Summary: Sirius ‘Open Source’ has had a severe case of nepotism (yesterday we covered several examples, including a manager who had brought to the company 3 romantic partners who lacked suitable qualifications/experience); today we look at the CEO and his ex-wife

FOR THOSE just joining us, 24 hours ago we wrote about the impact of hiring based on connections. The former wife of one manager pasted like 20+ lines of text into the command line of a client’s very important Glassfish server (with information about other clients in that text). The client, a large energy supplier, wasn’t amused. It could easily recognise what had happened. It could also see it was the spouse of someone, who moreover lacked background in computing.

Nepotism is a very big problem. It puts in technical positions people who otherwise would never occupy such positions.

Today we wish to highlight, as a case apart so to speak (because it’s a lot longer), the CEO’s own story. We’ll stick to known facts and admit where there’s a knowledge gap because we would rather not guess (wrong assumptions and a hyperbole would just muddy the water).

Here is what the ex-wife of the CEO says about herself:

Notice that Sirius ‘Open Source’ also says “Free software” (she joined the company just after Sirius was sponsoring the Free Software Foundation). Back then the company was still a lot better; the above profile hasn’t been updated in years.

I joined the company 12 years ago, i.e. some time after she had joined the company, apparently with some experience managing a store (for a large British chain; they have lots of stores nationwide). So there’s a period of time when I was absent and can only understand based on chats with former colleagues. The ‘founder’ of Sirius was running the company with his wife for about 7 years since I joined. But actually, it’s a little trickier than this; he was getting married when I joined, marrying a manager in the company whom he had already had a child with (she was also about 17 years younger than him). Here is a message he sent me when (or before) I joined the company:

Hi Roy,

I wish you’d asked a few weeks ago – we’ve just finished our first graduate recruitment for interns/full-timers!
I’m sure we’ll be recruiting again soon, so let’s stay in touch… although today was my last day at Sirius for a while as I’m getting married on Saturday then off on honeymoon for a couple of weeks…

In the meantime – would you consider maybe doing some part-time contract work with us? could I get one of my engineers to call you for a chat?

All the best,

[reacted]

This is 2010:

> —–BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE—–
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Hi xxxx!
>
> As you probably know, I have been spending my post-doc time mostly
> promoting FOSS, which was a personal choice of mine (advancing this
> cause by spreading the word). If you have any job openings at Sirius,
> can you please let me know? I’d be very interested.
>
> – –
> ~~ Best of wishes
>
> Dr. Roy S. Schestowitz
> http://Schestowitz.com | GNU/Linux | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
> Editor @ http://techrights.org
> —–BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE—–
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux)
>
> iEYEARECAAYFAkwiWTEACgkQU4xAY3RXLo522ACglZPcccD/SMKp0YqesMFP0Ep6
> tEsAnjU8Qm2o1b3aW7NO8GhfogqJ5Tzj
> =iU4L
> —–END PGP SIGNATURE—–

He responded:

Expect a call from xxxx – he’s very cool and completely of tge [sic] party – ex-Debian developer…

Speak when I get back.

Best,
xxxxx

Then myself (still 2010)

> Sure, that sounds great.
>
> I’m generally in no hurry and I can relocate immediately. My phone
> number is xxxxxxxx.
>
> – –
> ~~ Best of wishes
>
> Dr. Roy S. Schestowitz
> http://Schestowitz.com | GNU/Linux | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
> Editor @ http://techrights.org
> —–BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE—–
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux)
>
> iEYEARECAAYFAkwjrwAACgkQU4xAY3RXLo5XpQCeJsvAZST1qLukJRewQPxZO17v
> 25kAni1MHnbreEaUKG4VN6rUQ0x1oYMr
> =X+4R
> —–END PGP SIGNATURE—–

The key part here is, he was getting married in 2010 to the lady whom he (one can assume) hired 2 years prior. For some background, years before she was hired he phoned me, trying to recruit me while I was still a post-graduate student. I didn’t expect to have to apply for a job and do a “proper” job interview because he was already aware of my work/writings online. He appreciated it.

Regarding the wedding he wrote:

Hi Roy,

> —–BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE—–
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Congratulations on the wedding!

