Finding out another engineer is fired before he is

Posted by tk42967@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 246 comments

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've all gotten the calls that we need to disable an account between 10:01 and 10:06. Today was something completely different. I was cleaning up disabled AD accounts and testing our AD object backup solution before blowing away 300+ disabled accounts. I see that an engineer on another team has had their regular and admin accounts disabled in the backup report. I check AD & it's still active there, but I assume this is a propagation thing or was a mistake that was reverted. I message my manager and ask if there is something up with the user and he asks how I figured it out. I explain I was testing AD backups before removing accounts in bulk. He asks me not to say anything, which is fine. This isn't my first rodeo. What bothers me is that his accounts are no disabled in AD, he's offline on teams. The thing that's creepy is that it's been nearly 2 hours and no official announcement. This is the part that kinda bothers me. Anyone else have a similar experience like this?

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Current_Dinner_4195@reddit

His accounts aren't disabled yet in AD because they planned to sit with him at a specific time to give him the news, and he's not available. This happens a lot with terminations in my company. We get notification from HR that an involuntary termination is coming and to be ready to shut it down when they get them in the conference room or on Teams, and then they have to delay it because they can't find that person. (which is probably part of the reason they are being termed)

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Historical_Share8023@reddit

If the employee hides all day they can't fire him he he he he

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Current_Dinner_4195@reddit

LOL, it's amazing what people think.

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GreyBeardIT@reddit

It's the same attitude with those people with silos of knowledge only they possess. They can either document it, as asked, so others can leverage it, or I will term them, figure it out myself, on my own terms, and fuckem. I'm a greybeard and I document applicable obscure shit, they can sure af do the same or go fuck up someone else's shop/dept.

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posixUncompliant@reddit

I've made so much money over the years because someone thought that couldn't be fired because only they understood process X. I know how to figure out process X. I will happily take money from a company to figure out their process X when you decided that you didn't need to communicate to anyone any more.

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GreyBeardIT@reddit

And I've saved myself so much grief over the years by working with them until I realize they are intractable, then I term them and take the time to learn the material. There are rare exceptions, when their skillset is out of my bailiwick, but that's what folks just like you are for. :)

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printingstuffdude@reddit

I feel like you'd be a really unpleasant person to work with or under. I've never dealt with knowledge silo people outside of management or those who refuse to stay current with knowledge attempt to force their legacy standards on all. I'd also question the ability of a manager who fires people because they didn't provide tutorials and have to spend time learning what was written in a word doc.

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ethnicman1971@reddit

>I'd also question the ability of a manager who fires people because they didn't provide tutorials Often times their refusal to write tutorials or document their processes is a form of insubordination since it usually is part of the job description and have been told it frequently. Also, they are then the kind of people who will complain that they cannot take time off because they get called while on their vacation. While had they documented their work then others could jump in follow the instructions and leave them enjoy their time with their families. People believe that they are securing their position at the company, but the reality is that they are limiting themselves to that role rather than opening the possibility to expand to another role.

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printingstuffdude@reddit

I've seen similar types of behavior but typically from management or ancient IT employees. Termination/replacement of said employee and system is usually the right fix, I agree with you there.

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GreyBeardIT@reddit

Yeah, I've run into it across all age groups really. It is more often my fellow greybeards, but the answer remains the same. :)

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printingstuffdude@reddit

Documentation within reason or where actually useful for ALL. Skill, team player and knowledge of employees should be of primary concern

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GreyBeardIT@reddit

And I feel like you'd be one of those emps that thinks their jobs are dependent on specific knowledge and not what they bring to the table/team. Nice work mischaracterizing my statements too! No one asked for a tutorial. Documentation is not tutorials, now back to your T1 work.

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printingstuffdude@reddit

Good change in attitude. Keep that up.

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GreyBeardIT@reddit

Why in the holy fuck would I change shit for some clown that talks out of his ass about a role I've successfully performed, and well, for 30+ years?

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WhiskeyBeforeSunset@reddit

And here I am... Dealing with grey beards that dont want to document anything. They also plan to retire in 5 years. I'm not the director, so I put it in my reports, this individual is a risk to our critical business functions. Management understands the problem... But seems unsure of how to deal with it. Oh well. My job is to find problems, not fix them.

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GreyBeardIT@reddit

This is why bigotry and it's related ilks are so dumb. There are great people and assholes and clowns and every other variety in all groups. You made mgmt aware. Frankly, it's their problem to solve. You're part will be when they fail to resolve it and you have all the work fall on you. Remember vendor support. They may be very helpful. GL!

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Historical_Share8023@reddit

>There are rare exceptions, when their skillset is out of my bailiwick, but that's what folks just like you are for. :) "Better call [posixUncompliant](https://www.reddit.com/user/posixUncompliant/)" .... Coming soon on Netflix 🤓

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unusualgato@reddit

Yup my favorite is thinking the company even knows or cares about process x. Nine times out of ten they don’t even know about it until after things blow up cuz they fired the only people who do it.

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posixUncompliant@reddit

The ones where they don't realize that their whole workflow is centered on process X until it starts failing pay the best.

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GinandTonicandLime@reddit

Using ‘process X’ is particularly apt given what happened to Twitter and other Musky companies. He repeatedly fires people only to realise he actually needed them. It’s pretty funny to watch.

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posixUncompliant@reddit

Utterly unintentional. Musk's issues are beyond reverse engineering, process and workflow analysis. His underlying assumptions about how things work, and his own abilities are simply wrong. My skills don't lie in the kind of corporate coaching and personal therapy he needs before the technical side can be dealt with. Mind you, he could throw enough money at me to make working there palatable. He won't, of course, but I'm a deep believer in don't say no, just charge more.

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GinandTonicandLime@reddit

Yeah i guessed it was unintentional, still also pretty funny. He reminds me of some of the middle managers I’ve had, just with more money.

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PaintDrinkingPete@reddit

Yup…I’ve played that role on more than one occasion…figuring out process X

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flecom@reddit

the fact they have to bring you in to figure it out kinda means they were right no? anyway I've tried to document things but I was told I get paid to close tickets not make documentation so I giddily ran it all through the shredder, screw 'em

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posixUncompliant@reddit

No, they were wrong because they believed that putting up with them was always going to be more palatable to the company than bringing me in. I love places that refuse to document things like that! I have friends who are top notch tech writers, and stuff like that tides them over.

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bobsmith1010@reddit

if your boss that has never cared about how systems work all of a sudden ask you to show him how to do stuff, it might be a sign that you're getting fired.

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GreyBeardIT@reddit

Cool story, but what does that have to do with mine?

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dloseke@reddit

Happened to me except it was one of my coworkers. One morning I came in and my coworker asked me how to get into the RSA server and activate and deactivate accounts and such. I showed him, might have even drawn up some quick documentation before my boss showed up deskside to meet with HR.

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DOUBLEBARRELASSFUCK@reddit

Can you still fuckem if they are no longer employees? I figured there was some law against that.

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GreyBeardIT@reddit

There are actually more laws against fucking them while they work for the same company, than against, so I believe it's fine.

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petrichorax@reddit

Hear fuckin hear. Hate these types

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hurkwurk@reddit

we use the euphemism win the lottery instead of hit by a bus, but we mean hit by a bus. because if you win the lottery, you are likely to be happy enough to give us the fuckin passwords we need, while when you are dead, we are shit out of luck.

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Historical_Share8023@reddit

>like a fart in a hurricane. Noooooooo..... 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

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Historical_Share8023@reddit

🤣👍 I can't find the quote from Morgan Freeman - Lucius Fox in Batman You did not receive the fax? or something

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Particular_Pizza_542@reddit

"Didn't you get the memo?"

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Historical_Share8023@reddit

Yes!!! 😄😁💪

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GreyBeardIT@reddit

My favorite one of these is I worked at a large company (Fortune 500ish) and they issued laptops to lots of field people. They also had a habit of asking the emps to ship the laptops back, THEN firing them. So, when field people had laptop issues that required them to send them back so we could physically repair them at corp, they often refused, as if simple possession of the laptop secured their jobs. SMH. Some of them worked with cracked screens, missing keys, whatever, as long as they didn't have to ship the laptop back to corp for repair. I still laugh thinking about this sometimes. 30+ years of IT have taught me that people think the weirdest shit.

