What the Heck?! Thread (Closed)

[AssassinsMace]

What's the phrase? Work smart, not hard? Sounds like the axiom this guy lived by.

Yes if there was an award for it, that guy should get it.

 

[Lethe]

Several posters here are placing far too much emphasis on Barack Obama as distinguished from the President of the United States conveying the official position of the US government.

 

[Jeff Head]

Guys, the rules are not suspended because this is the "What the Heck" thread.

SD is not about politics. We are getting far too many political statements, rhetoric, and rants from both sides.

STOP.

DO NOT RESPOND TO THIS MODERATION

 

[MwRYum]

What's the phrase? Work smart, not hard? Sounds like the axiom this guy lived by.

Dude, you got it nailed right then and there...

 

[Equation]

Not surprising. There was that story a few years back where I think it was a company's IT guy who outsourced his job to a company in China. He worked from home a lot so that gave him a cover from why he wasn't seen at work. He made something like $150,000 a year from his job and it cost him something like $35,000 to get the Chinese company to do it for him. His employer found out when they thought they were being hacked by China but it was just the company he outsourced his job to using his password doing his work for him.

What's the phrase? Work smart, not hard? Sounds like the axiom this guy lived by.

Yeah but how long can that guy continue before his company would release him and started out sourcing those jobs to the Chinese for the rest of the companies departments? Than he can not blame anyone for the lost of his job since he created the problem in the first place and got caught doing it too.

 

[plawolf]

Yeah but how long can that guy continue before his company would release him and started out sourcing those jobs to the Chinese for the rest of the companies departments? Than he can not blame anyone for the lost of his job since he created the problem in the first place and got caught doing it too.

I think the issue would have been a breach of contract.

The company employed that person to do the job himself, based on his qualifications and experience. They are paying a premium for his services because they expect him to do it.

By outsourcing the work to others, he is in effect committing fraud as well as breaching his fidelity responsibility to his employers by making them think he did the work, and also opening up his company to the risks of possible losses and breaches, since the people he outsourced to might not be as qualified or experienced as him, so their work might not be as good.

Giving access codes to unvetted people and allowing them to gain access to internal company systems and databases is also just asking for trouble.

Had the company itself decided to outsource the work, they would have insisted on numerous checks and assurances, both regarding the qualifications and competence of the people doing the work, but also of their trustworthiness and reliability. Which would have incurred additional costs and a premium on the costs of outsourcing.

I seriously doubt this person did any of that due-diligence, so a great deal of the cost savings he achieved would actually have been a result of cutting corners, which is seldom a good idea.

 

[delft]

I think the issue would have been a breach of contract.

The company employed that person to do the job himself, based on his qualifications and experience. They are paying a premium for his services because they expect him to do it.

By outsourcing the work to others, he is in effect committing fraud as well as breaching his fidelity responsibility to his employers by making them think he did the work, and also opening up his company to the risks of possible losses and breaches, since the people he outsourced to might not be as qualified or experienced as him, so their work might not be as good.

Giving access codes to unvetted people and allowing them to gain access to internal company systems and databases is also just asking for trouble.

Had the company itself decided to outsource the work, they would have insisted on numerous checks and assurances, both regarding the qualifications and competence of the people doing the work, but also of their trustworthiness and reliability. Which would have incurred additional costs and a premium on the costs of outsourcing.

I seriously doubt this person did any of that due-diligence, so a great deal of the cost savings he achieved would actually have been a result of cutting corners, which is seldom a good idea.

Perhaps they are very capable and have sold access to the company's computer network to a host of entities, competing companies, criminal organizations or whatever and that is the reason they could afford to do the work so cheaply.

 

[delft]

From WaPo:

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The stupidly simple reason why the military lost control of a giant surveillance blimp
By

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February 16 at 11:33 AM

Last fall the military

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: The craft unmoored itself from a base in Maryland and drifted 100 miles over Pennsylvania, leaving destruction in its wake. A trailing tether downed powerlines and cut off electricity for tens of thousands of people; 911 lines were overwhelmed; college classes were canceled; and fighter jets were even deployed to track the blimp.

But all of that chaos could have been avoided if someone had done the sort of basic maintenance that keeps smoke detectors working: No one loaded the batteries needed to power an automatic-deflation device on the blimp, according to the

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The blimp was meant to be stationary, held tight by a tether that also transferred power and data between the floating behemoth and the ground. Technically an "aerostat," the craft could soar up to 10,000 feet as part of a test program designed to help spot things like enemy missiles and drones. It was dubbed JLENS.

Even before the runaway blimp incident, the program caused some to

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about the import of technology designed for battlefields to the domestic arena. And despite a $2.7 billion investment, JLENS appeared to

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But the program didn't truly break into public consciousness until the blimp broke free.

A Pentagon investigation found that a number of factors led to the disaster: First, a device used to measure air pressure inside the blimp malfunctioned. Because of that malfunction, fans that should have turned on due to changes in atmospheric conditions did not operate and air pressure inside the blimp fell, according to the L.A. Times, which cited anonymous people who have seen the Pentagon report.

The blimp also turned perpendicular to heavy gusts of winds, which bent its tail fins out of shape. That left the blimp unstable and put more pressure on its tether than it could with stand.

However, the craft was equipped with a device that should have deflated it and returned it to the ground within two miles -- which would have effectively contained much of the damage and prevented a flood of incredulous headlines. But no one had installed the batteries that should have served as backup power to the system in this kind of scenario.

"The lack of batteries prevented the automatic rapid deflation device from deploying," Michael Kucharek, a spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command and the U.S. Northern Command, confirmed to the Times.

So the true moral of the story might be this: Always have a backup -- especially when you're running a program whose malfunction could look like an embarrassing metaphor for bloated military spending running wild.

It is shameful when a program of $2.7b is unable to train its personnel adequately to prevent such "mistakes". Are parts of US military decaying?

 

[TerraN_EmpirE]

From WaPo:

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It is shameful when a program of $2.7b is unable to train its personnel adequately to prevent such "mistakes". Are parts of US military decaying?

Things happen, Contractor or Personal. Mistakes happen when you get complacent especially costly ones, Look at Challenger or Apollo's 1 and 13. Little errors that get compounded.

 

[Equation]

Perhaps they are very capable and have sold access to the company's computer network to a host of entities, competing companies, criminal organizations or whatever and that is the reason they could afford to do the work so cheaply.

The perpetrator GAVE them the access to the company's data network in order to do his bidding. The guy obviously knew the Chinese quality of work was to be so good that it passed by the superintendent for so many years before getting caught.