Thank you! It was a great day and I had a very nice couple of weeks away in Sicily and Rome…

> It has been a long time since I last heard from you guy and I did not
> receive a call/E-mail. Would appreciate knowing what’s going on…

Oops, looks like something fell between the cracks! xxxxx is off today, but back in on Monday and I’m sure he’ll give you a call…

Hope all is well with you, and speak soon…

Best,

When I joined the company in early 2011 I met the wife in person and learned a little more about what had happened and who she was. Workers in the office, who witnessed a lot of things and had direct face-to-face interactions every day, said the wife was controlling the husband (CEO). Some did not like her, but my experience with her was a mixed bag, partly positive. She was a lot better than some of the ‘managers’ we’ve had in recent years. I don’t recall her ever lying to us or bullying any of us.

So regarding the nepotism, what we know is that a person who was a manager at the company was marrying the so-called ‘founder’ (scare quotes as it’s likely a false credential). I do not know the full chronology of the relationship or her career path, but it seems likely that the marital relationship and having born a child played a role. Being the spouse of a ‘founder’ (or in a relationship) may mean becoming a manager irrespective of skills and experience. At best, maybe a manager was hired and then fell in love with the ‘founder’, culminating in matrimony in 2010 (and a child prior to that). Well, maybe too late for me to properly understand the chronology of it, but that smacked of nepotism already. Some members of staff did not like that as it was perceived to be somewhat inappropriate. When the CEO’s wife has a dispute with you and this escalates to the CEO, whose side will he take? More so if, according to office insiders, the wife controls the husband….

The CEO’s wife worked with my wife on handling tickets. She trusted her, gave her a chance, and was usually grateful for her hard work. My wife has mostly fond memories of her. She even sent her a sweater as a gift at one point. To me, personally, she sent a “Star of the Week” award (10-pound voucher) as an experiment of providing incentives, urging staff to go the extra mile. As another form of recognition I was sent a 5-year anniversary “certificate” from the company (we’d take a photo of this 5-year anniversary item, but it’s laminated and would be difficult to photograph). On the downside, these things were not a promotion or a payrise or even a bonus. Hence, that would entail no motivation or morale boost, it would be mostly symbolic. We previously explained why workers lacked an incentive to improve; managers were not even using their work when they decided to go/walk the ‘extra mile’, as it was all about protecting “territory”; any company that is failing to grow or reward people for extra effort doesn’t have a future because colleagues would sooner or later head for the door (exit).

In summary, the nepotism remains somewhat unclear or shrouded in mystery because I arrived 2-3 years late (years after the soon-to-be-wife of the CEO actually joined). But as noted above, if your line manager or direct supervisor is the spouse of the CEO, do not expect grievances to be professionally handled.

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.

Summary: For quite some time now Sirius ‘Open Source’ has been hiring for technical roles people who are neither technical nor grasp (nor use!) Open Source; this was a recipe for disaster

THIS post may seem like it revisits a subject we covered here before, but today we provide some more in-depth details and name numerous different examples. Nepotism is rampant in many companies; but this is the story about a company where my wife and I spent a combined 21 years. So we know it very well (from the inside).

Let’s start with D. S. who seems to be related (family connection) to management, hence hired. He was not capable of solving any tickets, could barely even figure out how to access clients’ machines. Even coming late, despite this being the bare minimum! While proving the family connection was always tricky, the surname was a giveaway (the first name is a very common one). Not every time the surname matches does that imply a family connection (we previously gave the example of the CEO’s surname and a new hire with the surname; they were quick to point out in writing there was no connection!). Was that a nephew? More relatives as new/temporary recruits?

For those who like to pick on my wife for this, remember she was suitably qualified and educated (Bachelors degree in Computer Science).

If that’s not compelling enough an example, consider the manager who brought three romantic partners to the company (including a wife). There might be faction at play (Mr. Kink and ‘the Angels’), but it would not be a problem if the new arrivals had a relevant degree or relevant work experience. As we noted before, you risk having people who paste a wall of text into the command line (the client did notice this error and was very unhappy; not even history -c was run after this mistake).

