My wife Rianne never appreciated these insulting analogies (calling NOC staff “monkeys” and treating them accordingly)

5 Little Monkeys Swinging In The Tree

Summary: As per Rianne’s departure message about Sirius ‘Open Source’ (tuxmachines.org post), the abuse endured since 2019 did a lot of damage and false accusations were the last straw; the role was created by people who called folks who would occupy it “monkeys”; that’s how some would view the staff

THE staff will always remember what happened. The staff does not forget bullying. Witch-hunts are also impossible to forget. While Rianne strongly suspects that Matthew Garrett ‘doxxed’ her to her employer as part of his efforts to silence me, the more plausible explanation is that Sirius management was looking for excuses to quell technical dissent and moral defense. I’ve been arguing against many of the company’s decisions for a long time (internally).

I wasn’t alone though; other staff also felt unhappy and some found the courage to speak about it, not just to peers but also to management. We’ve already shown a bunch letters after videos on grievances and there might be a letter-ripping video after explaining and showing the chain of events.

Adding insult to injury, in Rianne’s case her love of animals and regular donations to animal charities were sort of weaponised, hence the image below:

The company relied on truly ‘flimsy’ ‘evidence’. The management said, without any evidence, that I had uttered something “defamatory”; it took two weeks to actually show something and what they then showed was some side IRC channel (that nobody reads) stating perfectly factual information about my experiences, without naming people or the company. It was a chat between just two people and didn’t reveal anybody’s identity. It was factual and necessary; it was moral to object to bad ideas. Blind obedience and unquestionable docility should not be seen as a merit.

Based on a two-person chat, however, the company started breaching protocols and making up processes, as we shall show at a later date. The procedures set forth were disregarded and extreme measures taken for no good reason, so we resigned. It was done with immediate effect, as per the law; and “you are unlikely, in most circumstances, to need to continue the process,” say the rules. So we’re free to speak about what happened. We shall soon talk about labour union aspects as well. It’s something I’ve spoken about with friends for almost 4 years already.

In a company where some technical workers are compared to “monkeys” and there are about as many “managers” as non-managers, something has truly gone wrong. We had a moral duty or felt an urgent need to explain what had gone wrong. We now have a wiki that maintains several sections, including: memes, videos, report, key facts in a nutshell…

We’ve published about 45 videos with good titles (explaining in short the issues at hand), cases of clients (without naming them), openwashing, clown-washing etc.

As a reminder, we talk about a company that despite opposition from its own technical staff basically outsourced almost everything (Sirius also used to host for clients, on its very own premises). It used to self-host even the VoIP and file storage, but now, with no actual office, Sirius is just some account in another company’s server.

As we’ve said before, the company stands no chance of surviving. It’s deep in debt and it doesn’t know what it’s doing. Even its own clients began accusing it of “incompetence” (direct quote). When I joined the company in 2011 the staff had extensive media contacts in the wiki (for outreach, promotion, advocacy). It deteriorated over time as management was dismissing people without informing staff what actually happened (not safe to rely on hearsay and misinformation). Then, in Freenode, there was already an outlet for staff to discuss issues. Tackling a tradition of secrecy (dishonest management, but not quiet management), the IRC channel about the company insisted that “management wasn’t always right”, hence the need for a space in which bosses could be scrutinised. Now we do this in Techrights. The “monkeys” speak out.

Video download link | md5sum 517c825e6b2b4ff488a8c7557ed7b5ce
Management Always Right
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: Sirius ‘Open Source’ has a seemingly very common problem; managers cannot be held accountable and even when shown that they failed at something, instead of apologising or taking actions against themselves they resort to accusing/blaming the reporter

TWELVE years ago the management at Sirius was a lot better. I was there. I saw it. Managers were typically technical people (like programmers and sysadmins). Things have changed though.

In recent years managers were just self-styled ‘managers’ or “professional managers” with experience in babysitting (literally).

As noted here a few hours ago, bringing a concrete example to the table, managers had made bad technical decisions and then refused to admit that. The evidence does not matter! It’s all about one’s pride. It’s about protecting brands^*.

Moreover, in that same example, it should be clear that staff wasn’t properly informed or trained; then, a falsified timeline was constructed for post hoc-type cover-up.

This example is about a year old, so in relative terms it is recent. If you work in a company that behaves in this way, consider leaving. Things won’t improve as this sort of attitude repels geeks.
_______
^* At Sirius, Google and AWS/Amazon were stubbornly defended no matter what (also Slack and Clownflare to a lesser degree). Readers of Techrights would likely be going one step ahead, correctly guessing some companies (not Sirius!) or even universities/governments (public sector, accountable to their citizens) which made a move to Microsoft would be ‘religiously’ defending bad decisions/choices (bribes often play a role, as Microsoft whistleblowers have repeatedly demonstrated in the recent past).