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capn_doofwaffle@reddit

So here's mine... years and years ago I world as a Tech Support Specialist (basically an everything guy) for a chemical company for 6 years. It was a great gig and I learned a bunch. They eventually lost a Network Admin so they had to hire a new one. No biggie, he was aight. Anyway, fast forward about 6 months and I was doing typical job duties when liw and behold, my global admin account didnt have certain general permissions that it always had. So, I went in and bas8cally reset my AD permissions back to what they were for the past 6 years so I could do my job. 4 hours later, this weasle net admin walks over to my desk, says "u just gave yourself permission? You done fucked up". A day or so later, my boss flys in (i was contracted) and brings me into a conference room with HR on the phone to fire me. I fucking laughed in all their faces because I actually already had another job lined up makin 20k more (i was already a bit unhappy with how the company was changing) they let me go by putting in my own resignation that day. Anyway, fast forward another 8 months, and I was talking to the Admin Assistant (her and I still talk to this day 20 years later) and I found out that the Net admin that got me fired got terminated himself because they found out he was falsefying information in the network for multiple IT personel in an attempt to get rid of anyone he thought was competition. That was the day I learned that there are cuthroat assholes in every department. I dont know whatever happened to him but i secretly imagine he wound up back in 1st tier support begging for jobs...

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GreyBeardIT@reddit

That clown wasn't a manager. They were there to either cull the department, or just one of those power-mad idiots that find themselves managing depts. Very glad you escaped that. Well done!

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FortheredditLOLz@reddit

Don’t worry. The dumbest shit i ever seen is someone got fired for stealing. He was caught and asked how he thought he was getting away with it. He said he thought removing the UPS stopped some invisible scanner from the stolen devices.

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bobsmith1010@reddit

Ha prove you wrong. We hide rfid tags within the laptop.

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Historical_Share8023@reddit

🤣👍

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Historical_Share8023@reddit

>hey also had a habit of asking the emps to ship the laptops back, THEN firing them. 😮 >I still laugh thinking about this sometimes. 🤣👍

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PenlessScribe@reddit

I was laid off as part of a company-wide force reduction plan. There were specific notification requirements per company policy. I knew my position was at risk 2 months before termination, and affected employees had to be notified, in person so we could sign a pile of papers, no later than 1 month before. I got an email from my boss, "It is urgent that I see you on Monday morning." At the time, I was 6 hours away because my father had just died and the funeral was Tuesday. They would just have to wait.

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Historical_Share8023@reddit

Sorry for your loss

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Bubba89@reddit

https://youtube.com/watch?v=opk4x7jzRS4

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Historical_Share8023@reddit

😁👍

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pentangleit@reddit

…and MY favourite of these is when I was the sole IT guy for an 83 person company and someone made a cockup (or maybe not) and BCC’d me into an email saying that the company was being bought out and then gave a list of people who were being let go that afternoon as a result and I was on the list. I then was working on someone’s PC when I saw the director stalking me so I finished up there and moved onto the next user’s PC, etc etc. I ended up doing a whole lap of the building with him following me at a distance like a lost puppy. I eventually let him ‘catch’ me and it turned out that along with the termination they wanted to rehire me as a contractor on 30% bonus rates and vest all my stock options there and then, which eventually earned me £35k 👍🤣

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Historical_Share8023@reddit

>with him following me at a distance like a lost puppy 😁 > they wanted to rehire me as a contractor on 30% bonus rates and vest all my stock options there and then, which eventually earned me £35k 👍🤣 Great! From hell to heaven in a day!

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GlowGreen1835@reddit

I did not read this as laughing at first and was worried you had a stroke at the end of this comment. I think I need more caffeine.

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Historical_Share8023@reddit

☕☕👍🤣 Here you have!

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ThemesOfMurderBears@reddit

Before I was in IT, my wife (now ex) worked for the same company -- I drove a forklift in the warehouse, and she worked upstairs in marketing (it was a paper company, so go ahead with the Roy and Pam jokes). She was home sick one day, and they *called her in to the office to fire her.* She knew it was coming. Some new hotshot marketing guy came in and overhauled the company, and made it very clear to a few people that they were no longer "needed". But that's some bullshit -- call in a sick person to fire them.

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AcheronYYC@reddit

Back in the late 90s, I had to order a guy in from a vacation day to let him go on the 89th day of his 90 day probationary period. He had been doing great on my company's tech support phone queue, and booked a couple days vacation. Unfortunately, on the first day he was away, his name showed up in the paper. He had been charged with possession of child pornography. The general manager saw his start date and realized it was day 88 of a 90 day probationary period. We both knew what we had to do, I called him and said I required him to come in the next day, and had to tell him that unfortunately, it just wasn't working out and we were letting him go. He said he was being framed by people on a bulletin board system he ran off his server at him, that they uploaded the images and then called the police to report it. I had to repeat that it just didn't work out and escort him out. He contacted me a couple months later asking me to testify as an expert witness about FTP server logs at his triall, I don't know if he was guilty or not, but I just couldn't, too weird after having to do such a painful exit meeting, and really didn't want my name attached to the case in any way.

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harrywwc@reddit

>But that's some bullshit -- call in a sick person to fire them. at least I was spared that in '92. I was working for DEC Australia, and had a Uni exam on the thursday, and kinda made it through and called off sick the next day, friday (yes, I really was sick!). that was the day they were announcing the next round of layoffs in Oz, but I was out of the office, so I didn't find out. went in 8am monday, and sat at my desk and the phone rang a little while later - it was the recruitment agency calling about when I could meet with them to start the 'transition' process. of course, I was oblivious and asked their name/number and would call back when I had been officially told. a few minutes later, my supervisor came in and I asked "did I get the bullet last week?" and he responded that he couldn't say, that was <mangler\_name>'s job. I then explained the call I had just received, and he confirmed "unofficially" that yes, I had been "transitioned" (such an insipid term). so, I get to work, and wait for the manager to arrive (after 10) and went to tell him I knew the (not so great) news. he was ticked that I had been told, and I said for him to contact the recruitment outsource agency, as they are the ones that spilled the beans. said manager was pissed when he saw me wandering the halls of SNO a couple of months later while I was on contract to DECUS. he insisted that they and DEC were "the same" and therefore I could not be 're-hired' before 12 months had passed. he was schooled in the ways of DECUS by their manager :) btw - that was an interesting task, they only had COBOL on their machine, so I wrote a program to read rdb (with embedded SQL) to then churn out PostScript for the upcoming conference badges & tickets (for dinners and such) for the conference attendees.

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ExcitingTabletop@reddit

That's kinder than one company I worked for. Employee was sent to Qatar, they wanted to cancel his credit card and then ask to be reimbursed somehow. The local HR folks had to explain to the HQ HR folks that knowingly stranding a former special operations person in a third world country is bad for one's health. As well as make future OCONUS assignments much harder sell. Someone, probably HR, called him with heads up while HQ HR was being stalled. He snagged the first flight out, first class, and left everything. I mean, he left an aircraft disassembled, literally dropped the tools on the spot and went directly to airport. His layoff cost the company shitloads. Penalties from the military customer, having to pay multiple techs to fly out to Qatar, having to pay incentive bonuses to the techs to get them to leave the country in the first place, five figure first class flight with multiple legs back to US, etc etc

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bionic80@reddit

Does it begin with G and end with ynamics? I've been the "disable xyz AD immediately and enable full auditing for any post disable activities" guy in the past. it's fun times.

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ExcitingTabletop@reddit

No, but employees move between the same number of companies, he probably did probably work for GD, before or since.

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harrywwc@reddit

unexpected "a town called Eureka" reference ;) (although I doubt it was anywhere near your thinking :)

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bionic80@reddit

Yeah, it's a relatively rarified strata of admins / workers when you start doing that stuff.... "oh, he's back as a contractor..."

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wiseleo@reddit

We got a burn notice on you…

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WayneH_nz@reddit

Anyone see Anson?

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wiseleo@reddit

At least that show is mostly fiction. Person of interest is becoming more of a reality show day by day.

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WayneH_nz@reddit

I wanted to be Finch so bad. Money, skills, no one bothering you, guy to protect you when you do something stupid, and eating well in nice places. But the possibility of getting fat on all that good food stopped me from doing that. Then got fat anyway.

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Behrooz0@reddit

Every HR story anywhere makes me feel like they're some of the dumbest people there are...

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andrewsmd87@reddit

We had to text a guy on his cell (something we never do) because he hadn't been online and it was 20 minutes past a meeting he had accepted, where we were firing him. While it had been a long time coming from my point of view, he had, had support of upper management for a lot of years. That was a nice tidaso

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matthewstinar@reddit

"He's not in his usual bathroom stall! Where could he have gone?"

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OverlordWaffles@reddit

Where's Nedry? Check the vending machines!

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AdvicePerson@reddit

I got laid off once, and I knew it was coming, so I took my sweet time going to the office where the director and HR person were waiting.

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tk42967@reddit (OP)

I agree. The thing that weirded me out was the lack of communication/time it took to announce it.

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Current_Dinner_4195@reddit

Oh - we get that a lot too, because HR people in general suck ass.

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Brufar_308@reddit

HR does suck. Nothing like finding out someone was let go several weeks after it happened….

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jlawler@reddit

At one company they waited in a guys office for 2 hours but he just didn't come in until super late. HR/his manager gave up and then the dude showed up. His access key was disabled but he didn't know because he just ducked in behind someone (we watched the tape). When he couldn't log into anything, he went to IT to ask, and the person was looking at his account and in an incredibly awkward position. We updated policies after that.