Nepotism hurts not just on the technical front. It makes people unable to do the job or key aspects of the job; it moreover harms morale. Some people get special access and treatment owing to ‘bedroom politics’ rather than actual achievement or seniority. This is not good. It ruins companies.

Then there’s the immunity. When it comes to technical failures, procrastination, negligence etc. the Support Manager and the romantic partners never ever get reprimanded or criticised because he’s part of the inner clique; when he was a Support Engineer he got serious bollocking, in person, from our biggest client (at the time), right in front of the rest of the team. It was painful to witness and even seemed over the top, definitely inappropriate; either way, now he’s immune from criticism. As we noted in the last video (less than 24 hours ago), the rules apply only to “lesser” staff; the people at the top are immune from their own rules and they’re the ones monopolising actual enforcement. They don’t apologise and never face consequences. That too is connected to endemic nepotism.

So we’ve thus far covered several examples of nepotism and kinship in the management. Had the technical qualifications been satisfactory, it would probably not be a problem (or a lesser problem).

In the next part of this series we’ll travel back in time to 2010 and show how the CEO of the company married a manager 2 years after she had joined the company and after they had gotten a child (and a second pregnancy). It wasn’t his first wife and wasn’t his first pair of daughters. It seems like in Sirius grasping the concept of nepotism would lead to inner conflicts over double-standards.

A year ago I quit Twitter.

A month ago Musk attacked Twitter users some more.

It shows.

I’m not posting anything, but participation goes down noticeably.

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

Summary: Sleek like an eel, the so-called ‘founder’ and his pathologically-lying right-hand man have turned the company into a multi-headed hydra that offloads debt from one shell to another while refusing to cover financial liabilities

MONTHS ago it was becoming apparent that Sirius would not survive for much longer. Public filings (we’ve already included some PDFs and screenshots of them^*) made that rather clear. Even the company admitted it was having difficulties. It held online meetings with staff in order to discuss this. Well, the company is quite frankly broke and not worth suing for severance (it would likely have nothing to pay out, even after losing, according to our lawyers^**; so the short story is that layoffs or resignations would be similar).

Just to be very clear on this matter, the company does not wish to issue compensation. It said that in letters. It thinks it can dodge its obligations and has constructed a chain of shell companies, which further complicate litigation. The company wanted to make it all seem legitimate; so it meticulously issued or manufactured some false pretexts, even bogus scenarios (months in the making already). It probably reckoned it would be cheaper to start a witch-hunt than to do things properly. We still have them saying on the record (audio/video) that compensation would be considered, but that was just what HR told them to say. There was probably no intention to ever consider that. We have those bits on record (compensation mentioned several times^***).

To avoid repetition, the company has engaged in a lot of chronic lying and false promises in 2022^****. There were contradictory statements (like claims of recruitment in the US, later refuted by what the managers told me upon asking). It’s hard to even keep track of the lies. Many didn’t try to keep track; they were too busy trying to cope with a sort of ‘jet lag’ — an integral part of the job. We’re talking about technical people who are idle a lot of the time because they work overnight, devoted to complex tasks of monitoring many things and responding accordingly — all this while paid laughably little. Some cooks who work in daytime (9 to 5) get paid more. It’s worth noting that they use us for marketing in their site. They use or even exploit our credentials, even more than a month after we left. The company wouldn’t get away with it several years ago. To remind readers, there’s also programming done, but that falls under “projects” and has another pay grade. For projects, the staff needs a proper daytime job (without distractions such as alerts; they’re not sysadmins) and with decent pay.

Speculations aren’t as good as facts, but at Sirius speculating was often required due to a lack of transparency. The footnotes below contain a mixture of facts and speculations.

____
^* We’ve also shown PDFs with names and balances redacted; some demonstrate the nepotism, which we’ll revisit later this week. Sirius is basically run like a family thing. Incorporation of the current shell is dated “16 Oct 2017″ (with “Starting value 1 pound (minimum)”). We’ve long assumed this shell was meant to help dodge liability to the soon-divorced wife. The ‘founder’ has had two failed marriages with 2 daughters from each. The second wife was very much in control of the ‘founder’ (say former insiders who worked in the office and saw it firsthand). The ‘founder’ is (openly) a Donald Trump fan (there are Trump support tweets). Not a huge deal, but does help explain a thing or two at times. Jobs were advertised by him and the company’s account in Twitter a few years ago; that said the company was also US-based and said laughable things like us being American leaders in the area (we have had almost no clients and staff there!); the salary is very low for the skills level required and is shown in USD (currency) as well as GBP. The official Sirius Twitter account used to say US/UK; this is no longer the case. No idea why (possibly aborted plans), but the plausible explanation is that the company was just inconsistently presenting itself to potential/prospective clients, depending on what they wanted to hear or believe.

