
“It Was All Shredded”: Management Immediately Regrets Ordering Legacy Team To Destroy Documents
Interview With AuthorWhile, in theory, senior management is a role that requires a vast array of skills and knowledge, it’s not at all hard to find examples of folks who are given power and who then immediately run their organization into the ground. Everyone makes mistakes, but ignoring what your specialists are saying is just plain incompetent.
A man shared his bit of malicious compliance when a company fired the legacy software team and ordered them to destroy any and all documentation. Despite being told all the risks, management wouldn’t budge. We got in touch with the netizen who made the post to learn more.
Some parts of any company only run because a select handful of people know how things work
Image credits: Getty Images/Unsplash (not the actual photo)
So one man described the aftermath of management getting rid of the folks in charge of legacy software
Image credits: Getty Images/Unsplash (not the actual photo)
Image credits: AnnualAntics
All too many people can relate to management doing something dumb
Image credits: Getty Images/Unsplash (not the actual photo)
Bored Panda got in touch with the man who made the post and he was kind enough to share some more details. Naturally, we wanted to hear if there have been any updates. “Nothing much at this point, as it’s all very recent & ongoing. According to my former colleagues, it’s just a nightmarish quagmire of paperwork & excel for everyone. Nothing difficult in theory, but tedious & time consuming. On the positive side, they’re making some decent overtime pay. The company is apparently “bringing in a specialist consultant shortly” to have a go at fixing it. The rumor mill says it’s one of the legacy staff, but nothing concrete yet.”
The story did end up going viral, so we wanted to hear his reaction to its popularity. “Honestly, I didn’t expect it, I thought maybe a couple of hundred, as there’s always some new posts to get buried under. Reading the comments, it seems a lot of people have either been in this situation where a company erases institutional knowledge with a short-term benefit in mind (in this case, savings on wages) which backfires spectacularly, OR they’re in some form of IT themselves & have a fear of this exact scenario,” he shared with Bored Panda.
“I guess between those two categories, I caught a larger amount of people’s interest than expected. Probably helps the tale isn’t convoluted either, just a straight “Staff gone, and now there’s a problem which only they could fix”. Easy reading so to speak.” It’s also the sort of topic that is ultimately pretty relatable, unfortunately. Almost everyone has encountered at least one manager who made a truly block-headed decision. Similarly, companies, or at least key decision makers will often not have a solid grasp of who actually does what.
Hiring specialist and then ignoring them is not a great way to run a business
Image credits: Getty Images/Unsplash (not the actual photo)
We were also curious to hear his opinion on the various comments and suggestions folks made. “Someone pointed out there’s nothing truly malicious which I think is a fair criticism. The Legacy team did ask something like 4 times before they erased themselves, but still, it was more following an insane order exactly, rather than distorting the order in an unexpected way. But that’s more me not knowing sub-reddits very well.”
“A few people pointed out affordable data storage costs. Apparently the company felt that even a small spend on data storage was unnecessary. Others asked why the Legacy team aren’t all returning as expensive consultants or why they didn’t keep a copy for themselves,” he shared with Bored Panda.
“I suspect keeping a personal copy would probably be breaking some kind of law, and even more so if using it to enrich themselves. And they probably know it’s near hopeless to even try and don’t want to be blamed for the failure. Plus of course, all but one have new jobs to be doing (the other decided to just retire early).”
Some folks wanted more details
Many thought that this was a classic case of “to make your bed and lie in it”
Some shared similar examples
Poll Question
Thanks! Check out the results:
Company I worked for bought out the older managers and engineers with a fairly sweet severance package, so they could hire newer people and pay them less. I'm talking about one to two years salary. "Institutional knowledge" came and bit them square in the a*s. One of my favorite people, Ted, came back as a consultant making $250 an hour (He knew how to fix pretty much any screwup in production, knew where "all the bones were buried). He would take some of us out for lunch once a week to a swanky steak house, courtesy of all the money he was making on top of his severance. Ted is no longer with us but he was one good guy.
Been there; witnessed same. A guy who was single-handedly maintaining a data catalogue over multiple systems used by several hundred engineers was gradually drowning for several years, pleading for assistance. I knew him outside of work, and it was weird watching someone who honestly would’ve been fine working himself to death for peanuts gradually detach and start hating the company over hundreds of minor, unnecessary slights. I tried wooing him over to my area (which paid more), but he had a different idea: abrupt retirement. Ten years after he left, I mimicked his exit (for different reasons, but similar amounts of anger).
So my job is " getting people off one system and onto another". What people fail to understand is you have to configure new software. Usually down to the level of " how many digits to round before calculating or fo you round after "? ( save that fractional and become rich ). When you ask people which way, they go " just make it work like the old one" . Then you are sitting there with the finance team trying to figure out what that critical piece of software does. Software that was written by " some consultant we hired 5 years ago".
Company I worked for bought out the older managers and engineers with a fairly sweet severance package, so they could hire newer people and pay them less. I'm talking about one to two years salary. "Institutional knowledge" came and bit them square in the a*s. One of my favorite people, Ted, came back as a consultant making $250 an hour (He knew how to fix pretty much any screwup in production, knew where "all the bones were buried). He would take some of us out for lunch once a week to a swanky steak house, courtesy of all the money he was making on top of his severance. Ted is no longer with us but he was one good guy.
Been there; witnessed same. A guy who was single-handedly maintaining a data catalogue over multiple systems used by several hundred engineers was gradually drowning for several years, pleading for assistance. I knew him outside of work, and it was weird watching someone who honestly would’ve been fine working himself to death for peanuts gradually detach and start hating the company over hundreds of minor, unnecessary slights. I tried wooing him over to my area (which paid more), but he had a different idea: abrupt retirement. Ten years after he left, I mimicked his exit (for different reasons, but similar amounts of anger).
So my job is " getting people off one system and onto another". What people fail to understand is you have to configure new software. Usually down to the level of " how many digits to round before calculating or fo you round after "? ( save that fractional and become rich ). When you ask people which way, they go " just make it work like the old one" . Then you are sitting there with the finance team trying to figure out what that critical piece of software does. Software that was written by " some consultant we hired 5 years ago".
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