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Nymaz@reddit

A previous place I worked had a very strict policy for terminations. I was given notice and terminated their accounts and at the same time security was sent to escort the person out the door. Then after all that a boring "we wish this person well in all their future endeavors" form letter was sent to the entire company. One day a "we wish this person well" email went out to the company for a person that was still sitting in the same room as me. "WHAT THE FUCK?!?" I hear him yell and I immediately jump on terminating his accounts. A minute later security rushes in and hustles the guy out the door. Turns out HR screwed up and sent the email out early.

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alficles@reddit

I worked once at a company that sent out a "We wish X well in all their endeavors," after a termination of any kind. For folks leaving for another job, the time frame is less strict, but generally the employee sends their own final email with their linkedin and personal email and any well wishes, then HR sends the notice and everything gets turned off. Once, right after the employee sends the email, HR sends an email that just says, "X is no longer an employee at this company." Before the employee access is turned off. The person didn't make a stink or anything, but wow it was clear why they were looking for a new job. (Employee was definitely moving up. Company wasn't happy because "loyalty".)

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MDSExpro@reddit

That's standard in EU. Reading stories from USA where you nuke everything in seconds while unsuspecting person sits in room with HR reads like some utopian horror stories for people from more relaxed parts of world. Between this, PTO not being regulated (and very short) and health care not being available without some insane money and insurances... how the hell did you allowed to let it happen to you guys? Unless you are rich pretty much every part of life is hostile to you.

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alficles@reddit

The nuke-everything approach is mostly for adverse terminations, where there is reason believe the employee may be angry at you afterwards. The intent is to minimize the risk to the company. If employees are leaving on their own terms, it's usually a lot more relaxed.

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Appropriate-Fold-697@reddit

the "nuke everything" approach still exists in EU, but not as much in legal sense.. in my career i only heard from a single story (back in my govt days) where few people were made let go for being uncomfortable (read didn't look away from a deal that had no business of costing that much) whether its employees leaving on their own accord or being fired, most countries' laws still expect the work to continue for the next few month or two (eg. at mine its "end of this month and following two").. sure, the company could come into my office tomorrow, tell me i'm being fired immediately, but unless its due gross negligence*, but they still want me to fuck off immediately, they can - tell me that they only expect me to get all the paperwork done and return assets loaned and send me home saying i don't need to come in anymore while paying out the remainder of those ~2 months as if i was working - come to an agreement on both sides(legally its a dismissal based on agreement between the company and employee) - which based on offered severance** could be beneficial for me to accept and sign on, or not... `*` anything that falls within that is usually up in the "this could be easily prosecuted so you're lucky we're not pushing it" category and above `**` such offer is sometimes going along with the words of "accept this hefty severance, we will sign the papers and you leave by end of this day/week/... or we will make the remaining of your time here reaaaaly horrible"

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Nymaz@reddit

> how the hell did you allowed to let it happen to you guys? Remember that time back in you guy's history when the Christian church said "All the aristocracy is blessed by God and if you go against them you're going against God. But if you let them exploit you you'll get a big reward later, we promise! Plus, hey you're better of than those heathens over there who are going to burn forever."? Well we never had that in our past so when that got pulled on us in the 1980s, we didn't have anything to look back on and say "naw I don't think so" and bought it hook, line, and sinker.

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Skinny_que@reddit

Yup. Had the office manger come to me and somebody on my team requesting security cam footage from a super random yet specific time. Set them up in a private room to view it and by lunch the next day the receptionist was fired for stealing toilet paper.

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tk42967@reddit (OP)

Of all things to steal.

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Skinny_que@reddit

Literally had me like ???????

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HerfDog58@reddit

At least you didn't have the engineer come to you with "Hey, my logins don't work for some reason. Can you check them and fix it? I'll wait while you do." Awk...ward...

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Living_Unit@reddit

We had HR notify us late without confirming anyone saw it, guy managed to email himself personal documents after being canned. The next one, we disabled 5 min after they were to be in the meeting, the HR drone was late to go grab them. He called us asking why his machine rebooted and hes disabled. That was a spicy one for the HR done...

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Mindestiny@reddit

This is why our policy is that we will have someone be on standby at the time listed in the ticket, but it's **HRs** responsibility to slack that person "starting the meeting, disable accounts now" to actually kick off the process. Way too many near misses because HR can't get their shit together, I put that responsibility *right* back on their plate, full stop.

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Living_Unit@reddit

I had to push back when they called to ask wtf why wasn't he disabled. 10-15 minutes notice by email only, during lunch hour isn't sufficient notice nor did anyone confirm with her. A week later i was tipped off i received a unofficial complaint. This is the only interaction that wasn't positive in the last couple years so i can only imagine this was it. We do it all the time as you said, few hour notice prior in the day so someone is on standby, and a confirmation at the start of the meeting when to do it either via email or teams.

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HerfDog58@reddit

The last time I was involved in revoking access due to layoffs/terminations, my team didn't get notified at all! I got a text message from a buddy who was a manager on a different team asking if I knew the names of people being laid off. I was like "I don't know what you're talking about - are there layoffs happening?" I got on Teams Chat and message the remainder of my team and asked if anybody knew about it. Our Manager said "Hold on, I'll make some calls." Ten minutes later he comes back to tell us "HR confirms there are reductions in force occurring today. All that I'm allowed to say is that if you don't get called into a videoconference by 2PM Eastern Time, your position is safe." That's great but what about a) who's being cut, and b) how are we dealing with cutting access for those being offboarded??? Like an hour later we got a spreadsheet with a list. But that was 3 hours after the start of the workday. Among the people who were let go was a syadmin who had just shy of 25 years at the company and literally had the keys to the kingdom - domain admin for the AD, admin level access to email and phone systems, admin for the building access, root access to all of the AWS VMs running our customer installations, everything. The guy could have shut the company down completely before walking out. Luckily he didn't, because he was a decent guy in spite of the knife put in his back by management. I felt bad for him. But as soon as I confirmed he was on the list I closed his access, disabled his accounts, reset his passwords, changed the admin passwords on every system to which I had access. It took us 4 days to catch up with the entire list. If we'd known ahead of time, one our guys could have built a script to parse the list and disable logins first thing that morning. Instead, we got a partial list that kept getting added to. And subtracted from - we had a few people we were notified about, completed all of the access revocation, then got a ticket that their layoff had been rescinded.. That week was a shitshow. I kept waiting for the call, but didn't get it. I ended up leaving 4 months later.

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whocaresjustneedone@reddit

This is what happened to me at my last position. Came in and tried to log in to all my normal stuff, couldn't get in, said I didn't have permissions. Messaged my coworker: "Hey, I'm having trouble getting into stuff, are you experiencing it too?" "No that's strange" "Hmm, would you mind checking my account to see if something weird happened?" Very awkwardly "It looks how it's supposed to" which was a strange way to word it Got a meeting invite from HR 15 minutes later. Brought it up in the meeting, that surely there was better ways to let people go than coming in to no access. They were more sheepish and shameful that I had to spend two hours with no access than the fact I was getting let go.

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bloodguard@reddit

I had to go through something like this at one of my previous jobs. Warned that about a dozen people were being let go. Four of them had offices on either side of mine. The span between "disable access" and "we should probably tell them" was going to be a few hours. I took the cowards way out and did it while ensconced in the server room while watching the security cameras. There was a steady and sad parade towards my office before they finally started calling people into conference rooms. It was just handled so badly.

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LeadingEnd7416@reddit

As an ITSM Consultant I'll jump in here to reinforce that process is King. Not computational but operational. With solid operational process in place these things won't happen. Same thing goes for the other end when you're on-boarding new staff. How many times do they turn up on their first day & the tech team needs to scramble just to look disorganized because the organization has no operational process for on-boarding? Know something, say something, do something.

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DeptOfOne@reddit

Karma is when you find out that your arch nemeses is getting axed a full 2 weeks before they do & your assigned the task of disabling their access. Gave me time to write a power shell script to do everything all at once. * Cell Phone remotely wiped * WiFi access removed * AD accounts disable * incoming emails re-routed with auto response back to sender * Desk phone Name changed on the display to Spare X-#### * Desk phone voicemail disable * Building ID card disabled. * Do not admit email sent to security. Meeting was at 1:00 PM script stated executing a 1:03 PM. Heard he flipped out when went to use the desk phone and saw his name was removed.

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aluminumpork@reddit

You can do that all with powershell? You must have some fancy access control and phone systems.

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DeptOfOne@reddit

The card access and Desk Phone systems had AD plugins. I suck at scripting ***but I was motivated to learn***.

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p90rushb@reddit

I wash my car with powershell. Just a command bro.

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Dal90@reddit

> Heard he flipped out when he went to use the desk phone and saw his name was removed. At least you didn't change the phone name to, "Replaced by a very small shell script."

