Summary: The company where I’ve worked since my twenties is going under; now it’s trying to find excuses to deny compensation to staff while failing to pay very basic bills and liabilities; there are many other issues that deserve the light of day

SO IT finally happened. I’m liberated. Liberated to speak out and liberated to work around the clock as best suits me.

So what exactly happened? My employer is going under, and in my informed assessment it is going under partly due to its own incompetence. It’s basically its own fault. I did what I could to prevent it. I spent years cautioning against decisions that would make staff recruitment — and retention — very difficult. I even studied documents and laws, hoping to make a case for my stances/positions. But they would not listen. The managers put in charge were clueless; heck, “clueless” is an understatement.

The way things stand at the moment, the employer is too broke to pay the salaries or pay compensation in case of staff cuts. We know that. We can see the statements from the company; its finances make it quite a miracle that it’s still running at all, based perhaps on prospects of netting some very major client in the imminent future. But that won’t happen. In fact, the staff still left in the company is incapable of dealing with major clients; lies and cover-up from management won’t keep such clients around; no major client would fall for it. ‘Our’ company cannot even find someone skilled at GNU mailman and ninja-style management with “tweets” instead of job advertisements are a symptom or a hallmark of severe weaknesses.

The company was trying to convince people to leave voluntarily (it’s all on record) while treating people poorly, in effect treating them as disposables. To quote an E-mail that my wife Rianne sent to the “Office Manager” earlier this year (failing to do the most basic job!):

Hi ———-,

The same issue (as before) is happening again and I’m really baffled as to why the same mistake would keep repeating itself over and over again. I guess I deserve to have an explanation regarding this matter, because if the NOC shifts wiki page is the only source or basis for your accounting, why can’t you count the number of shifts correctly? I’m starting to look at it as if you are neglecting your responsibility. I have had 13 shifts in total for the month of February, 8 were regular shifts and 5 more are the extra shifts. I got paid for the regular shifts but not for the additional shifts. If you could add the additional shifts to my account, I would be grateful.

Best,

Of course it fell on deaf ears, as usual.

We might do a separate series about Gates Foundation and its sneaky moves, apparently trying to sneak in a bribe at a very critical time (as if it needed a British company to do a simple task thousands of American firms can do). That merits a lot more discussion.

As later posts will explain (in greater depth), the company I joined almost 12 years ago was very, very different. It was run by knowledgeable and compassionate people; not the company run by reviled, unqualified and demotivational people (since 2018 or thereabouts).

So why not leave earlier? Well, a pandemic is not a good time to seek alternative employment, especially when already working from home (many advantages during lock-downs and a lingering epidemic-turned-pandemic), though times are now changing and the clock is ticking. The company is simply running out of time and sinking deeper and deeper into debt (the ‘overdraft’ is like $100,000 per permanent member of staff).

It is important for me to state upfront and very frankly that the company I leave is not the company I joined. I worked alongside some very skilled individuals in 2011 and now it’s just a drag. Turning the job into “bullshit job” is the legacy of years of failing managerial style. It’s akin to the way this blog post described it a few weeks ago: “This was my introduction to busy work: work to be done for no other reason than to keep yourself looking busy. It fits into a larger category of bullshit work: work that the worker must do despite having no purpose.”

That’s basically what much of the job became. From supporting and advancing Free software it turned into using proprietary “clown” disservices to help other companies run their proprietary “clown” disservices. Sometimes not even for a profit but a loss! Yes, imagine taking clients onboard only to lose money on them! That happened again very recently and it was not the first time bosses decided to underwrite, in effect undercharging, just to get a “client”. About 8 years ago, at the instructions of the boss, I tried to get the client to pay for the time we spent; eventually the company was so frustrated with the contacts that it tried to block them from moving to another provider (or to hold the work ‘hostage’), using technical means. What an embarrassment.

Those proprietary “clown” disservices aside, imagine stuff like Microsoft/Azure and various proxies of Microsoft, for whom we were meant to act like clerical staff, reading from scripts and then writing into GUIs (for staff to relay), in essence cheapening the workforce and wrongly assigning roles/tasks — all this in a pathetic pursuit of business. Not to mention several unethical clients, which won’t be named as the rants aren’t about any particular company except the one I know best (it is unfair to pick on pertinent clients as it’s not about them).

