– Moving or changing the NOC’s night cover from 4 people to 3 people was also about lowering costs, but that meant really awful and unhealthy sleeping patterns for all those involved. Despite assurances this would improve, nothing ever happened and no redemption came. People who work in daytime cannot fully understand what it involves to work overnight and change the night hours half a dozen times a month (like jet lag, maybe even worse due to short intervals).
– The new manager knew the Sirius CEO for a long time (circumstances or context not fully known but it may be professional, like the Open Source Consortium, which the CEO claimed to be the leader/founder of but apparently wasn’t; there was a mis-representation in the press; Roy met the person behind the Open Source Consortium, who wished to point out he had wanted to sue the Sirius CEO for defamation over it but said it would be too expensive and thus unworthy of pursuing).
– At some time around that point the Director of the company (in the UK) was US-based and even insinuated to staff that many NOC operations would be shifted to the US (that never actually happened).