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Brufar_308@reddit

Hey I have that t-shirt , we’ll close anyway. Go away, or I will replace you with a very small shell script.

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rookie_one@reddit

Where do you get it?

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Brufar_308@reddit

Think I bought it in the checkout line at Microcenter years ago. Just google it, looks like every online T-shirt vendor and their brother has a version now. Thought I might get one hit, but got tons of options.

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oloryn@reddit

I refer to that checkout line as the "Microcenter Geek Toy Gauntlet". I guess that time, you didn't make it through unscathed.

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rookie_one@reddit

I'm for sure getting one at one point

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DeptOfOne@reddit

or "Asta La Vista Dude"

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Adventurous-Coat-333@reddit

We had a script that would force an instant log out of their computer at the same time the account locked. That's a big one you missed. Sometimes if HR was a few minutes late, they would call us for support with the "computer issue" first. It was difficult to lie to them, but we would say "I just unlocked it but it will take up to 30 minutes to process". So they would wait, and if the planned firing got canceled for some reason, we would just let them back in after the 30 minutes.

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printingstuffdude@reddit

What an immensely satisfying script to spend time on. A little "GG no ree" push notification would've been nice (assuming you're only wiping company profile and app data)

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DeptOfOne@reddit

I would say I being petty but rather it was that I was jut beaning thorough. Whatever enjoyment that I might/might not have not got from that was *purely incidental*.

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retrogreq@reddit

> Heard he flipped out when he went to use the desk phone and saw his name was removed. Saw this coming as soon as I read that bullet point. lol. Of all the things, making sure something so SO low on the totem pole is finished in minutes probably clued him in to how happy you were about this.

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jkw118@reddit

So heres what ive run into at one jobs, the firing of someone involved a mtg with the manager and hr.. certain ones involved a few mtgs of debriefing.. as well as mtg with company lawyer. (That job had nda stuff) Alot of companies don't announce someone left till end of day.. Only time that wasn't the case was when someone was caught stealing. Was walked out in cuffs..

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UCFknight2016@reddit

I have done terminations at past companies and sometimes its a gut punch to know someone is gone before they know. Other times I enjoy it because that person was a pain to work with.

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Mindestiny@reddit

Getting the "layoff list" and having people on your team on it, looking them in the eye and being completely unable to say anything, has to be the absolute worst feeling I've ever felt when managing people.

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UCFknight2016@reddit

I dont think I would be able to keep my mouth shut.

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Mindestiny@reddit

Its tough, but it breaks down to practicality, professional ethics, and self preservation - this person is about to get let go, a lot of people don't take that well, and if you tell them ahead of time and they don't take it well and do/say something to signal they knew, it blows back directly on you. The fastest way to end up right next to them on the list is to get caught leaking the list, as you essentially prove you cannot be trusted with sensitive information by the business which is a huge part of your role. Not to mention it poisons the well for any other potential employers if they found out you did it. You live with it because at the end of the day, it's *your* job to act in the best interest of the business, and nothing you say to this person is going to change that it's happening, so throwing yourself onto the fire doesn't achieve anything but setting your own career ablaze as well. And on the flip side, you know if *they* were leaving, they sure as shit aren't going to tell the business until they're ready to walk out the door because the business could react similarly. As much as I hate the phrase, "it's just business"

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UCFknight2016@reddit

My ethics would tell me to warn the person. I don’t give a flying f what the business thinks. I think future employers would think that it shows I care about people and are t a mindless corporate drone

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jesuiscanard@reddit

The ticket should be sent when the employee is told. Whether that's on the day. Flipping the swith in Entra is not a big thing, and why do we need to know before the employee. I would hate that to happen to me.

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fshannon3@reddit

At a previous job, our group once received a termination notice for an employee which had the term date set to about two weeks out. We figured the employee was leaving on their own accord and turned in their 2 week notice to HR, and HR sent us the notification, as they usually do. So we created the ticket and put it on hold until that date as we normally did with upcoming leavers. The following week, we were doing some desk moves over in the area where the terminating employee sat. My one co-worker, who was Mr. Social Butterfly, went to her desk and started chatting with her. Then he asked her, "So I saw you're leaving....sorry to see you go, where are you headed to?" The employee looked at him with a very worried expression and said, "I am?" My co-worker took the hint, shut up, and walked away. We finished up the desk moves and headed back to our area. Turns out, terminating employee wasn't leaving on their own...they were being fired. A little bit later our manager pulled us aside and gave us a quick "Don't do that again" type of talk. He couldn't really get upset with us because it wasn't our fault and he knew that. He actually pushed back on HR telling them not to send out term notices so early if they're planning to fire someone like that. We never received that type of advanced term notice again.

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ASympathy@reddit

Giving adv notice to IT is fine, but add the word "confidential" or something. I've gotten the call from an employee before who couldn't log in, see their account is disabled, and had to tell them I'll look into this and call them back. Call up HR just to find out someone with a similar name was termed, and this disable was another sys admins mistake. Mistakes happen

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tk42967@reddit (OP)

Honestly, the notice should be as short as possible. IT doesn't need to be involved until it's time to flip the switch.

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Zawger@reddit

This is why my terms had an option for resignation if it's not checked then yea the employee doesn't know.

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DarthJarJar242@reddit

Y'all are getting term notices?

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mcdade@reddit

Ours is a ‘team notified” check box, if the team doesn’t know then it’s something that is not public. Same same.

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lordjedi@reddit

Excellent idea! I'm totally taking this.

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tk42967@reddit (OP)

That's brilliant. I'm stealing that.

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lordjedi@reddit

Maybe I'm different, but I want that ticket filed as soon as possible. We've had at least two resignations happen in the last month and both tickets were filed days AFTER the employees last day. I don't care how much you don't think an employee might try to access the system, I want that ticket BEFORE their last day.

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tk42967@reddit (OP)

I want to know while you have the person siloed in a conference room. Not after the fact. That being said, the more advanced warning, the more risk of somebody running their mouth.

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lordjedi@reddit

> That being said, the more advanced warning, the more risk of somebody running their mouth. The only people with access to the ticketing system is IT. I have informed my helpdesk guy (he's new to the IT world) that under no circumstances is he ever to speak about a termination (firings/layoffs) even if I'm the one being fired. It would completely destroy his credibility. IT absolutely has to be able to keep secrets. Generally speaking, we have access to everything (maybe I don't have access in the ERP system to accounting data, but I have access to the database, so I have access to everything). If we ever talk about something that we're entrusted with, lots of problems would ensue which could possibly cost us our jobs. It's simply not worth it to even talk about those things. We had an incident a couple of months ago where we were asked to suspend an account. We did it and said nothing to the effected employee (who I thought was a cool guy, but oh well).

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ElasticSkyx01@reddit

You are correct. In a previous role, I had access to everything. On-premed and cloud. I had this access because I could see things and keep it to myself. I also didn't read things that weren't my concern. Being trustworthy is just as important as a strong skill set.

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Schrojo18@reddit

It's more fun when it's someone in IT losing their job so there is a chance they could see it in the ticketing system

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ethnicman1971@reddit

You guys still make it a manual process? Where I am HR sets a term date in their HR/Payroll system and AD reads that term date and disables all accounts automagically.

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lordjedi@reddit

There's a plugin for our system, but we're not running it. I need to speak with HR about it since it would make their job so much easier.

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OldGirlGeek@reddit

If we let our HR control when accounts get created or disabled….it would never get done. Just getting them to submit their regular tickets so we can document the work, is a headache for us.

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ethnicman1971@reddit

It works splendidly for us. If an account isn’t created we tell the department talk to HR.

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OldGirlGeek@reddit

You're lucky. If WE are lucky we get a day or so of notice for new hires, and it's a backfill for an existing position so we already have laptops, monitors etc allocated. More often recently, it's a brand new position which they knew about for months, we find out a day in advance and have nothing on hand. It's a crappy look. And this time of year....fricken interns are coming out of the woodwork. Ugh.

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tk42967@reddit (OP)

We want to move there. We don't have the integration configured yet.

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Shot_Statistician184@reddit

My process has been different I suppose. I want to know as soon as HR does. It takes some effort for a DLP check, file check, copy files over etc without them knowing. Sometimes they catch wins and start deleting important docs in places not intended to store docs and as such not backed up. Its a lot easier to force password recovery, attestation of deleting corp data etc when they are active employees. Its pretty much impossible to recover docs once they leave, even with agreements. I've seen it. When we fire someone, I'm given a heads up so I do "my thing" and has saved the company a lot of head aches.

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hobovalentine@reddit

I think that only makes sense for terminations. For voluntary resignations you kind of want to let them know how to turn in their laptops or other company assets.

