Screwing up at work (IT)

[Murpheeee]

Hypothetical situation:

You work as a systems admin in a company.
One of your duties is to carry out backups of server.
One day a HDD in server fails.
The backup tape has not not been working properly and no complete backups have been carried out for a while.
Important data is lost.

Would you expect to be fired?

 

[Orsorum]

If you were deliberately negligent in your duties, then yes.

 

[CADsortaGUY]

First things first....

You don't happen to be one of MY "IT" guys do you?

Something similar almost just happened to us

CkG

Edit - I probably saved my "IT" guy's job by telling him to check on our sever (we are in a remote office with no real server access) So YES you should be canned - sorry

 

[Spac3d]

Of course.

How can you know the tape back up drive is not working ... and not replace it? It isn't even your money.

 

[poopaskoopa]

This has happened before, and he's still here.

 

[Murpheeee]

how about if you were not deliberately negligent.....something had gone wrong with back up software say....but I guess it was your duty to check it was working

 

[Gunbuster]

One day a HDD in server fails.

A drive? as in only 1? I would fire them for not running raid 5

 

[Jzero]

Originally posted by: Murpheeee
how about if you were not deliberately negligent.....something had gone wrong with back up software say....but I guess it was your duty to check it was working

Depends on the history and the company. Where I work, if it was the first time it happened, we'd definitely yell at you, but we wouldn't fire you. If it's happened before and it's clear that if you had been checking you would have pre-empted the problem, we'd at least take you off the backup system, but we may even can you.

 

[Tallgeese]

Originally posted by: Murpheeee
how about if you were not deliberately negligent.....something had gone wrong with back up software say....but I guess it was your duty to check it was working

If that was that person's sole responsibility...then I would expect serious consequences....prolly directly proportional to the importance/value of the lost data.

 

[Beau]

Originally posted by: Murpheeee
Would you expect to be fired?

Yes.

 

[Murpheeee]

Originally posted by: Gunbuster

One day a HDD in server fails.

A drive? as in only 1? I would fire them for not running raid 5

well I don't know specifics.....I was told "a hard drive failed" but I can't imagine a server without some kind of RAID array

 

[BooGiMaN]

Instead of posting it on ATOT you should be hiding the evidence and trying to figure out how to pin int on the other guy dont you know anything about how to be a negligent engineer?

Reason for dismissal: posting on ATOT while backup drive is bursting into flames and backup tape system is unplugged

 

[RGN]

RAID is good, but I remember a time when I took a server down with a RAID 1 setup to replace a failed drive, and the other fvckin drive died. We only lost half a days work, but it was still a pisser. I couldn't believe it. How ofter do 2 drives die within 24 hours from the same box?!?!? Blech, never make that mistake again.


oh, and no-one was fired.

 

[Murpheeee]

Originally posted by: BooGiMaN
Instead of posting it on ATOT you should be hiding the evidence and trying to figure out how to pin int on the other guy dont you know anything about how to be a negligent engineer?

Reason for dismissal: posting on ATOT while backup drive is bursting into flames and backup tape system is unplugged

This is not ME we are talking about

 

[BooGiMaN]

Originally posted by: Murpheeee

Originally posted by: BooGiMaN
Instead of posting it on ATOT you should be hiding the evidence and trying to figure out how to pin int on the other guy dont you know anything about how to be a negligent engineer?

Reason for dismissal: posting on ATOT while backup drive is bursting into flames and backup tape system is unplugged

This is not ME we are talking about

sure its not

riiight gotcha

I am just messing with you..let us know what happens to that guy

 

[vi edit]

It's the IT person's responsibility to ensure that backups are successfully backing up - this includes disaster recovery situations where you try and reload your precious data back from tape onto a test box.

If you can't do it successfully it's time to make sure that it will.

Touchy situation. You can't prevent failures, but you sure as hell can prevent total data loss.

If it was me in that situation, and I lost a week or more worth of data, it's a pretty safe bet I'd be putting resume's into places.

 

[Murpheeee]

Originally posted by: BooGiMaN

Originally posted by: Murpheeee

Originally posted by: BooGiMaN
Instead of posting it on ATOT you should be hiding the evidence and trying to figure out how to pin int on the other guy dont you know anything about how to be a negligent engineer?

Reason for dismissal: posting on ATOT while backup drive is bursting into flames and backup tape system is unplugged

This is not ME we are talking about

sure its not

riiight gotcha

I am just messing with you..let us know what happens to that guy

He WAS fired

And more.....I don't want to go into specifics here....don't know who reads this
PM me if you are interested

 

[squirrel dog]

No worse,transfered to sales.

 

[Yossarian]

Same exact situation happened at my company and more than one IT guy was fired.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: Murpheeee
how about if you were not deliberately negligent.....something had gone wrong with back up software say....but I guess it was your duty to check it was working

It would be forgiveable IF you were at least checking the reports / logs from the backup software.

If you've just been popping in tapes and never bothering to read any of the logs, you deserve at least a reprimand and a black mark on your record. If the data is important and you knew (or should have known) to check the logs then you may well deserve to be fired.