Having said that, here’s a recent example, which intentionally omits any names; some months ago the company’s founder asked me to look into Web/Apache logs of some ‘Christian’ fundamentalist (anti-abortion) site, trying to reaffirm it had come under DDOS attack (barely!) after Roe getting overturned. Well, at that point I knew already it was time to leave. I think it was around March that the decision had been finalised, at least in my mind. The issue isn’t a monetary one; it’s just that we don’t filter potential clients, we’re even desperate to get some that yield losses rather than profit, or don’t involve any actual projects. If there’s no filtering, you risk letting staff do unethical stuff in a company that has “Open Source” in its name; in the above example, the supposedly ‘Christian’ fundamentalists were trying to demonise those “Evil” and “Extreme” people who support a woman’s right to choose whether to bear a child. Why would I want to help them? No way!

There were other unethical clients (one was even a loan shark) and highly unprofitable contracts that ended up losing the company 4 times more than the actual revenue. Imagine working for a desperate company that’s under-selling itself, telling the staff to study stuff like Kafka (in a hurry) just to claim to potential clients that we possess such skills as if a few days messing about with some software is the same as proper experience. This was about getting business based on false claims of skills possessed by the workforce.

Looking at the current staff page, it’s fair to say that half or perhaps a majority of those listed aren’t in fact in the company. Some left about 3 years ago. They’re in no way associated with the company:

In terms of communications, an abyss widened too. Replies weren’t being sent (or selectively sent), not even a reply to message about aggressive cancer of a loved one (little sympathy is a sign of sociopathy) in addition to lying about not receiving important E-mail. Sometimes clients would not receive replies for months; it was a failure at the very top! More recently, we witnessed a manager probably lying about a client making a complaint (I could ask the client directly to prove this too was a lie, but it’s not fair to the client) and misrepresenting/distorting what I actually said. Suffice to say, pointing out a lie or a pattern of lying is not the offense; the offence, or even repeated offence, is repeatedly lying to people. In the business context, lying has financial and sometimes legal consequences. When I actually said flattering things about a client, without any names, that was used against me. How dare I praise someone? When attempting to weaponise anything against someone, even flattery is used negatively.

Lies often go hand in hand with cover-up, so of course an inappropriate romantic relationship was becoming a taboo; you cannot even ask, “is there a relationship or not?” That in itself is considered a problem, but not the nepotism. In fact, pointing out a potential conflict of interest (that is rather obvious to everyone inside the company) is not abusive, it’s the relationship itself, which doesn’t predate the hiring, that seems inappropriate to say the least.

Of course spending all day spying on staff (activity outside of work) instead of actually running the company is also not a sanctionable offence. There are some rules that are only applicable to those who aren’t enforcing them.

A rush to finger-point is instinctive and convenient; it’s not unprecedented, either. A professional company with a thick enough skin would ask questions first; they should be “chilling” and finding composure again (maybe get a lawyer, ask for an actual lawful action; it’s harder to mess about when instructed based on legal grounds).

But “I suspect there is no involvement of HR here,” one person advised me, as “they don’t have money or they don’t have HR as they would find out it’s just a fishing venture or expedition” (causing embarrassment to the company, obsessing over chats where there’s no actual damage done, except ‘damage’ to one man’s ego).

I’ve had enough. This message was sent today:

10 Years ago. They say if it lasts the first 10 years, then it’ll last a lifetime. Hopefully.

From our wedding (and beyond) album

VER a decade ago the mainstream (corporate) media brainwashed people into thinking they needed to hand over their personal photos to surveillance companies. In return, they would get “likes”. Is this a good exchange? No!

Less than a decade ago I set up this album for our wedding. It wasn’t the first as I had already set up a similar album in 2004 (last updated 2005 or more than 17 years ago!).

A few weeks ago our wedding (and beyond) album exceeded 5,000,000 views. We didn’t need anything like Facebook/Instagram or Flickr to share our photos. This site is not self-hosted in the sense that I host it from home (sending large images upstream from a residential copper connection would not work); but at least it’s controlled by us at the domain level. More people should quit social control media (I did completely, only months ago) and invest in their own presence online. Stop renting. Take control. There is no such thing as free hosting. The Net is not a charitable project.

VER the past two decades I’ve done a lot of activism, which intensified over time. This Web site was created in 2002, modeled at first or branched off some academic format. I actually copied one of my lecturers’ layout, which was a simple heading, mug, followed by a list of interests. It was hosted in another domain, not this one. Months after I had started my Ph.D. (and having been asked about that other domain) I decided to register my surname in the .com namespace. Since then I’ve posted a lot of stuff here, but a lot more in other sites, which aren’t personal. As I recall it (vaguely), this site started in October 2002 and by 2003 it looked like this already. Not much has changed in that page since. schestowitz.com is generally quite outdated, most of the pages here are from my early 20s, but at least it’s still working and I’m very pleased with my webhost.

t is no secret that I turned 40 just several months ago. I said it openly several times. I’m not ashamed of it. I think I’ve accomplished a lot over the past 20 years (the first 20 were mostly spent growing up and developing educationally).

