How would you have reacted if someone reformatted

HCL Domino Domino Forum
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the machine your Notes server was on?

From the Shark Tank:

http://www.computerworld.com/departments/opinions/sharktank/0,4885,93052,00.html

Freshly graduated pilot fish gets a job testing software, and he arrives just as cubicles are being rearranged to make room for new employees.

“Two weeks later, I needed a Pentium 133 for a test I was running,” says fish. “So I asked my boss where I could find one. He said I could take the one next to this other developer’s desk.”

Fish grabs the PC, boots it up and discovers it’s configured as a Lotus Notes server. “I couldn’t remember anyone using a Notes server for anything, so I grabbed my trusty boot floppy and went to work,” he says.

Next day, one of the software developers comes through – looking for her Notes server.

“I came forward and said I had formatted it, that my boss had told me that I could use the PC next to this other developer’s desk,” says fish. "Turns out my boss meant his old desk, which I had no concept of because when I started, they had already moved him to his new digs.

"I stayed that night as they called a former employee to come in and reinstall the Notes server. Good thing the developer had database caching on the client; she had a local copy of her database.

"But after paying out an insane amount of money for that former employee to come back, I don’t think they ever added that Notes server to the backup routine. And it sat in the same cubicle with no indication that it’s an important production machine.

“And I earned the nickname of ‘Notes’ for the duration of my time there.”

Now personally, I would have asked some questions of at least one person before reformatting the machine…

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Subject: How would you have reacted if someone reformatted…

Two weeks on the job, and he thinks he already knows everything that goes on! lol

This is why Notes servers should be locked up securely!

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Subject: How would you have reacted if someone reformatted…

Could be worse, one day at a company I was working for, I come in, turn on the computer, and it beeps at me. After some head-scratching, I eventually pop the cover off, and lo and behold, there is no CPU inside. It had been put in a client’s machine.

This was the same outfit that set me up a Oracle on Novell server for testing, but didn’t give it enough memory for Novell to load the math libraries. I ended up having to bring an 8MB stick from home every day, which in those days was 250 bucks worth of RAM.

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Subject: How would you have reacted if someone reformatted…

I would fire the employee on the spot. Reformatting a machine without being absolutely positive it was the correct one could be disasterous to a company, and I wouldn’t keep the person around to find out what they might do next.

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Subject: RE: How would you have reacted if someone reformatted…

That’s a bit unfair. Don’t tell me you’ve never made a mistake before. Plus, he’s a fresh Grad…what do you expect him to do everything right the first time? Most likely he’s still in his academic mindset.

If you read this line: “So I asked my boss where I could find one. He said I could take the one next to this other developer’s desk.”

IMHO, I’d fire the boss for not supervising properly, for giving vague directions, and for not advising the newbie to CHECK first. The boss, being the boss, should have the experience to know better.

Remind me never to work for you.

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Subject: You may be right

I guess I have been in a few too many situations where the results were disasterous. In one, a machine was completely wrecked by a newbie who thought he knew what he was doing. Our company lost data that had been backed up improperly, by this same person, that cost us about three million dollars. Now, trust me, several people shared the blame for that fiasco, as they would in this case, but there had been warning signs about this person already and everybody had said, “Give him another chance” more than once. Four months into his job, he almost takes the company under.

Another time, an employee who was not new but was new at Notes admin started a replication that took down a large corporation for about a day. Not sure what the cost was, or how one would calculate it, but he didn’t like how long lookups were taking on the address book, so he deleted most of the names in the address book. Should he have known better? Sure. In this case, he was not fired or punished, but I certainly didn’t let him near any of my machines.

At yet another company, we had an employee reformat a client machine without realizing it was the one with the latest source code for a critical custom project. In that case, the employee who didn’t back it up got most of the heat, but the company ate a pretty big loss in reconstructing the lost code.

As I said, you may be right. I may be overly judgemental in this regard, and I agree that the boss should never give such a directive to a new employee, but I still would not want an employee around who would not double check before reformatting any machine, server, client, or whatever. A certain degree of caution is an important ingredient in an employee, and sometimes you have to get burned badly to learn that lesson.