And whenever things fail, as always happens (Microsoft products are even defective by design), Microsoft just pushes them more Microsoft as the supposed solution. More sales! The culprits who brought Microsoft to the business/government want to “prove” it’ll work; so they pay Microsoft some more, albeit not at a personal expense. It’s a vicious cycle. Everyone loses, except Microsoft. And if only everything ran on Microsoft, they insist, things would be ‘optimal’ (until the next ransomware attack).

As an associate put it (to paraphrase), the problem is always that there wasn’t sufficient faith in Microsoft and that is always solved by buying TheNextVersion(tm) and MORE of it. For decades the cycle has been the same, namely it’d work if only they could achieve 100% Microsoft integration. Once that happens, the target goal posts move, and it would work if only they could purchase TheNextVersion, and if that happens before they run out of money, then the goals posts move again. At that point it becomes, it’d work if only they had the right Microsoft training. Then by that time, the $TheNextVersion has become $ThePreviousVersion and that part of the cycle starts again. And yet they still blame outright collapses on “Linux people” and your average worker agrees to believe that excuse. The problem is not new, it as it goes back to the 1990s. But for a recent example look at Aaron Swartz’s blog post about Conde Nast and why he had no choice but to walk out the door and not look back.

Clients chasing while managers chasing staff that works overnight, entrapping the staff for using faulty processes and faulty software (the management’s own fault)

Summary: Lately we’ve focused on nepotism and special treatment at Sirius ‘Open Source’; today we show how the “club” (or the clique, which is sometimes literally family members) avoids responsibility and liability

THIS series has inevitably become long because there’s plenty left to say and a lot to demonstrate with more practical examples (sans names of people and companies, especially clients).

We’ve already shared several examples of management passing blame to staff that did nothing wrong while failing to hold itself accountable for its own failures. A year ago there was one classic example of this when a message about a potential client resulted in disciplinary warnings; I joked that since we had received no instructions whatsoever I can at best say “hi, it’s Roy” when picking up the phone. To spare all the ‘gory’ details, here’s a message I sent back then:

I’ve just caught up with E-mail.

I remember the scenario very well. This was the first time ever that I received a call over Google Voice while connected (online).

The browser requested authorisation for microphone access and other things before I could pick up the call AND also be heard. This is inevitably what happens when there’s no thorough testing of such new protocols (Rianne did do some testing on her laptop).

It boils down to our instructions (which I have saved locally) coming late and without any training after that. Or even being able to test it “live” in my browser, which understandably limits what site site wants to do with my hardware.

I hope this clarify what happened and helps prevent future such scenario (browser settings have been changed accordingly).

Regards,

I got the following reply:

Hi Roy,

Many thanks for your reply with responses on the points raised.

I will check on the points you have noted and get back to you to see if there were any steps where there was an issue with the process and any areas that we could have improved on.

I think a key point though is that nothing should prevent us from answering any call with a professional greeting that sounds like a Service desk response. First impressions are vital for customer confidence of course. This is something that with your years of valuable experience should be well-practiced.

Thank you for resolving the browser settings though for future calls and engaging with this change.

And then me again:

Just to note (I’ve not yet read the other 5 messages), for a number of weeks we were on duty “in the blind”. We were given no instructions at all regarding:

- How to answer
- What to say
- Who might phone
- What to ask
- Where to enter information

In a sense, had we answered, it would possibly prove worse than not picking up at all.

A hypothetical call would be something like

“Oh, hello, who are you?”

“What do you want?”

“What are you? What am I? What am I even supposed to do?”

So I think that higher up (than me) someone failed to prepare us. I did not raise this concern at the time.

Regards,

Long story short, the company expected technical staff to carry out purely clerical work using defective products that many staff members had issues with (but could communicate with peers to affirm that pattern) trying to meet impossible demands like picking a call within 3 rings using defective stuff. Sometimes it would not phone or ring, sometimes it is a background process (not an actual phone!), sometimes there was insufficient memory.

At the end came a long document with a fabricated timeline of what had actually happened. Why? Because you can never assert that people above you blew it. Or that it’s their fault that faulty products are used and no instructions are available.

It’s not even clear if the above client was actually a paying client. The company was habitually announcing clients that later turned out to be ‘pre’ announcements or truly premature as nothing would ever come out of it. Giving false hopes to staff to discourage looking for other employment may seem fair, but it is still misleading. The managers were very eager to give a false impression (illusion) of getting business.