^** To give some more hypothetical scenarios, let’s say we found a way to sue the company (it is hiding). The lawyers told us a legal case of this nature can take 12 months to conclude and if by that point the debt collectors decide which liabilities are paid first, then the news isn’t good; a court case (legal bills and so on), even if a resounding loss for the company, would be at the bottom of the priorities, the bottom of the list (or liabilities to pay off). So it would be a pyrrhic victory for us, no financial and moral damages paid, not even our legal fees covered. This hopefully helps explain the decision to resign. The resignations gave us more freedom to speak out too (no agreement to keep silent). One notable issue is, the company can pretend to be broke in one shell while hiding some assets in another. There’s this ‘monkey business’ modus operandi which is to separate companies into profitable and non-profitable, then pick one part with no liability and throw out the rest. Maybe this is applicable here. We’ve found no compelling evidence though.

^*** We started making our own recordings because the management lied about providing recordings of particular meetings in 2019. It lied about such transparency, so I started making my own recordings of such meetings.

^**** Last year we had this meeting for “re-infrastructuring”, followed by several more meetings. They pretended things would be OK but were planning to dismantle the company and turn it into a kind of ‘consultants’ reseller, looking not to pay staff, seeking advice for back-stabbing (from external HR firm, months before spying on us).

Video download link | md5sum b7092ce567dc2abaaf29741f7fd87ae2
Sirius Stuck in Clown Computing
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: Sirius does not know what it’s doing. How can Sirius advise clients on hosting when it cannot even do its own hosting right? Colleagues tried to push “AWS” to clients, but I kept standing in the way, saying it would cost a fortune and erode security/privacy (over time I was vindicated as bills constantly soared)

THE VIDEO above is relatively long but it could be far longer. I have a lot of things to say about the shortcomings with clown computing, based on firsthand experience for over a decade. The short story is, avoid clown computing any time it’s possible to shun clown computing. The clown computing pushers (marketing) are untrustworthy; they “appeal to authority” and they’ve long targeted gullible non-technical managers.

Disregard their misleading vocabulary (like “serverless”). Call it “clown computing” and don’t say “on-prem”; they’ve utilised this for upselling, exploiting a new buzzword for what was done, correctly, for decades already! A lot of that isn’t even “self-hosted” (another relatively new term); it’s like getting a subdomain in GitHub(.com), which is proprietary and controlled by just one company. There’s that same subdomain mentality of Slack, as it gives false impression (illusion) of control, like “guilds” for chat. All that centralisation is corrosive and very risky. It’s also expensive in the long run (I give the example of FeedBurner, which almost literally burned its own users). When the hosting is controlled by one company the user is at the mercy of this one company; moving from one company to another is often impossible or very expensive. This entrapment is exploited by raising prices ad infinitum — to the point where it becomes so unbearable that the providers lose more clients than they gain in additional surpluses (price hikes). In the case of GitHub, the hosting is controlled by one company; the platform and code are also controlled by that same company (Microsoft).

People need to talk about these issues in abstract and topological terms, only to be challenged by weak-minded folks who speak in buzzwords and brands (like “AWS” and “Amazon”). I’ve sadly found myself unable to communicate these issues with people who act like salesmen rather than software engineers.

Putting aside financial aspects, AWS has technical issues and occasional downtimes, as noted in passing above (in the video). Lots and lots of examples of that could be given and presented in full. Moving from one’s own servers to Amazon (et al) is as technically sanitary as giving up on toilets at home, choosing to use public toilets instead (“as a service”).

All in all, the video above tells some stories “from the trenches” that we don’t plan to write about (they’re not that scandalous anyway). It does not merely repeat what was covered in the article earlier on.