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Cervateus@reddit

Reading these types of stories are always so weird to me as a Swede. It's a bit different from company to company, and sometimes position to position, but in my current position I've got a 3 month notice period, in both directions. With that said, if someone is fired, they sometimes do leave quicker. Could be a day, could be a few weeks. But that would most likely be agreed upon between the company and the employee, and would be more like a buy out than anything else.

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JacerEx@reddit

We had a new hire come in that was replacing a soon to be departing person. It was explained to the newPerson that they were replacing someone else. On newPerson's 2nd day, they went to ask a question of the departingPerson. When finished with the technical details, newPerson asked departingPerson where they were going. This was how both newPerson and departingPerson were termed on the same day, after some intense back and forth. It was a fun time.

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kamomil@reddit

So... if departingPerson was unable to work, due to being in an accident or something, was there anyone able to cover them? This screams poor planning, if they are hiring someone to replace someone else, but the first person doesn't know they are being fired Training your replacement, and being trained by someone you know is being fired, is demoralizing for both. If they did that to your predecessor, they will do it to you

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Schrojo18@reddit

We've had announcements of new people starting or taking positions before it's been announced about the people they are replacing taking other higher/different positions.

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nuage_cordon_bleu@reddit

New person got fired too just for asking where the termed guy was going? Geez. We had four managers on our team at one point. A, B, and C were informed that D was being fired. C told D, D raised a stink, and C got fired as well. At least that one was a deliberate “act of subversion” by C. New guy in your story was just innocently making small chat.

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JacerEx@reddit

He had been told several times that he's coming in to take over responsibilities, and it was made crystal clear to not mention it. After he mentioned it the departingPerson, the departingPerson started a heated argument. Both parties crossed lines during the argument. It was wild.

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bs0nlyhere@reddit

Completely off topic but I like your mustang logo pic! I have a 99 :) she’s on jackstands right now unfortunately.

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fshannon3@reddit

Thank you! I've got a 2003 Sonic Blue GT that I just put Historic tags on and collectors insurance. Just crossed 199K miles too. I check in regularly over at r/NewEdgeMustang and r/Mustang!

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perthguppy@reddit

Yeah this is on HR for not having a departure reason in the closure request

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homelaberator@reddit

Yeah, if you want to keep a secret, don't tell anyone.

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SikhGamer@reddit

> send out term notices so early if they're planning to fire someone like that. ... > "they never tell us in time"

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FrecciaRosa@reddit

Your HR tells you when people are terminated? Proactively? I have to call them up every week and beg for a list of changes, AND schedule a quarterly meeting with them to go through the list of current employees and job titles. It’s like pulling teeth to find out who got laid off or who retired. Promotions are easier because people put in tickets asking for access to stuff that they shouldn’t need, and then tell us that they got promoted and now they need it. Cue another call to HR…

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tk42967@reddit (OP)

Our biggest problem is managers hiring contractors or temps. They scream and yell when they didn't create an onboarding ticket and on the start date don't have accounts or hardware. Then they never tell us when they leave and we end up with people who left a year and a half ago and still have an active account. I implemented a PowerShell script that warns the user & their manager at 30 days of inactive, disables at 45, warns them of deletion at 165 days, and deletes at 180 days. I'm pushing to get all contractors to have a set expiration date in AD so that we can just query who's account has expired and offboard.

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Mindestiny@reddit

Oh I put my foot down on that bullshit *hard*. Fucking creative contractors hired completely outside the process then my team is getting slacks and out of band emails about "hey we need this person set up by tomorrow." Hell no. The only thing that triggers my team to do any onboarding or offboarding actions is a specific onboarding/offboarding ticket the HR team is the only one who has access to create, and we require a non-negotiable 10 business day lead time starting when that ticket hits our queue. Doesn't matter how "urgent" this hire is, even if we agree to expedite we won't do **anything** without the request coming from HR.

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Sparcrypt@reddit

A place I worked HR never told us. Felt they were above us and we didn’t need to know. Branch manager walked in two weeks post dismissal and logged in/sent out an email blasting 15 years of company dirty laundry to everyone. IT managers phone rang seconds later from the exec branch, many of whom were named. He pointed them to HR as none of us even knew they’d been fired. HR got real good at keeping us informed after that. Wonder why.

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Mindestiny@reddit

Happens all the time. Terminations are often complex and sensitive, and there's thousands of reasons that HR wouldn't blanket announce someone's leaving ahead of time even to IT. I wouldn't waste too much time worrying over it, the messaging is an HR matter, not an IT matter and there's almost *certainly* context that you simply don't have (nor should you have).

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ElasticSkyx01@reddit

I never blew it like that, but up until a few years ago I did these off-boardings for all systems. When we had layoffs, and even just individuals there were occasions where people who didn't work there anymore knew about it. There are too many people who can't keep their mouth shut.

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BeerNerd207@reddit

My example of this was at a small organization where the entire IT infrastructure team was just me and my boss. We started noticing that HR and Finance were having a lot of not-so-secret closed-door meetings, and could sense the impending doom. We shared an office, so when my boss got a call from the CFO to come to his office we both knew what was on the agenda. Seconds after he left, HR came in and asked me to disable all of his accounts and those of about 10% of the office staff. It was a rough start to the day at 8:30 AM, knowing what was coming for those folks over the next few hours.

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Schrojo18@reddit

That's where I would have just walked out and told them to do it themselves.

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Rags_McKay@reddit

I was the one who had to term accounts regularly at my old company. I went through a couple of downsizing/restructuring events in my time there. One of the last times, a restructuring occurred, I got a list of names and time frames of when to disable and who to give access to the data. On this particular list was the IT department head. I was so happy. I ran into my supervisor's office and told her today was a great day. She asked why. I said I can't tell you, but you will find out. I won't do into details about why I was happy they were leaving, but it was cool to be one of the first to know.

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Schrojo18@reddit

If only I could be experiencing this. We thankfully lost our IT projects head 2 weeks ago but I am still waiting for that to happen to our IT infrastructure/Cyber security head (yes both under the same person who doesn't understand infrastructure)

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entropic@reddit

> On this particular list was the IT department head. I was so happy. I ran into my supervisor's office and told her today was a great day. She asked why. I said I can't tell you, but you will find out. Took me multiple readings to realize that the IT department head and your supervisor weren't the same person. Thought you were just savage AF.

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eagle33322@reddit

This is the way

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itsfortybelow@reddit

I didn't realize it until I read your comment.

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Rags_McKay@reddit

Yes, they were not the same person. The department head was the not there that day, so they had to have a conference call with them. I heard the conversation was very heated. I never did see him again. He had his office cleaned out and personal items were shipped to his home address.

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shiggy__diggy@reddit

As someone who also had to term their boss' account as they got the talk in the CEO's office, that is the most insanely easy button click I've done in my entire career.

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ZippySLC@reddit

This is one of those reasons that I try to treat the people who work for me extra nice. (Besides just being a normal halfway decent human being.)

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dieselxindustry@reddit

I pray for this day at my org.

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lurkeroutthere@reddit

"It's quite a shakeup that your boss got let go." "Yea my blood pressure has suddenly gone down."

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dontusethisforwork@reddit

Strangely I've had a semi all morning though

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adamschw@reddit

Promotion to customer

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Shoesquirrel@reddit

I had one of these moments, too. I was so flipping thrilled when I got the ticket from management the day before. I had a hard time hiding my excitement from my coworkers until the next morning.

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Historical_Share8023@reddit

> I ran into my supervisor's office and told her today was a great day. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

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Ill-Environment9593@reddit

Yea put process us automated as well through and HR work flow.

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patg9234@reddit

I was called in a Friday morning to disable a directors account. It was the best call I ever received. Guy was a dick. Then I had to act surprised when everyone said "did you hear?!"

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haljhon@reddit

I, unfortunately, worked for a company as a security “engineer” for a short period. I handled terminations for things. This was my first job actually in an IT department (kinda). One day, I was told to disable a user at 10:00am. He was supposed to be in a meeting with HR but that had been delayed without my knowledge. I was of lesser wisdom back then so I didn’t think to validate that he was actually in that meeting first and I just did it. Shortly after, he appeared at my desk and asked me to unlock his account because he was in the middle of work. I made some motions and told him I would see what was up. He left but then returned like 5 minutes later and was asking me why I was incapable of doing my job. I had emailed the HR person but she was nowhere to be found. I just told him there was a problem and I couldn’t fix it right now. He figured it out at my desk and stormed off. There was a scene with him and HR at his desk, it was awkward, and I really just wanted to crawl in a hole and hide. I left that job very quickly.

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OgreMk5@reddit

My brother-in-law was the account manager for a major Texas company. He handled all the lay-offs. "At x time, disable all these accounts". He heard about a new set of layoffs coming, but wasn't worried since he hadn't been given a list yet. He left the office, drove home, and tried to login to check on something he was running. And that's when he found out he was on the layoff list.

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Frequent-Durian5986@reddit

I don't get it. Has the person had physical access to devices? What good does removing his account do. Always place contingencies.

