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"Why do we need a Security Director? Our security is fine, there's no problem, so why spend the money?" There's this weird dynamic in Information technology w

"Why do we need a Security Director? Our security is fine, there's no problem, so why spend the money?" There's this weird dynamic in Information technology where professionals doing their jobs really well result in there being no problems. When there is no problems there's not much attention and the lack of problems is devalued by management. Management value teams and managers who heroically solve big problems and issues. This is why companies can sometimes decide that their best people are not needed cause "all is so quiet" and fire them.

mc32 7y ago
I have no insight here, but given the NYT isn’t completely ignorant about technology, conspiratorially I might think it could be a way to push someone they didn’t want anymore out —we eliminated the position! (And we just created a new chief of “cyber” position, it’s totally different).
- MiroF 7y ago
  You always eliminate the position so you don't have to pay severance, oldest trick in the book.
  - zaphirplane 7y ago
    What is severances for if not for redundant positions
ALittleLight 7y ago
An odd corollary of this is how being kind of bad can cause massive problems that get the attention of high level people and lots of focus. If you can then fix, or help fix, the problems and dodge blame, it's really quite positive as you get to know the high level people you'll be able to leverage for promotion and career advancement.
qzervaas 7y ago
Kind of like how everybody thinks Y2K was a zeroburger because nothing catastrophic happened.
bigiain 7y ago
Management value teams and managers who engineer huge problems, blame them on someone else, and then pretend to heroically solve big problems and issues.
- busterarm 7y ago
  This doesn't just apply to engineering fields either :D
Gene_Parmesan 7y ago
This is where having someone on the executive team with technical experience can be such a boon. I know I'm lucky with this, but our exec (chief admin. officer) spent years in the IS ('s' is for services) department at our company -- starting as a VB dev back in the 80s. Luckily leadership is fairly forward-thinking for a nonprofit and we've been doing Angular and C# for years now. She consistently goes to bat for our director and has managed to get our CEO to understand the great difficulty involved in keeping an IS operation running smoothly. I mean, think about it. Hospitals wouldn't fire the surgeons for consistently executing error-free operations.
- dawnerd 7y ago
  When I worked at Discovery Channel I remember a call where the CEO admitted they have no idea what they're doing with regards to tech. Made my decision to leave seem smart looking back now that they've shut down Rev 3 (where I worked for a while) and the other division doing R&D. Was pretty frustrating to build stuff that would never see the light of day. TLDR; execs that know something about tech is super important.
donohoe 7y ago
Stop! It’s a re-structuring, not abandoning of infosec. This was one person out of many. Still sucks, but should be seen within context
hkai 7y ago
You are assuming that NYT doesn't care about security, whereas this might be as simple as this particular lady being fired. As others said, her boss and other information security people are still working there.

mc32 7y ago

I have no insight here, but given the NYT isn’t completely ignorant about technology, conspiratorially I might think it could be a way to push someone they didn’t want anymore out —we eliminated the position! (And we just created a new chief of “cyber” position, it’s totally different).

MiroF 7y ago
You always eliminate the position so you don't have to pay severance, oldest trick in the book.
- zaphirplane 7y ago
  What is severances for if not for redundant positions

ALittleLight 7y ago

An odd corollary of this is how being kind of bad can cause massive problems that get the attention of high level people and lots of focus. If you can then fix, or help fix, the problems and dodge blame, it's really quite positive as you get to know the high level people you'll be able to leverage for promotion and career advancement.

qzervaas 7y ago

Kind of like how everybody thinks Y2K was a zeroburger because nothing catastrophic happened.

bigiain 7y ago

Management value teams and managers who engineer huge problems, blame them on someone else, and then pretend to heroically solve big problems and issues.

busterarm 7y ago
This doesn't just apply to engineering fields either :D

Gene_Parmesan 7y ago

This is where having someone on the executive team with technical experience can be such a boon. I know I'm lucky with this, but our exec (chief admin. officer) spent years in the IS ('s' is for services) department at our company -- starting as a VB dev back in the 80s. Luckily leadership is fairly forward-thinking for a nonprofit and we've been doing Angular and C# for years now. She consistently goes to bat for our director and has managed to get our CEO to understand the great difficulty involved in keeping an IS operation running smoothly. I mean, think about it. Hospitals wouldn't fire the surgeons for consistently executing error-free operations.

dawnerd 7y ago
When I worked at Discovery Channel I remember a call where the CEO admitted they have no idea what they're doing with regards to tech. Made my decision to leave seem smart looking back now that they've shut down Rev 3 (where I worked for a while) and the other division doing R&D. Was pretty frustrating to build stuff that would never see the light of day. TLDR; execs that know something about tech is super important.

donohoe 7y ago

Stop! It’s a re-structuring, not abandoning of infosec. This was one person out of many. Still sucks, but should be seen within context

hkai 7y ago

You are assuming that NYT doesn't care about security, whereas this might be as simple as this particular lady being fired. As others said, her boss and other information security people are still working there.