Half of what’s left of the company is basically a family

Summary: Sirius ‘Open Source’ has become a minuscule company that’s unable to serve clients and is shamelessly lying to what remains of its client base; Human Resources (HR) is missing in action (MIA), so the operations are improvised and detached from the Rule of Law

TWO DAYS remain until the end of the year and the end of my last month at Sirius — a company that I joined in February 2011. Most of my time at the company was OK, but things took a drastic turn for the worse around 2019 or a little earlier (it was like a Sarin cluster bomb; see image to the right). There was a glimmer of hope (that things would improve) at the end of 2020 owing to a managerial shuffle, but such hopes were short-lived and overly optimistic. The person who was meant to ameliorate matters resorted to finger-pointing and cover-up at the end of 2021, culminating in fierce arguments over legality, truth, ethics, and various technical aspects.

The differences became irreconcilable in November of this year and at the start of December I deposited a report that I had prepared with my wife for a few days. It was almost 50 pages in length, accurately highlighting the abuse we had encountered in recent years.

We regret to say that Sirius doesn’t stand a chance of surviving. It’s run by dishonest people who don’t know what they’re doing and they’re moreover unable/unwilling to listen to important stakeholders.

At the moment it is unclear where the company is based or where to send legal papers to. The ‘UK’ CEO is sending envelopes without a return address, the other CEO lives in some unspecified address in another country (colleagues haven’t seen him for about half a decade), and the company’s registered address changed three times this past autumn (both the company and the awkward subsidiary attached to it — more on that another day), so the only address for the company is in fact some accountancy firm that deals with salaries.

Sirius will mostly be remembered by us as a company that originally strived to spread and support Free and Open Source software… years before it became so desperate for cash that it started lying and outsourcing everything (in spite of strong opposition from staff).

From the report sent to our employer on December 1^st:

The Office Manager, the Account Manager, and the CEO don’t have understanding of Open Source and some lack any technical background and are thus unfit for the roles they occupy. In some contexts, this is legally actionable and as far as the public knows, there was never a job advertised for those roles, i.e. each of these was just ad hoc appointment. The CEO has a single-page Web site that says almost nothing and has no track record of actual work (in 18 years). It’s hard to figure out where all that confidence is derived from.

A company that had properly accredited managerial staff in 2011 is now run like a hobby, or by people who think they themselves are the law. No involvement of HR — no evidence of it anyway — so it’s all improvised and likely a one-man fishing expedition, trying to become judge, jury, and executioner. This is not acceptable. This needs to be independently investigated.

There are many legal issues with the way Sirius handles itself. As noted earlier in this document, the company did not pay the pension for months at the time, it did not pay a webhost until it was too late, and staff members haven’t received payslips for months.

The company conveniently shifts the attention to two workers. Funnily enough, the official Sirius web site still links to the sites they claim to be “defamatory”, using Roy and Rianne for self-serving marketing purposes. The Sirius Web site states that Rianne runs TuxMachines, yet it’s presented as a “discovery” in the accusations. How is that anything short of satire?

Photo credit: U.S. Honest John missile warhead cutaway, showing M134 Sarin bomblets (c. 1960). Public Domain.

Summary: At Sirius ‘Open Source’ people who lie, cheat and trample all over other people are trying to frame themselves as voices of reason and justice; nothing could be further from the truth and it casts Sirius in a negative light (as if it’s an outlaw organisation that escapes from one shell to the next to dodge liabilities, accountability and thus enjoy de facto impunity)

THE management at Sirius ‘Open Source’ has begun to resemble the EPO‘s Benoît Battistelli. Sure, it’s not French (EPO management has been French for like 85% of the time in recent years; António Campinos was no exception). There are even kangaroo courts. For those who don’t know, kangaroo courts are meant to seem like a place where justice is available; but in practice it’s just theatrics.

The management at Sirius ‘Open Source’ has been trying to downsize, but it is struggling to come up with the money required for separation fees. Moreover, instead of keeping skilled people it is aiming to retain family members. Yes, this is how awful things have become…

Having failed to convince people to leave willfully (to avoid having to pay separation fees), the management began trying to cause guilt, shame, and humiliation. It’s a common tactic (making staff miserable). Then it started changing addresses (3 times in just over a month). It won’t say why, but that might be a legal defence strategy (making lawsuits against the company more cumbersome). Then it picked on yours truly for calling a liar “liar”. As if the lying is absolutely acceptable and the problem is opposition to lies. Narrative inversion is also misused in this way in politics, e.g. misframing those who expose war crimes as some sort of unethical “foreign agents” and reckless, disloyal voices. So what we now deal with is a bunch of rascals trying to judge or even crucify their exposers, critics, and so on. This happened in Debian too, as yesterday’s story from Daniel Pocock explains. For those who didn’t see it, the gist as per this new story is that Debian ‘family’ (people who never coded anything in their entire life!) started intimidating and shaming people who say the truth — all in the name of protecting some brand or reputation!