We previously shared some screenshots from the Internet Archive, demonstrating with the Wayback Machine the contents of old sites of Sirius, mentioning words like community and advertising more honestly (staff, clients etc.). Well, honesty is long gone at Sirius.

Sirius is now a minuscule company. At the moment it paints a misleading picture of who works in the company and who the company works for. We’re already in the second half of January and this still hasn’t been rectified. I happen to know that at least one client (telephony company) asked to be removed from the fake “clients” page. There were probably more, but I wasn’t a witness to that. Should Rianne and I keep asking them to remove our names from the site too? They’re not even removing our prior staff that left years ago; one of them changed jobs to work for our client.

Sirius is very fake.

Video download link | md5sum ae1efc68cafb1d4dec5a536eb6aaf511
Do Us a Favour, Stop Asking for Favours
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: Employers must not ask staff to do jobs outside the remit and scope of their work contract; anything else should be strictly forbidden, based on my personal experience which I talk about today

THE video above speaks of Sirius ‘Open Source’ and the notion of coercion. Apparently this is done to volunteers in Debian as well (i.e. unpaid people). Being part of a project or a company does not constitute a master/slave relationship. Voluntary contributions outside one’s work are welcomed, but when subordinates cannot (easily) say “no” to those who pay their salaries or hired them…. that’s a potential problem.

Today I gave two personal examples where the company’s management asked me to do favours (gratis work) for their own friends. I use some analogies to exemplify the absurdity and I certainly hope other people, including employers, can learn something. There should be clearly expressed laws that forbid that. This should be illegal.

O we might have a fourth Prime Minister in less than 12 months. Things aren’t so “strong and stable”, are they, Tories?

Given the awful state of public health and the bailouts for the rich (including energy giants) it “pays off” to be prudent and proactive. I left my job last month and lately I’ve been checking the state of pension schemes, knowing some of them are akin to pyramid schemes. I was already cautioned about this more than a decade ago (after the first financial crisis and meltdown). Shown above in this figure is our rapidly growing national debt (similar trend to the US, the political sibling of the UK). This does not seem sustainable simply because it is not. And as health and long life are a sort of wealth I decided to leave the job (almost a year ago I finalised this decision), but now it’s time to worry about financing the future.

I’ve ranted already about pension providers barely responding to their customers. I documented this here.

With Aviva, it took nearly a fortnight (and persistent nagging) merely to get this not very useful reply from a generic E-mail account (and no name):

> Dear Customer,
>
> Thank you for contacting Aviva.
>
> To allow us to get your query to the relevant Administration department
> as quickly as possible, we require some additional information to help
> us find your policy with us.

It took you nearly two weeks to finally respond to me.

> Please reply with the following information ?
>
> Policy Number ?*please note we may not be able to trace your policy
> without the policy number *

As far as I know, Aviva never sent me any correspondence with any details. Myself and my employer paid Aviva, but I have no record of the actual Policy Number.

> Full name (including any previous names that may be linked to your
> policies)

Roy Schestowitz

or

Roy Samuel Schestowitz

working for Sirius Corporation

> Date of Birth

[... redacted]]

> Full address (including any previous addresses that may be linked to
> your policies)
>
> National Insurance Number

[... redacted]]

> As soon as we receive the details we need, and we are able to find your
> policy our Admin team will be in touch.

Please do. I’ve been frustrated by how long it took you to respond and even blogged about it.

Aviva hardly bothered to communicate with me, ever.

> Warm Regards,
>
> The Aviva Customer Team

There seems to be no “safe” place for one’s money these days. Commodities, cash, “crypto” (scam)…. they’re all volatile. Pension schemes don’t even assure anything; they’re just there and people assume they too are “strong and stable”.

Nothing is “strong and stable” these days. Pension providers barely want to even speak to their so-called ‘customers’. All they want is their money. Keep paying us every month, they insist, no questions asked…

There were times I literally stayed at their home because they didn’t want to spend money on suitable accommodation (e.g. hotel)

Summary: At Sirius ‘Open Source’ I was sometimes asked by management to look after personal affairs or help family friends; employers aren’t supposed to leverage their workforce like that

TECHRIGHTS deals with a variety of “Tech” issues and a broad range of “Rights”, including so-called ‘IP’ so-called ‘rights’. There is currently a constitutional crisis brewing in Germany and it relates to patents, but today we focus on labour rights pertaining to workforce outside the workplace.