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Fuzzmiester@reddit

Or don't. Because that is unethical.

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zcworx@reddit

Mid sized university I worked for a while back wouldn’t even tell people when they fired IT people in various departments. I’d be working a project and have to reach out to the applications person and find out they’d been gone for 2 weeks. I hate this trend in corporate America.

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gabhain@reddit

We had one of our service desk guys get his own term notice as a ticket out of the blue. HR hadn’t even told his management. He was Indian with a super long user name that was truncated to the 16 character limit but HR was American and assumed it was a similar legal name so assigned it to him. In 2015 I was in the US training their Service Desk on some systems and there was a surprise mass layoff. Hundreds were left go. It was a case of people turned up to the office doors and found out if they were fired, if they were a security person took them to their desk to get their stuff and straight out the door. The badge swipe logs were used for timing of the term so someone swiped, it was cross referenced with the hit list by HR and SD killed the accounts. We didn’t even know if we were on the list and just swiped in early and some were. I was drafted by C suite for this and taking in IT gear from people crying, screaming, enraged or just defeated. It was one of the most horrible experiences for me let alone them, I’m from Europe where we have different employee rights. After a few hours of it I just said no more and walked out and called my direct manager who understood. I just went into San Francisco and wandered around shellshocked. I actually met Bernie Sanders who was starting his campaign for president, whatever you think of him he came up to me and was so nice and chatted about life for a bit.

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saveyourtissues@reddit

Did you talk about the firings with Bernie? What were his thoughts?

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gabhain@reddit

Yeah but to be honest I can’t remember the specifics of what he said but I remember he was sympathetic. I didn’t really know who he was at the time but I got a Vote Bernie pin before they were cool and I cant even vote I the US.

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michaelpaoli@reddit

Sysadmin or IT or the like - may know rather to quite ahead of time ... hour(s), day(s), sometimes even weeks or more. And, yeah, sometimes the employee(s)/contractor(s) don't (yet) know. And yes, sometimes it's very appropriate to be informed in advance, ... sometimes well in advance. E.g. depending how many folks and how much and what kind of access in how many places ... sometimes it can take some bit of time to fully disable all the relevant and confirm it's been disabled.

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Barangaroo11@reddit

My team found out about the CIO being suddenly ousted by an immediate termination request. We were all dragged into a leadership meeting to be solemnly told the news with appropriate sad leadership faces while my Teams was going nuts with everybody who had known for a couple of hours. It was a biggie too, press coverage and all sorts.

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dLoPRodz@reddit

I was on the other end of your situation on my last job. I "knew" it was going to happen cause there were rumors the company was getting rid of all contractors from my contracting agency, but they kept it on the low as much as they could until on friday I got back to my PC from lunch and my account was disabled.

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DavWanna@reddit

I also work as a contractor so I get that I can and will be dropped at some entirely random point in time, but I'd still appreciate as much lead as possible. I know they're afraid of full blown scorched earth scenario, but I'd just like to start looking for the next gig to reduce downtime.

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ASpecificUsername@reddit

About 12 yrars ago, I found CSAM on an employees laptop after his 4th virus and my boss asking me to see if I could figure out why he kept getting viruses. I knew that day he was getting canned after his vacation ended, in a week, since I had to give a statement to our ceo about who worked on the equipment that time and prior. Of course helpful-me was this guys go-to person so I had the dirty machine. Ceo asked for me to hand it over to a cop that was standing outside of the ceos office. And completely unrelated, about 3 years ago, I had developed an offboarding workflow in Okta thar disabled pretty much every account someone had at the company. The first round of layoffs in mid summer were huge (some 4100 people). I had a heads-up on this group, and received the lost the day before. The second round in mid-fall was ~300 terms but they didn't have a list for me. My boss said at the time that I wouldn't be doing the terms, as I was scheduled for a business conference. I fly out, get settled in, wake up the next day and see a company-wide email about the layoffs. They said we'd get a call around 8am. My boss's phone had died the day before and he had to find his wife's (it was work from home transition time). He called me at like 8:45am as I was about to head to the conference, fighting a terrible cold. Since it was well after 8am, I thought I was in the clear since it's a 4 person team and that's the only people he would need to speak with directly. I was disappointed and let down that my own process was what termed my account. But also they took care of getting me back home after the conference (I tried to use it as networking facilitation, but I was too sick to socialize). Crazy times. Thankfully it worked out and I found an even more inspiring job that I love, and with a group of people that I work well with.

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kunt_hunter@reddit

This is tame compared to how my employer operates when it comes to any termination, voluntary or not.

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dh1423@reddit

Back when win7 was EOL, I was on a contract doing in-place upgrades to win 10. Contract was extended out 2 months. 2 weeks after extension was approved, I’m sitting at sys admins desk with him trying to figure out a problem with one of their kiosk systems that refused to upgrade when an email notification popped up on his monitor. It was our boss telling him to disable my access after 530 that day. Called my company up trying to figure out what was going on and they wouldn’t tell me. Crappy way to find out you’re being fired.

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DonL314@reddit

I worked in a small shop once (30 people). We had no automation for user management and account (de)provisioning so that was a manual task that took some time. Dan and I were colleagues and good friends. One afternoon, my boss called me into a meeting: "We're letting Dan go tomorrow at 10, please be ready to terminate all his accounts then." It was a long afternoon having that knowledge and doing tasks with Dan, and it was a night with very little sleep. I hated knowing that he'd be let go in the morning before he knew it.

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knight_set@reddit

One time i got an escalation that this account was locked and heldesk didn’t want to unlock it and they and their manager kept calling for a status update I called the persons manager and this gutless wonder was like yeah I fired them but hr hasn’t contacted them

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ckeown007@reddit

I disagree with some of this, I worked for a super shitty IT company that basically would have the good engineers document everything they did and then off shore their jobs to some idiot that didn't know shit but could follow and SOP. .I tried to off shore me for 4 years, even went as far as giving me 'help" to try and trick me into training my replacement. Nope, won't do it, fuck you. They eventually off shored my job like everyone else, but I had already found a new job and moved on. It didn't work out for them either. I get support calls now from techs at the same company, and they are all off shore and have no idea what to do when something isn't exactly like the soo in front of them. Fine you want to bring in someone to figure out what I do? Go for it, you will, you will pay for it, but I am not training my replacement. I'll document stuff, but I'm leaving out some details and what-if though. I. Have seen this happen too many times in IT. besides that, I specialized in a very complex app that takes a long time to master and some technical writer is not going to figure it out, nor is someone who thinks they know everything either, it takes a few years to figure out for a reason. At the time there was only a handful of people around that knew that application.

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Bartghamilton@reddit

This is why I always enjoy disabling my accounts myself when I leave a company. I enjoy imagining someone’s face when they go to do it and see I beat them to it. lol

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bionic80@reddit

I've done that when I've left in the past. run script as admin -> admin disables normal account -> admin account removed user account from all groups -> script iternates through RDP sessions to make sure theres no lingering RDP sessions for admin -> script removes admin account from admin groups then disables self on the way to script end.

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p90rushb@reddit

Then the script self-deletes. Then a scheduled task formats the computer. Then a PLC releasess the thermite on your workstation. Then a cloud-seeding aircraft creates a storm above your office with spawns an f5 tornado which wipes the building off the face of the Earth.

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ZippySLC@reddit

Reminds me of one of those boxes where you flip a switch and a hand comes out and pushes the switch back to the off position and then retreats back into the box.

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bionic80@reddit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xCd55oSgO4

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ZippySLC@reddit

Hahaha brilliant!

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mortsdeer@reddit

I got "crawls into a black hole and pulls it shut behind it" vibes from that last bit. Kudos!

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bionic80@reddit

"leave no trace but the audit log telling the other admins that you did your due diligence on the way out the door"

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tk42967@reddit (OP)

I just blow away all of my AD memberships on the accounts. Hard to clone my account for the next guy.

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cease70@reddit

At my first REAL "adult job" after college I was working in data center operations Friday thru Monday working 11p to 7a on Friday, 7p to 7a on Saturday and Sunday and 2 3a to 11a on Monday to give me some amount of overlap and face time with the day shift folks in IT. About 6 months in, there's a meeting invite that goes out to most, but not all, staff to be held in the large conference room. Then there's an email that goes out to all staff saying "If you got the meeting invitation, go to the conference room. If you didn't, stay at your desk." I didn't receive the meeting invitation so I stayed at my desk, absolutely sweating bullets. Luckily, one of the senior members of the team asked our manager specifically about me and it turns out that I didn't get the meeting invitation because the CIO's admin didn't think I was even onsite that late in the day so she didn't include me. I felt extremely grateful that I wasn't let go and ended up being at the company for 7 years. Shitty part is that the senior member who looked out for me ended up getting caught in the next big RIF shortly before I left. It wasn't the same company I had started at 7 years prior and I was bitter to lose so many good friends and coworkers.

