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.

Video download link | md5sum d0384f2c4e1fd225180787cf9d38a9fe
Impact of Sirius Nepotism
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: Today we focus on nepotism at Sirius ‘Open Source’ — a subject we’ll cover some more tomorrow; in the video above I add stories that were left out or only partly covered in the text

AS noted in Rianne’s departure message, she was bullied and falsely accused. She wasn’t part of the “clique”. The “clique” always sacrifices those outside the “clique” first. It protects the salaries of the loved ones.

As the video above explains, managers started bringing relatives and sexual partners into the company in spite of a lack of qualifications. Over time this would render the company increasingly incapable of carrying out actual work.

As it stands at the moment, we’re talking about a company that has managers who pay themselves a large salary while sliding or shelving away the debt (or growing deficit) into the shell of a company, likely to dodge its financial liabilities some time in the future. A lot of the staff was underpaid and for over a decade the salary wasn’t increased to keep up with either seniority or inflation.

The sad decline of the company ought to be explained. There are companies out there that made similar mistakes and managers claiming that they took a paycut (without ever holding themselves accountable for their mistakes) is a symptom of infantile administration. We reckon the company might file for “administration” (insolvency) some time before it turns 25. The offshore shells (US) serve no real purpose anymore. Gates Foundation never intended to salvage the CEO’s business.

Video download link | md5sum 0b5cee9f48792260e28e59272e7fbb14
The Very Ugly Collapse of Sirius
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: The Sirius ‘Open Source’ series is now dealing with the more interesting “stories from the trenches”; with over 20,000 views of the Wiki alone after less than 40 days (see above) it seems clear that people are interested in the 21 years of experience my wife and I had inside a company that claims to be “Open Source” (things changed for the worse, so we must investigate/examine why, knowing this can happen to other companies including large ones such as Red Hat)

THIS week the series entered its final phase. We shall be gathering remaining material/stories and explain them in a more generalised context, seeing that some readers (whom we heard from) experienced similar things in present or past workplaces. There are things here that people can relate to even if they worked for other companies in other countries.

Some time this month we shall cover a likely illegal contract-signing ‘ceremony’ and explain the context of Sirius ‘expanding’ to the US (because it was failing in the UK and the marriage of the CEO was collapsing). The above video explains how both my wife and I were being bullied by management just weeks or at most a month after a shell was created in the US after the Gates Foundation had secretly (under NDA) offered money to the CEO. Only a few years prior to that he told me (face to face in Alton Towers) that Microsoft had contacted him over the phone to complain about me (regarding things I wrote in Techrights). Funny how Microsoft likes to complain about you behind your back… to your boss. I only found out and wrote about it years later. It was risky to even mention this, but I did it anyway.

Therer’s a lot more information in the above video — stuff that wasn’t covered in the text earlier on. We’re far from done here and there’s still an ongoing fact-finding investigation.

“Those with long memories might suggest a parallel between Rick’s position and mine when in 1997, I was sitting on the XML Working Group and co-editing the spec, on a pro bono basis as an indie consultant. Netscape hired me to represent their interests, and when I announced this, controversy ensued. Which is a nice way of saying that Microsoft went berserk; tried unsuccessfully to get me fired as co-editor, and then launched a vicious, deeply personal extended attack in which they tried to destroy my career and took lethal action against a small struggling company because my wife worked there. It was a sideshow of a sideshow of the great campaign to bury Netscape and I’m sure the executives have forgotten; but I haven’t.”

–Tim Bray