Back in the old days, well before exceedingly toxic political discourse, wars/conflicts, a serious pandemic and high inflation (or dare we say hyperinflation; it’s almost 20% per annum in Estonia! Even a large economy like The Netherlands saw 12% inflation!) I thought to myself, “when can I retire?”

The decision not to have kids goes a long, long way back. Seeing the direction the world has taken, it was the right decision (for me anyway).

Over the past few years I thought about part timing, as I’ve worked full time for nearly a decade already (maybe a full decade this summer) and I’ve been at the same employer for 11.5 years (milestone coming soon, some time this summer, August 12 being the exact date if I recall correctly).

I still wish to more extensively focus on freedom-fighting activism in the digital realm. It’s a lot more important, not from a “legacy” point of view; it’s just a lot more satisfying and personally rewarding than working for clients. It’s a community effort rather than a corporate objective.

This post isn’t a “Why I Left Sirius” post (or “Leaving the Job To Do Techrights Full Time”); I still need a job, I need to save money, and my wife does too. I’m not resigning. But I might have more free time.

The decisions aren’t only mine. It’s personal. Some I cannot talk about.

But we both made a decision earlier this year; whatever the outcome, we need to focus on our sites, notably Tux Machines (just turned 18) and Techrights (turning 16 this year). Those sites are important for many reasons, to a lot of people. These people want to emancipate themselves from proprietary shackles, not working for proprietary software companies (or with proprietary tools) all day long.

At the same time, professional life has changed somewhat. Back when I joined this company we used OpenLDAP (broadly used, not underused), Jabber (self-hosted) etc. But a lot of our Free software-centric workforce left (yes, brain drain), so now there’s Gulag (Google disservices/spyware), AWS (NSA tandemocracy), Slack (Saleforce ‘surveillance capitalism’), LastPass (outsourcing passwords to untrustworthy parties) and some other proprietary junk. The name of the company is still the same, we generally support Free software, but the tooling isn’t compatible with the mission (like deploying Moodle on Microsoft/Azure, which is proprietary ‘surveillanceware’; Moodle is good, but putting it on Microsoft servers can lead to misuse of pupils’ data). If one wants to spread Free software to loan sharks, surveillance and military outfits (or even criminals like Bill Gates), then fine… good luck with that.

That Bill Gates did this under an NDA (that I did not sign) is strange enough, especially considering the timing. Many mysterious things happened around that time, including corporate bullying. Being an NDA, it’s shrouded in secrecy, leaving one always guessing, at best… about all sorts of hypothetical possibilities… not a suitable working condition for a company that’s open or transparent.

If things worsen in terms of pay, in terms of skills (we think we can see where this is going) we’re advancing not real computer skills but dependence (people can do more than just pick up the phone).

When I joined in early 2011 we had some high-profile people on board, even Debian Developers (back when becoming a DD meant something, nowadays an increasingly political decision and vetting deficiencies give room for state actors). That’s no longer the case.

Meanwhile, my workload associated with personal projects has increased to the point where I can hardly travel (too many activities require physical access inside the home). We still need to renovate the sites (upgrading things in the process), I want to sleep better, I need to become more active in and around IRC, and I wish to produce more articles and videos. I used to aim for a dozen a day, but when working full time it’s just too difficult to maintain that as a daily pace (as opposed to occasional “bursts” or “marathons”).

When I started writing in the non-personal sites, third-party sites, and this site (and in various other sites) I was still a student. Then, I was partly employed. Over the past decade it has been full time work, so a lot of potential (e.g. to write) was not fulfilled. I left social control media almost 5 months ago, freeing up a lot of time. The next stage might be reducing the number of hours per week that I work. Maybe a long overdue change. Maybe not even that… the decision is not purely mine.

Personal autonomy and freedom are connected to self-determination in digital realm, more so over time. Many decisions were made without consulting the staff, the technical people, choosing trends and brands over substance and fake (perceived, shallow) security over real security. I spoke openly and candidly about it. It’s the moral thing to do.

Video download link | md5sum c505208eed2e0bfab27707477560abd2
My New Home Setup
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

HE video above is a new and very quick run-through, showing the changes made over the weekend and why I keep tweaking these things. In a nutshell, if you spend a lot of time in front of a computer, then investing a little time every week or every month optimising it for ever-changing workflows is worth the investment. Adding additional hardware is also more economic if you value time. Machines can be made or configured to automate/simplify many things.