As readers are aware, my wife and I resigned last month and left our job (after a combined period of 21 years in that employer). Today I’d like to highlight a likely common situation where the employer tries to get workers to do personal favours outside the business or outside the workplace. Many people don’t like to talk about it, as it might come across as “moaning” or a lack of generosity. After all, some colleagues — typically below the pay grade of their bosses — end up picking up post or picking up the kids from school. They may end up like family assistants. They try to “get ahead” by improving the relationship with the boss or, to put it more bluntly, “sucking up” to the boss. It’s unprofessional, but it is still done a lot. Some bosses exploit that, knowing it’s construed as impolite to say “no” to the people who pay the salary.

In practice, bosses should never do this. It’s not like asking for sexual favours, but it’s still bad. It’s better not to even ask or bother with such a request.

Today’s example is old but still relevant. I can finally speak about it. The CEO and his wife asked me to look into a site of a family friend from Spain, in spite of language barriers and the site having nothing whatsoever to do with my job. Like I’m a “home butler” of theirs, serving guests.

It started like this:

Hi xxxxx,

I have cced Roy into this mail as he knows a lot about wordpress so he should be able to help you sort out the problems you are having.
I will leave you to chat between yourselves.

See you in a few weeks

xxxxxx xx

The person in question spoke, but with very weak English — to the point where it’s extremely difficult to communicate at all. It was a massive language barrier. I followed up:

Hi xxxxx,

Can you please show me your site and tell me what you are hoping to
achieve, maybe with examples of sites that accomplish what you’re after?

Regards,

The communication was informal, but I was expected to give technical help to a family friend of the CEO and his wife. Here’s example of communication that I received:

Hi xxxxx!!

Thanks!!! My mum thinks that she is going to pick me up hahaha so you will See her at the AirPort

Hi Roy,

Ill have to give you acces to the blog Cuz its not aviable now, Also Ive got allready a list with the things that I would like to change if its possible of course

Do I give you access with this email?

Thanks a lot for your help

xxxxxxx
Enviado desde mi iPhone

It didn’t go very far, but the point of the matter is, the manager was asking me to provide support to someone who wasn’t a client but a personal friend.

On another occasion, more recently, the CEO was asking me to speak to a personal friend who had become the target of a patent troll, as if I was some unpaid ‘consultant’ on this matter.

“Next time I’ll phone you,” I said, “assuming you don’t keep an eye on E-mail.” I spent a long time basically advising someone because he was a friend of the CEO. Looking back (in retrospect), it was a waste of time as I was under no obligation to do so. But because I was receiving salaries (for something totally unrelated) I felt compelled to agree.

There should be very strict laws against this sort of thing. Paying someone a salary for job X does not make one a “butler” for job Y. From what my wife has told me, in some occupations and with some agencies there are official avenues for reporting this. Apparently this sort of misuse or workforce became such a big problem that confidential helplines/lifelines were thrown at workers, offering resolution without retribution/reprisal from the employers (threatening/blackmailing workers who report the practice/abuse).

Video download link | md5sum e07915de3d9b82d54ea7b3b66fd312a9
A Sirius Relationship and Couple
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: It’s hardly a scandal that a married couple was running the company from around 2010 until almost 2018; but that may have been a poor role model, as in later years one manager would bring in a spouse and two girlfriends into the company in spite of unsuitable background; the video above ends the series of articles about nepotism inside Sirius ‘Open Source’

THE company Sirius ‘Open Source’ was owned and controlled by a husband and wife when I joined almost 12 years ago. It still had plenty of geeks, including a former Debian Developer. It had a large building, it had staff specialising in different facets of operation (e.g. finance/accounting), and nepotism — if that counts at all — was limited to the CEO. In all fairness, it’s quite common for a couple to run a business. The only other example of nepotism (prior to me joining) that I’m aware of is one colleague who joined because of his boyfriend, who then became a colleague. He later left both him and the company, but again, in all fairness his (ex)boyfriend was technical and a GNU/Linux user. He looked after almost everything in the office, he was polite, and generally amicable. It was devastating to the company when he left several years ago. His certificates and his KDE desktop were still left there in the office when I last visited (even a year after he had left).

Looking back at the whole thing (21 years in combined duration for my wife and I), the CEO’s wife did a much better job than anything that came later and it seems safe to attribute the collapse of the company to the deterioration of that marriage (the CEO’s second marriage, ending around 2018 or 2019). It didn’t take long for him to sell out to Bill Gates (2019) and only weeks later the new manager was bullying both myself and my wife. They were never held accountable for it; not even an apology was offered.

The video above tells stories almost a decade old, corresponding to the text published last night.