People Are Eager To Tell Us Their Malicious Compliance Revenge Stories

“I’ve read a lot of people having issues with jobs with everything that’s going on and it reminds me of an act of malicious compliance that I perpetrated back in the last economic crisis of ’08-’09.

I worked for a large online website in what we call the Operation Center.

Large websites have many servers, not only in number but in type. A problem is sometimes simple, like “this server (really just a computer) is broken.” But sometimes, it’s complicated. A dozen small problems have happened throughout the system, normally not an issue on their own, but together have become this perfect storm that messes up the whole website and takes it down.

These problems are complicated, and often the individual developers are not familiar enough with the system as a whole to figure it out quickly.

This is where the operations center is tasked with monitoring the system as a whole and connecting the dots on these larger problems. Different companies may use many names like service operations center/SOC, network operations center/NOC, etc. but every large website has this sort of group that acts as the custodian of the inter-dependent connections of the individual servers.

It can take a year to a year and a half of learning how a website works before you’re even useful during an outage and many years before you’re an expert and have the confidence to lead a shift.

We ran 24x7x365 all from one office, in a major city.

1/2 the people were on 4 10-hour shifts, others were on 3-12 1/2 hour shifts, (with 5 extra hours every other week to make 80h every 2 weeks), covering the whole week with no on-call (as we were staffed 24x7x365. No need to call anyone at home, there was always someone at the office.)

I had been there for years and was darn good at my job. I had done several years on 3rd shift, and was ready to be done with staying up all night and basically being a zombie on my time off.

It’s tough to switch from being awake all night to being awake all day twice a week.

So a new manager, let’s call him Kyle, was hired, and decided that he didn’t like the fact we were only getting messed up on sleep.

He wanted to mess us up just a little harder. And dry.

So he pulls me into a meeting room one evening, when basically everyone except my two team members had gone home, slides this paper over to me, and starts telling me that the shifts have to be changed, and everyone has to work 5 days a week, and on top of that, now shift leaders have to be on-call during the time period of their shift on their days off.

Something about understanding common issues that happen during that time of day. On top of this, they were going to expect us to also do some kind of vaguely defined project work while we were on shift or something. Which with our workload was absolutely ridiculous to expect.

We weren’t JS or Java developers anyway, which was what the site ran on, so it was ridiculous to expect us to work on the web application in our spare time. We were ops, and while some of us were good at scripting, this was just a terrible decision.

There were already teams there that handled monitoring and build tooling for us to use.

The turd cherry on top of this crap sandwich was that he was moving me back to third shift, and I’d be working Wednesday – Sunday.

No weekend. And on-call at night during my two days off.

After all this was laid out to me, I looked at him and said, “We’d be working every day of the year, no time to unplug or get away from work.

I don’t know why anyone would accept this plan as it’s laid out.”

He responded with a smug grin on his face that I will never forget, “Well, if you think you can find another job in this economy you’re welcome to try.”

I literally, (not literally as figuratively, but actually literally) had to bite my tongue hard enough to bleed to stop myself from saying ‘challenge accepted’ out loud. Instead, I slid the paper back at him and walked out of the meeting room without another word.

The thing is that good sysadmins are tough to hire. We’re loyal, we have excellent problem-solving skills, and we enjoy a challenge. So I kept my mouth shut, started working overnights, and meanwhile contacted everyone I knew about the predicament I was in.

I got Kyle to pay for a certification that I’d always wanted. And meanwhile, I was complying with all the maliciousness I could come up with.

I landed an interview with someone who’d managed our group right when I’d been hired. I showed them how I’d kept growing as a professional, getting certifications and regular promotions.

I let slip that the only two days I’d be available for the interview were Mondays and Tuesdays because well, they changed the schedule. And I’d have to keep my phone on as I’d be on-call those two days. This led them to ask more questions about the changes there and I have to admit I wasn’t at all averse to telling them how this new manager was changing things.

I could absolutely see the disbelief on their face, and enjoyed every “What? That’s not how you run things!”

This old manager was sympathetic and so I had another job offer in hand within a month of the changes. I left a 2-week notice on Kyle’s desk, that said “Despite the slightly stagnant economy, I have been offered another position.

Effective in two weeks I will no longer be able to continue my employment with COMPANY.”

The little jerk told me not to come back after one week. Didn’t even try to schedule any knowledge transfer meetings where we share what we know when we leave, a common thing with technical employees.

Cut off your nose to spite your face, I guess.

Now he didn’t have anyone to cover for that third shift with any experience for months. Mistakes were made, and website problems were way up on his watch (which was tracked by another team).

He had no one else to blame but himself. He did tell me I was welcome to try!

EPILOGUE: I was always getting stories from the people who were left about dumb stuff that he said in large meetings, but eventually he crossed HR.

He said something mildly inappropriate in a meeting, and someone went to HR and complained. He then went all-in on his stupidity, and, I kid you not here, God’s honest truth, pulled that person into a meeting room alone and demanded to know why they went to HR. He told them stuff like, “you come to me first if you have a problem with me” and “we don’t go above other people’s heads around here”.

The person was shaken, and the other people in the operations center advised that they go straight back to HR with it. HR wasn’t ready to believe it, and clandestinely called others to corroborate. Not only did they say it was totally true, but they all felt free to discuss even more inappropriate behavior they’d seen.

Kyle was escorted out with nothing but a box of his belongings that day. Do not pass Go, do not collect unemployment. I don’t know what happened to Kyle after that. But that was a bridge I was happy to burn.

And dance and sing while it crumbled to ashes.

And don’t give up hope. This too shall pass. Businesses know this and will still be hiring for the long term. It will be tough but you can do this!!! DO IT!!

Interview (on video conferences of course). Talk to old co-workers and managers. There are opportunities even in times of crisis, look for them. “‘You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take’ –Wayne Gretzky” –Michael Scott.”