Being "Back Doored" At Work

"Joe" sends in the following email:

I experienced rather unprofessional communications from "Sally" the other day in regard to an issue she was having with a computer system I manage. Having a zero tolerance policy for unprofessionalism, I subsequently contacted her manager, "John," in confidence, via email. The reply amazed me.

First, John's response was canned and did not address my concern at all. Second, and most surprisingly, John copied Sally on the response, effectively allowing Sally to see what I had sent to John about her bad behavior!

Why the hell would someone do something like this, other than to intentionally throw someone under the bus? He completely undermined my trust in him and will surely have created animosity between his employee and me. Anyways, I thought you would have some experience with these types of issues.

Wow - did you get back-doored. There are two ways to look at this:

1. Giving the Manager the Benefit of the Doubt - By copying Sally and sending you boilerplate, he is letting her know that he got a message about her unprofessionalism, but isn't doing anything about it at this time. The manager is hoping that Sally sees this and takes it as a warning.

This is not the right way to do management, and would be employed by someone incompetent or unwilling to confront employee problems directly. If you interpret it this way, the manager is being naive rather than evil, and he isn't taking in account the secondary effects between you and her.


2. Not Giving BOD - In this scenario, he doesn't really care what she did, what you think, or anything else. He is protecting his employee against you, essentially, and he is letting you know this by copying her on the email and sending you a "no big deal" response.

Either way, you are going to have to be very careful how you deal with this pair in the future.

What I would probably do is somehow communicate the situation with your management before John or Sally has the opportunity to do it for you. Don't bring it up as a problem or something your manager needs to get involved in, but just let him know the situation and what happened. This way you get to frame the situation before anyone else gets to. Basically CYA.

As for John and Sally, you will just have to be careful with both in the future. I wouldn't change how you work or act around them, but you are going to have to be circumspect how you handle future issues. If you get another nastygram from Sally, you know it was scenario 2 that you are facing, and in this case you may be forced to get your management involved.

Either way, don't expect a Christmas card from Sally this year.


Anybody else have any comments?

Revenge Against Telemarketers

Dutch Driver sends in the following audio link, which is quite hilarious: Telemarketer Nightmare

Definitely Not Celebrating the 300 Million Milestone

I found this headline ironic:

300 Millionth U.S. Citizen Stirs Confusion (AP) The nation's population officially hit 300 million at 7:46 a.m. EDT today. But there weren't any wild celebrations. Why?

Easy answer: higher population density sucks. We have crowded roads, crowded stores and crowded airports. Even vacation locations are crowded with people: crowded beaches, crowded parks, crowded slopes. Even people who want to go camping these days have to "reserve" camping spots. And as the U.S. population continues to expand it is going to get worse.

People who say "there is plenty of open land in the U.S." really don't understand that all that open land is where no one wants to live. I flew over miles and miles of open desert for three hours flying from Texas to California last week, seeing all that open land that will still be empty 100 years from now. All these new people are going to live in the same areas people are already in today, which means that density is going to continue to climb until the U.S. resembles the human ant hills of present day Asia.

When people ask me where I want to retire, I usually tell them that I am looking for one of those countries that are supposedly going to be devoid of population in the next few decades. And the areas that will experience the largest population drop by 2025 will be Eastern and Southern Europe. I think I will start building my dacha now.

David vs. Goliath in an IP Dispute

Transmeta Sues Intel Over Patent Infringement

This will be interesting watch. Transmeta will likely run out of money before they get to the end, but whole companies have been established on less.

The HP Fiasco - A Lesson in Office Politics

The WSJ has a great article today (paid link only) on the HP "pretexting" fiasco. The article covers the background and timeline of the events, but reading between the lines I think one thing is clear: this was an example of office politics played at the highest level.

Board Member Tom Perkins used his influence to point Chairman Dunn down the path of squashing board leaks. Once the hook was in, he worked to set it in deeper by tacitly encouraging it, leading Dunn to believe that it would settle internal board strife. Once Dunn ran out a good length of line overextending herself, he reeled in the catch by exposing the breadth of the investigation, not only forcing Dunn off the board, but ruining her reputation and getting her indicted.

Dunn is ultimately responsible for her own actions, but Perkins was behind the scene, setting up the stage for Dunn's self-immolation. This episode will probably be turned into a book on business ethics, but what it should be is a case study in Machiavellian plotting.