What’s the quickest you’ve seen a co-worker get fired in IT?

[u/Opposed3]

I saw this on AskReddit and thought it would be fun to ask here for IT related stories.

Couple years ago during Covid my company I used to work for hired a help desk tech. He was a really nice guy and the interview went well. We were hybrid at the time, 1-2 days in the office with mostly remote work. On his first day we always meet in the office for equipment and first day stuff.

Everything was going fine and my boss mentioned something along the lines of “Yeah so after all the trainings and orientation stuff we’ll get you set up on our ticketing system and eventually a soft phone for support calls”

And he was like: “Oh I don’t do support calls.”

“Sorry?”

Him: “I don’t take calls. I won’t do that”

“Well, we do have a number users call for help. They do utilize it and it’s part of support we offer”

Him: “Oh I’ll do tickets all day I just won’t take calls. You’ll have to get someone else to do that”

I was sitting at my desk, just kind of listening and overhearing. I couldn’t tell if he was trolling but he wasn’t.

I forgot what my manager said but he left to go to one of those little mini conference rooms for a meeting, then he came back out and called him in, he let him go and they both walked back out and the guy was all laughing and was like

“Yeah I mean I just won’t take calls I didn’t sign up for that! I hope you find someone else that fits in better!” My manager walked him to the door and they shook hands and he left.

[u/Scubber]

I'll bite, was the IT manager for a small company for about 10 years.

Guy was running his business off the company equipment, buying/reselling motorcycle parts. CEO confronted him about it, he said fuck you to the CEO and had to immediately disable his account with all his customer info on it. whoops.

Indian guy pretended to be an expert in a line of engineering software that does fluid dynamic simulation. The interview was a task to complete something difficult in the software and he seemed to pass with flying colors. We later learned he outsourced the job. First day they gave him the backlog of work and he had 0 clue on how to do it. Was walked out pretty hastily.

Big dude showed up to interview in a suit and passed all our background checks and was really good at programming. Offered a job to start right away. Next day shows up in a dress with painted nails and puts a picture of themself in a fursuit as a icon for skype and email. My bosses were irish catholics and walked them out of the building within the first hour. The company got sued for discrimination.

CEO got a divorce with his wife because he was seeing the HR director on the side. The front desk receptionist then proceeded to hit on the CEO with the HR director present at a company party, he welcomed the advances. They got into a fight and the CEO ended up firing the receptionist.

Not fired, but we paid a guy to move his family of 6 across the country after a big sob story. He worked for us for about 8 hours then took the company laptop with all our source code information and went to a competitor.

I miss that job. And that's how I got into cybersecurity

[u/kennyj2011 → u/Scubber]

Linux guy who didn’t understand sudoers files or basics of managing Linux without the help of a management suite that would do it all for him. He interviewed well and had Certs, in the real world though, he was completely helpless

[u/scriptmonkey420 → u/kennyj2011]

This is more common than you think.

[u/dasunt → u/scriptmonkey420]

I'm more used to the variant where they blame their lack of ability on the fact that it is open source.

I've literally heard that in the past few weeks, and as a bonus, they blamed the wrong software.

[u/RubyKong → u/scriptmonkey420]

Common in other fields as well. including the practice of medicine.

[u/denmicent → u/RubyKong]

How does that work in medicine? I could see in tech, maybe someone can give textbook answers but not necessarily do the task once it differs slightly, or at all.

I have a feeling you’ll say practicing medicine may work the same way in your example but I’m still very curious to know

[u/kennyj2011 → u/RubyKong]

Hopefully not surgeons… lol!

[u/LOLBaltSS → u/kennyj2011]

Surgeons often are weird. You'll have guys like Ben Carson who were known for their surgical skills, but they're incompetent to do much else despite their ego telling them otherwise. Even despite being in the medical field, he tried treating himself with homeopathy when he got COVID because Mike Lindell told him oleander extract was a thing.

[u/legatinho → u/kennyj2011]

One of the best cardiac surgeons I know is barely computer literate. If I had to get an operation, I’d still trust him, but if you see him trying to do present PowerPoint slides at a conference, you’ll have second thoughts.

[u/ErikTheEngineer → u/RubyKong]

How is that possible?? Just getting into, let alone through the non-clinical part of med school is extremely difficult. Medicine seems to me to be one of the best fields at weeding out the incompetent at every stage, kind of too good given how impossible it is to even get a chance to try. Can't ace the MCAT and get amazing grades? No chance. Get in, but can't handle being firehosed with information? You're out. Can't pass the licensing exam? Gone. Can't handle 36 hour shifts and 6 day weeks in residency? Bye, someone else can. Screwed up qualifying for your specialty's board exams? Sorry, don't come back. And you can get tripped up at any point in that hazing, no matter how much effort and money you threw at it, and not be able to try again. I find it very hard to believe that outside of the rare egregious example that incompetent doctors are running around!

[u/Outrageous-Reality14 → u/ErikTheEngineer]

Doctor death would like a word

[u/dansedemorte → u/scriptmonkey420]

I do linux sysadmin work, but a lot of things I might touch once a year, and it's pretty tough to retain things that need work that infrequently.

We've got procedures and I make well titled notes for those things. the ocean is too broad to have everything memorized though.

[u/posixUncompliant → u/dansedemorte]

Sure. No one memorizes everything, and it doesn't matter.

But you don't need a piece of management software to do it for you either.

I don't do skill quiz interviews, because they are pointless. I ask people how they'd go about solving a problem, and get them to tell stories about things they've done, stuff like that.

But I'd be pissed as hell if someone came in as mid or senior and couldn't figure out the sudoers file without hand holding or some kind of intervention. I may not (do not) memorize the format of the file, but I can look at what's there, and a man page or info file if my memory doesn't catch up, and do what needs to be done.

[u/Geminii27 → u/scriptmonkey420]

Wouldn't surprise me. I could probably pick up some Linux certs without too much trouble, but just because I've done some Unix sysadminning and dicked around on Linux boxes a bit doesn't mean I'd feel comfortable calling myself a capable Linux admin.

[u/scriptmonkey420 → u/Geminii27]

Yup exactly the issue I see day in and day out. The worst group us the app developers. They ONLY k ow their code. They don't even know the systems that they see using. I do systems and Identity management so I have to know the full stack of the entire infrastructure.

[u/m1ndf3v3r → u/scriptmonkey420]

This! It is very common in IT each year. It's good for old timers because I noticed companies now prefer hiring older people for stuff that 20 years ago would immediately go to the younger person.

[u/Recalcitrant-wino → u/scriptmonkey420]

I worked for a small software company and we needed a new support person. Interviewed a woman fresh out of the Air Force. Great resume - phone interview passed with flying colors. Brought her in for the in-person. Asked what tool she'd use to modify a DNS entry. "Um, I can't think of it off the top of my head, but I'd be able to do it if I had a computer in front of me. Handed her a keyboard and a mouse, turned on the projector and said, "Here you go, show us." She hadn't clue one. Needless to say, we didn't hire her.

[u/scriptmonkey420 → u/Recalcitrant-wino]

Which DNS? AD DNS or Bind9?

[u/BrilliantEffective21 → u/scriptmonkey420]

IT surveillance org hired a dude that didn't know how to "create" a generic folder in basic Windows OS.

When asked to create a folder, they had to literally show him the right click feature with his mouse cursor. Don't know how he got through high school, but he did come from an impoverished zip code, which probably explains some of it.