To be clear, when I used the word “liar” I did not name a person and did not even name my employer, only judged its behaviour in a two-person conversation, berating unethical behaviour that had long been observed and pointed out internally (to no avail).

Sirius must be doing the same thing to other people, but it threatens people not to talk to each other (a divide-and-rule tactic) whilst inducing some sense of baseless regret, having done nothing wrong yet led to a conflict over someone’s ego, covering up likely unlawful behaviour.

The sad reality is that Sirius is now governed by a so-called ‘boss’ that sends nasty letters (days in the making but still with the wrong names in them; maybe attention and concentration issues), pretending to be all-knowing while lying to people, lying about people, and so on. Despite going by the title “CEO”, he is basically ‘bossing’ maybe a handful of people and some of them mock his lack of technical skills (even right to his face!). He has been trying to create a culture of lying, cultivating deceit and fostering cover-up instead of honesty, compelling colleagues to compromise their integrity (visibly against their will; they did complain, as we showed in prior parts).

The sad thing is that unethical people like these never belonged in the company in the first place! But in terms of recruitment the company has been racing to the bottom — to the point of hiring based on family connections and in spite of zero relevant skills. For management, the company started recruiting based on accents and style rather than knowledge and substance.

What was envisioned? That technical staff (geeks) would end up idolising or looking up to (or using as a role model) nothing short of a “bullshit artist”, who is conning clients as a short-term strategy of client retention? This is hardly a good investment, as it is tarnishing the names of workers, not just the company. I’ve wanted to leave for years, seeing the company was becoming a stain on my name (the company still uses my name in its Web site!).

Companies where ambition is tied to ruthlessness (towards clients and staff, burning people to get “ahead”) are likely to accept all sorts of truly unethical clients. This is what has happened in recent years. To make matters worse, the company was living a lie, naming bogus days for future meetings, saying in vain they’d advertise and hire in the US (later, upon inquiry, they admitted they hadn’t done that at all), and pretending to be vastly bigger or “growing” (there was no actual growth).

Finally, seeing that staff was resisting the lies, management decided to embark on a witch-hunt, hinged on a low-grade fishing expedition or muck-raking adventure. I refused to participate in kangaroo courts (not in compliance with the most basic international laws anyway) and resigned at the start of this month. Below is a portion of the report I sent days prior to the resignation.

The allegations is that Roy and Rianne do not speak to the management directly, as they wish to instead communicate through a legal representative. Roy has explained to managers that they are not an appropriate tribunal (clearly HR hasn’t been properly consulted about this):

Under the European Convention on Human Rights Article 6 (England is in the European Court of Human Rights) I am entitled to have a representative and access an objective tribunal. You will hear from my lawyer soon.

So basically they improvise and make it up as they go along, thinking they’re a sheriff or something — very unprofessional.

Why does this happen? It’s plausible that tribalism and self-service are the motivation.

The current CEO seems to have zero experience with Open Source, and some workers lack even a relevant degree in a computing-related field (it’s all about nepotism — harsh to hear, but true; it wasn’t like this when Roy joined the company).

As noted before, the company is misrepresenting itself to the public. It’s portrayed as a cross-Atlantic enterprise and the web site is faking the size of the company, which is like 1 or at most 2 people in the US and only half a dozen in the UK. They mislead existing and maybe future clients.

Other colleagues have long spoken about these issues (also past colleagues), a reputation harm to the company, but they have not been subjected to stalking or singling out. Why? Probably because they left the company early enough.

The company is basically looking for a finger-pointing opportunity, it tries to cover this up, and may conveniently cheery-pick Roy’s criticisms, which don’t name people or companies.

To make matters worse, the managers accuse Roy of “defamation” even though everything said by Roy is easily provably, just not very convenient. Conversely, the company itself lies routinely; for instance, the managers repeatedly said they would hire in the US; in a later meeting they admitted this was not done.

Data as OpenDocument Format

ack in October I looked at the data from Ireland for the first quarter of each year, focusing on total number of deaths, irrespective of cause and age.

We now have data for the second quarter (Q2) of this year.

Total number of deaths in second quarter (Q2), by year:

Q2 2019: 7519
Q2 2020: 8582
Q2 2021: 6700
Q2 2022: 9326

HIS is too early, I know…

We’re now 70 hours away from 2023! 2022 was, to me at least, a year of emancipation. I’m no longer required to keep quiet about bad things which happened in my (almost) 12-year employer.

In 2023 expect January — and probably February too — to be occupied with stories I can recall looking back. I never planned to write about my employer, but my last month at the company was so bad that I started taking lots of notes. People out there need to understand what’s going on.