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Nik_Tesla@reddit

I don't get why companies don't announce that kind of shit to *the security* people. If that dude had just called you or someone on the helpdesk and said, "hey, I got locked out, must be a bug, can you enable my stuff again?" there is a decent chance they would get access again.

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I_ride_ostriches@reddit

At a previous org, the tickets were titled “immediate separation” or “scheduled separation”

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DOUBLEBARRELASSFUCK@reddit

I once came into work to find all of my shit disabled. I get called into HR. "Uhh, okay." This was very early in my career, and I had no idea what was going on. "So, you've been terminated... accidentally. I am literally the worst person to be doing HR; I don't know why they let me do this. We were supposed to terminate the guy next to you, because he's out with cancer." Followed a few days later by a meeting with the same person shouting, "I did ***not*** fuck up this time. *Normally* when something gets fucked up, it's me, but not this time!" I left not long after, and was better for it.

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DenialP@reddit

You’d be surprised how many shops have a weak or completely nonexistent offboarding process. This is a common vulnerability we all face. It’s worth noting that privileged user offboarding IS a different process and is often wrapped in secrecy for various reasons. Usually only key stakeholders will be in the know/lined up for process (lol you have that right) execution along with whatever security protocols are in place for asset recovery, sensitive information protection, knowledge xfer (when fortunate), etc. Not a fun situation to get wrapped up in at any level, particularly when professional relationships are involved… you did the right thing escalating quietly fwiw

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what-the-puck@reddit

The first place I worked, someone other than the service desk disabled the employee's account. The employee wasn't told by HR. The employee called service desk and had their account re-enabled. It was then still enabled after they were terminated, because the process to disable it was " already done". I don't know if that eventually led to process improvements or not, it was 10 years ago and I didn't work there much longer.

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brother_yam@reddit

<narrator voice>He wasn't surprised</narrator voice>

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posixUncompliant@reddit

I've had to write the offboarding process for myself, twice now. Once was for a layoff, even. I thought it was hilarious. But I knew they'd screwed themselves over with the cuts they were making, and my boss knew it. The part where they had to reach out and make client changes, they skipped that part. I found out later when my old boss called me and asked me if I remembered how to access that client's systems. I was less than pleased that I had the liability of that kind of access, there was incredibly sensitive data on the machines, and they'd already had a catastrophic breach.

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immortalsteve@reddit

On Tuesday this week I had a meeting with a manager to kick off a project with another team in the org. On Wednesday, that manager was let go for cause. Wild world out there, man.

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Cryptic1911@reddit

I had a couple good ones from probably 2000-2001, so it was a bit oldschool without much oversight. Usually just a phonecall or an email, hey disable this account, etc etc. I got an email that said disable so and so's account. So, I turn it off. I get a phonecall like 5 minutes later from that person like hey, I can't log in, am I being fired? I'm going uh... uhh, no we're having domain problems and it's only affecting random people. Then I call the hr person, only to find out her and a couple other people just got in the car and are currently driving to the next state over to let the person go. Talk about putting the cart before the horse Also had another one where they let this guy go and he said oh, I have some files on my computer that I need to get before I leave. The manager hands him the laptop and then walks all the way to the other end of the building to me and say oh hey, we let bob go. He's got his laptop, so you should probably go watch and make sure he doesn't do anything. I get down there and he's deleted a ton of shit already. Of course, the manager was like omg what are we gonna do? I said you're gonna buy some software to try and undelete this shit and pray you get some of it back. We were able to get some of it back, but he'd moved shit around and copied some files, so some things got partially nuked in the process and weren't retrievable

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leexgx@reddit

Well.The firing coat that worker a lot more then just his paycheck (police should have been called and taken the ex worker to court)

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Cryptic1911@reddit

they may have. not sure, but not my problem

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SixGunSlingerManSam@reddit

I got hired as a contractor for a former employer once so they could fire their CTO without anyone finding out including their sysadmins. It was weird AF, but hey 100 bucks is 100 bucks.

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NorthernVenomFang@reddit

At least once a year this type of thing happens. I somehow got pulled into a term process on one of our executives; one of the C levels needed every email they sent to and received from this executive... That was 2 months before it happened, needless to say HR did not terminate the exec, but said exec went on a surprisingly long term level of absence with no return date... It's been 6 months said execs positions has been filled (not a back/temp fill).... Yet everyone is still expecting the exec to come back, well except HR, the C levels, and myself. It sucks having to deal with this stuff, as it takes time out of my job duties, but it needs to be done, it's just business.

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DrapedInVelvet@reddit

Everytime there was layoffs at my old gig, a coworker ran ldap queries against AD and compared them against a version he did a nightly report on to see who was getting let go/got let go.

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Iheartbaconz@reddit

I had another guy ask me to unlock his admin account. I went and unlocked it for him and he made the joke about being let go. We get emails when terms happen. His came in and he replied back in before he got got force logged out and told me me “yep, I’m out good luck dude” I didn’t even get to talk to my lead/mentor till he called me on my cell after. I had worked along side him for 5 years. Our company got merged with another and he was deemed redundant. Mostly like it was because our director and him clashed. He was proactive and tried to bring up issues to management and well they apparently didn’t like that. I’m still there but i do the bare minimum nowadays

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FullMetal_55@reddit

weirdest one for me... being told that by the boss, and told to disable his account, go turn off his pc as soon as I'm given "the signal" (aka the boss walking up, nodding to me, and grabbing the other guy for a "meeting in his office".) meanwhile I'm trying to hide my screen a bit, to not tip him off... (and my manager hated when the monitors were turned away from the screen)... guy comes out of the meeting, asks me "did you know?" yeah... like 10 minutes before you did...

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OtiseMaleModel@reddit

I'm still mad at the other guy who knew I was getting shitcanned before I did. I dont know if it was because he was acting so nice the day of. Or really the main reason I got fired is because I couldn't carry him as a senior sys admin who had been with the company for 20+ years and couldn't renew a certificate. I dunno, you'll never feel too fond of most people for a company that fires you I guess

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ChampOfTheUniverse@reddit

I was a part of a two-man Admin team and we had a lot of automation and alerts in our chat to trigger when new user and term requests came in. Unfortunately, we knew something was up and had suspected layoffs were on the horizon, so I was sort of mentally prepared over the last few weeks. One morning I saw my own termination request from HR come in along with dozens of my colleagues and it felt like a punch in the gut. I had to sit and wait around 45 minutes for my turn to get read a script and let go by my director. It felt so cold the way it happened. Not a "thank you", or a "good luck" even. I used that time to shoot folks emails regarding tasks that would need to be taken over. On that day I lost any will to be loyal to any company again. I still vowed to continue being a professional but I was always going to put myself first from then on.

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activekitsune@reddit

I thought I got laid off when my card at the entrance wasn't working; this was due to a coworker joking prior about this and... the card machine was down 😆

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badlybane@reddit

Usually with IT if its someone with a ton a access and responsibility. They get invited somewhere off site. there the person doing the firing and an HR person will have lunch and at the end the cell phone, badge, and all that is collected right there. They go home from there. Personal stuff will be collected for them and sent to him. Often times they'll send like everything including pens, just to avoid the person going back onsite.

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tk42967@reddit (OP)

With the amount of toys and junk I have. That would get expensive for my employer. LOL

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badlybane@reddit

far less scary than letting someone with a potential black hat skill set with initmate knowledge of your systems flaws and vulnerabilities anywhere near your building. Hell all he'd likely need is an app on his personal cell phone and get close enough to pick up the wifi off the direct access printer on the third floor that had a CVE with no resolution on it.

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tk42967@reddit (OP)

This guy's job title was "Security Engineer".

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Thecardinal74@reddit

>The thing that's creepy is that it's been nearly 2 hours and no official announcement. Why? It's not your team so it's not your business. or because it's a rough enough time for all involved without calling attention to it. Or maybe he was still in the building dealing with HR/offboarding stuff and didn't want people gawking when he did leave because an announcement was made. The people left behind aren't owed an explanation. Being in a corporation is like being in the mob. Don't bring up his name, he's gone now.

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-elmatic@reddit

Sounds like my department right now where the same employee has come back from FMLA for a few hours before they send her on FMLA again lmfao

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pockypimp@reddit

At my previous job my coworker and I had to participate in what we called "Black Friday". HR manager comes to IT, our boss is on vacation so it's just the two of us. So HR manager asks for some privacy, we go into our boss' office and the HR manager lays out that they have 6 people they're laying off that day. He has the forms we use to disable accounts and give the necessary access to the managers and stuff, he just wanted to work out the how to time everything. We have him set up a schedule with us, which person, what time their meeting was going to start for the surprise offboarding. Had him submit the tickets to the Help Desk and we called the Help Desk to just create the tickets and send them up to us.