Video download link | md5sum cfd19bcb3213d2172eaf3999500f03b5
Sirius Closed Minded
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: This year’s Sirius ‘Open Source’ (or Sirius Corporation, the fake former company) isn’t run by geeks but by people who view geeks as a threat; this dooms the company irreversibly

THE management at Sirius ‘Open Source’ is almost the majority of staff now (yes, more administrators than cooks inside the kitchen!) and it has brought an element to the company that the company cannot leave behind. It is beyond redemption. The video above deals with the latest part of the report, which generally explains how a family of three adults (don’t say “threesome”, it’s a sensitive term) suggested lowering the already-low salary of long-serving technical workers. The more shocking revelations about Sirius are yet to come (mostly next month). We assume there are other companies out there that act similarly, so it is important to identify and meticulously explain the patterns.

Summary: Sirius ‘Open Source’ has a severe case of nepotism and obscene case of hiring unqualified people based on ‘bedroom politics’; pointing this out to a friend outside the company is impressible, even if this endemic issue leads to technical issues and low employee morale

THE nepotism at Sirius was almost tolerable until colleagues found out they had been denied access to certain systems that far less qualified and barely-experienced colleagues were able to access. And why? Bedroom politics.

Bedroom politics is a recurring theme at Sirius and it’s further exacerbated by the fact that we’re talking about people without relevant qualifications and experience, having the audacity to suggest that people who work in daytime (like two bedroom partners) should be paid more than technical staff that’s on the beat all night long (with further disturbance to sleeping patterns owing to shift alternations about 6 times per month, akin to jetlag with all the lasting health implications).

The company’s management wasn’t willing to tackle the problem and instead viewed critics as the problem. Even if those critics merely discussed the matter outside of work without even naming the company or the people.

Sirius is going to find out that covering up abuses is a short-term strategy and a terrible technique/method for quelling dissent. It’ll all come out eventually. As noted in the report below, the company already has a history when it comes to that and it already resulted in major staff exodus; the reputation of the company cannot be redeemed by creating more and more “shells” as people inevitably find out who’s who (or where they came from).

As it stands, several employees have a romantic relationship and in spite of inadequate skills one trio of workers (with a very unconventional love affair, akin to a wife swap and love triangle) enjoy privileged access to some systems that more veteran colleagues cannot access. It’s perfectly clear that some people make all the decisions behind closed doors and some are denied any influence whatsoever because they are not part of the “clique” or the literal family. Career progression is not based on merits but a facade thereof. If it’s about who one knows who (or sleeps with who), then this degrades the image of the company, at least internally. One of the trio suggested lowering the salary of the nighttime Support Team, which her two other halfs aren’t part of. That’s rather offensive and can repulse those who really deserve double the salary for working overnight.

To quote or to paraphrase Roy and Rianne’s replies to threatening messages:

Dear all,

I believe I was unfairly treated on several grounds, including relevant protocols pertaining to several aspects. I will spare you the details but can elaborate if needed.

Here is the gist of the issues:

1. No due process
2. Verbal/oral distortion of claims
3. You misrepresented alleged evidence, but conveniently presented it as facts to my wife
4. No hard evidence presented (just a reference to a handbook we lack a copy of)
5. Rather gross accusation inflation against a person whom you did not even speak to

There are more points, but I shall keep this brief.

The company has a history doing this to couples, e.g. one blind colleague based in Germany; it was very serious and it went to court, based on a trusted source (it cost the company and/or its Directors — ???????? and ???????? — a lot of money, as went on for a long time; allegedly got settled at the end but injured the company).

We visited lawyers on Friday and on Monday. We spoke about the facts in length and have a good understanding of our rights.

We agreed that we don’t yet wish to escalate this matter and would rather settle amicably.

Regards,

Roy,

[Your longest-serving employee (aside from the founder)]

Actually, as we recently discovered, he’s not even the founder but more of an opportunist. As we shall show later (some time next month), it’s even worse than this.

Sirius will find out the hard way that Sirius should have stayed true to its mission instead of straying to Microsoft’s orgy territories.

Video download link | md5sum 8d8f65debd319f2ce20370cf6df32a32
Sirius Spooking the Sceptics
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: Corporate bullying and false accusations/finger-pointing thrive when companies are failing and find themselves unable to blame the management; this is the story of the company my wife and I left this month (a company that only exploits the term “Open Source”)

THE surveillance by Sirius ‘Open Source’ (with even more surveillance in the pipeline) will be explained here next month, but today’s video deals with the low-grade muck-raking done by the company’s CEO instead of actually running the company.

Who is disgracing the company? This episode in the company’s history is shameful and it is embarrassing to staff. As geeks flee the company (a years-long exodus as noted in the video above) all that’s left in Sirius is a bunch of self-appointed managers who are neither trained nor qualified to act like leaders. They in turn resort to bullying for the sake of scaring sceptics or critics.