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Happy_Kale888@reddit

You get official announcements??? The thing that's creepy is that it's been nearly 2 hours and no official announcement.

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SketchyTone@reddit

I'm an HD Admin (no SA between director and I). I've been through seven layoffs, also got put on a PIP and survived all of them. I recently had to go through turning off directors access as we were a team of 3, Director, HD, and HD.... CIO isn't technical but needed me to assist in shutting off his access immediately as he trusts me heavily. Used a break glass account and got PIM approved for global to remove everything. Lots of manual work needed to be done as I've only created a script to offboard users with no elevated permissions. I'm still an HD Admin after several months of no SA, heavily elevated permissions and responsibilities :) I'm just holding out for my wedding if nothing changes.

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CountGeoffrey@reddit

> 2 hours and no official announcement more than one place i've been at, the normal mode is there is *never* an official announcement

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PowerShellGenius@reddit

This is what's awesome about where I work. The just over a dozen of us in IT are our own dues-free union and we negotiate a collective bargaining contract with the school district. That contract does not allow termination on <30 days notice. In addition to the 30 day notice requirement, unusual circumstances are required to terminate other than at the end of the fiscal year. Of course, this doesn't prevent the surprise revoking of admin access & assigning to unprivileged tasks for 30 days, if they are really worried about someone. But we are all aware the penalties for sabotaging government systems aren't worth it even if we were fired. If it is a layoff / reduction in positions, other rules apply, and the whole bargaining unit needs to be told a reduction in headcount is under consideration before the final board decision is made and can show up at the meeting to justify our existence. We have never had to do that, but it's in the contract in case they try something. This is all theoretical as I have never seen anyone fired in our department.

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barkingcat@reddit

In sysadmin world, it's super common for this to happen. In some sysadmin roles, you see the CEO being fired in real time by the board. This is part of the job.

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brother_yam@reddit

The company I work for has secrecy built into the fabric of it. People leave (various ways fired, quit, etc.) and nothing is said. Nothing from HR, nothing from mgmt. Sometimes we don't even get an off-board ticket. Frustrating as hell.

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ripzipzap@reddit

Oh I've got a horrendously awkward story about the beginning of my career: I enrolled in an apprenticeship program run by a "talent incubator" in my city and was given a placement as a sysadmin at a small-scale high-volume sauce manufacturer in an adjacent city. Day 1 that I'm on site I go to the office with my assigned apprenticeship project manager who also kind of functions as something akin to an academic advisor. I get introduced to the crew, meet with the head of IT who I had only met virtually and get a rundown of what is expected of me. My job was to shadow some guy they had functioning in a tier II/tier III help desk role well below his pay grade. The idea as it was explained to me was that I'd learn from him for a few weeks and as problems came up that I had seen before I'd start to handle them myself so that he could move on to doing the more valuable stuff that was associated with his title. I get given a company laptop and shown my desk next to my assumed mentor, I start watching a series of training videos that prepare me to be sent out on the manufacturing floor to fix computers and network equipment out there (stuff like why you shouldn't sneeze or trim your fingernails into the open vats of ranch dressing, how to properly wear a hair net, wash your hands, etc.). All the while my mentor is chatting up a storm with anyone who passes by his cube, when my advisor sends me a slack message via the apprenticeship firm's slack room. It said something like *Please keep in mind that this office is semi open, and I can confirm that sound travels further than you'd think here*. 3 days in and the head of IT really likes me, I'm eating lunch at my desk when I see a ticket enter the queue that reads **Offboarding: \[guy I was shadowing\],** and by the time I click on it, it's been hidden. The next day, bro is really quiet, the vibes are way off. I keep wondering what I did to offend him when I get another slack message from my advisor *Have time for a quick call?* I get into a call with him pretty quickly, he confirms with me like 3 or 4 times that I'm wearing headphones or that I'm somewhere very private. He explains the situation to me: **my mentor is getting the boot in two weeks**, and the new plan is to absorb and archive as much practical info I can squeeze out of him and then be the new head of servicedesk (as an apprentice). My advisor makes sure to stress that I shouldn't adopt any of his mannerisms or attitudes about various things, and don't accept any methods he gives me as gospel if they seem needlessly inefficient. Apparently the head of IT was not a big fan of mentor's attitude or approach and would rather take a gamble on molding me more or less from the ground up. Two incredibly awkward weeks later (me & the mentor never directly addressed the situation until his last day) I'm flying solo at an apprenticeship with no mentor. Six months later I'm hired by the new MSP that the company adopts as the MSP's on site representative & I'm able to quit my second job. Eventually got hired by the company itself.

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Olleye@reddit

Not your job, not your business.

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tk42967@reddit (OP)

That's why I kept it under my hat and went on about my work.

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Olleye@reddit

This is the way. A „curious“ sysadmin is to be fired immediately; following our company rules.

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tk42967@reddit (OP)

This is the way.

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scriptmonkey420@reddit

On the other side. It's scary as fuck if you are on a messaging app and the account goes disabled before your manager talks to you. Had that happen at the beginning of the pandemic when I worked for a travel agency.

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Marsupial_Chemical@reddit

We developed set termination procedures at our institution a few years back with HR giving input on every step. They get rolled out to show auditors every audit. Problem is that HR ignores them when the time comes and just phones the dept heads to “kill access, don’t let anyone know until we authorize release”. When n the alert comes up in the SOC on the SIEM, we usually phone them and ttey get pissed. We just reference the checklist for the term and tell them that they were supposed to let us know in advance.

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cats_are_the_devil@reddit

Maybe he's getting a promotion and he doesn't need his engineer account access anymore. It's not always a bad thing... Okay, now that we have laughed... Obviously they are outsourcing all of you.

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hideogumpa@reddit

They [fixed the glitch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUE0PPQI3is)

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Ssakaa@reddit

Yeah, OP's just seeing cached info since their account was disabled right *after* that backup ran... (/s? I hope?)

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MacMemo81@reddit

I had to disable my team lead's account 2h before he was called into the official meeting once.

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BeagleBackRibs@reddit

I can't login! Well you don't have to worry about that anymore

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TheRubiksDude@reddit

When we had layoffs last year I was one of the ones thrown into a group chat to make sure everything was going to work in advance. I knew 4 days in advance my boss and one of my coworkers was getting let go. At another job my boss told my coworkers on a Friday one of our other coworkers was getting fired that following Monday. I was on vacation so the only one that didn’t know in advance. Stuff sucks all the way around.

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orezybedivid@reddit

Back in 2012-2019, I worked for an oil and gas company. This story takes place 2014-2016, exact time range is fuzzy at this piont. Oil field was down and our company through many of its locations were doing quarterly RIF's (reduction in force). Well, someone created a termination automation that would allow HR to fill out the term forms, with a specific time and date on them.....sort of. I guess somewhere in testing, it worked, as long as the term date and time were no more than 24 hours out from the term form being filled out. Most of the layoffs would happen either right before lunch or right after. Well, I always went to lunch at 11 and would be back for 12. Right as I am about to walk out, I get a call from someone asking if they were being fired. To which I respond, "How would I know that?" User tells me they tried to log into their computer after a break and their computer says "Account is disabled." I go to AD, sure enough, the account is disabled, along with 15 others. At this point, I call HR and ask "Are you guys doing layoffs today?" Now, mind you, HR is across the hall, 2 doors down from my office. 2 inch solid wood doors to my office are always closed, so sound is low. Of course, HR gives the company line "No. What makes you ask that?" I tell him I got a call about an account disabled, and there are like 15 accounts disabled. By the time I start naming names, I hear shoes screeching through the hall and an abrupt knock on the door. HR is totally panicked. That was the time that all the people being layed off that day, got tipped off. Overall, I don't think it became a bigger deal than I was expecting it to be.

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Historical_Share8023@reddit

>By the time I start naming names, I hear shoes screeching through the hall and an abrupt knock on the door. HR is totally panicked 😮😮😮

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steinerscout@reddit

Funny story from that time period: I had a buddy at a midstream construction company during the 2014-2016 crash who found out he was being laid off six weeks ahead of time because the CFO asked him to fix his email, and while the tech was fixing Outlook the CFO got emailed about tech's layoff date.

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theborgman1977@reddit

Working for a small MSP I get this all the time. Sometime month in advance. Being small we are pretty close to our clients. It is literally torcher on my brain. Also, deleting AD users has some issue in its self. If you AD sync the users mailbox even those converted to shared will be deleted when you remove them from the synced group or delete AD account.

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tk42967@reddit (OP)

We have a process for that. All accounts get 3+ months cool off before deletion. All licensing (handled by AD groups) are removed before deletion. The manager or their delegate has 3 months to deal with things like mail when the user is disabled before it's gone for good. For high value accounts, it's longer. We're nearly at a year with the former Chief Legal Officer.

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notonyanellymate@reddit

Yes this type of thing happens a lot for IT Managers. In my experience.

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