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> Companies don't have to send fired employees home immediately, they only do this because they don't trust the individual to act appropriately. Companies don'

> Companies don't have to send fired employees home immediately, they only do this because they don't trust the individual to act appropriately. Companies don't have agency or feelings. If company leaders expect people to do their jobs properly only because they are getting paid, it's already an institutional failure, because it's not taking into account that individuals are fallible. If the company does not have an established process to protect itself from human error, whether accidental or intentional (like an disgruntled employee going rogue), when shit hits the fan all its leaders can do is to find blame in the individual. But instead of blaming people and hoping that we can force everyone to avoid mistakes, a better alternative would be to design a system that can withstand human nature and fix the institutional process so that that error doesn't happen again. The problem is that to do this takes time and most company CEOs can not see much beyond the next fiscal year.

StreetChief 3y ago
> when shit hits the fan all its leaders can do is to find blame in the individual. Or they could, like, take responsibility for their actions that led them to that point?
- rglullis 3y ago
  They could, but do they?
  - StreetChief 3y ago
    Very rarely; maybe i misunderstood your point. You're saying it's an institutional failure, but not one of the leaders? So, it's the governments fault they allowed corporate structures to function this way? Or maybe you want to blame the board of directors?
_heimdall 3y ago
I could have been more clear here. When I mentioned companies there I was referring to the people running the companies. Of course a company has no feelings or agency, companies are just a legal structure around a collection of people. Don't get me started on the absurdity of arguing that companies are people, that ruling was terrible. I don't think its reasonable to assume that a company could ever have full safeguards in place to ensure that a bad actor employee could never cause meaningful damage, unless you are okay with a completely trustless system. Companies must trust their employees at some level, generally the level of trust grows in relation to the employee's responsibilities. Its unreasonable to assume that any system can be 100% foolproof, if that's a requirement it just shouldn't exist. In the case of companies, they have to accept dome level of risk that employees can cause damage, whether intentional or not.
- rglullis 3y ago
  > Companies must trust their employees at some level, generally the level of trust grows in relation to the employee's responsibilities. Hard disagree. People should be trusted with the things they need to perform their role, and no more than that. You would not give access of a production database to a CTO just because they have more responsibilities than a sysadmin, and any CTO that tries to bludgeon their way into getting access to it should be considered unfit for work.
  - _heimdall 3y ago
    It sounds like we actually see that the same, I'm trying to make a slightly different point. Say I'm a software developer specifically working on the frontend library for an authentication service. The company needs to trust me with access to parts of the system and infrastructure pertinent to that feature. I very much agree that I should be locked out of other areas that I don't need for the job, for example I shouldn't have access to employee records, accounting, etc. Once I am fired, though, the company has to continue to trust me to not misuse the parts of the system that I do already have access to. If I am fired but allowed to stay for a transition period and my permissions aren't revoked immediately, the company is trusting me. If I am fired and immediately blocked, its a sign that the company didn't trust me rather than an indication of my own mistrust for the company/institution.
    - rglullis 3y ago
      You could continue to work on things, but your access would be set to read-only and you'd lose commit rights, or you'd be working on a completely separate branch and as part of the transition process someone else on the team would have to be able to report they have successfully merged worked from your tree to the main one.
      - _heimdall 3y ago
        Going back to my original point in this thread, aren't you describing how the post-firing lockout is based on the company's mistrust of the employee rather than the other way around, right? My point was never that there aren't security protocols that could be used, only that its not relevant whether the employee trusts the company in that scenario.

StreetChief 3y ago

> when shit hits the fan all its leaders can do is to find blame in the individual. Or they could, like, take responsibility for their actions that led them to that point?

rglullis 3y ago
They could, but do they?
- StreetChief 3y ago
  Very rarely; maybe i misunderstood your point. You're saying it's an institutional failure, but not one of the leaders? So, it's the governments fault they allowed corporate structures to function this way? Or maybe you want to blame the board of directors?

_heimdall 3y ago

I could have been more clear here. When I mentioned companies there I was referring to the people running the companies. Of course a company has no feelings or agency, companies are just a legal structure around a collection of people. Don't get me started on the absurdity of arguing that companies are people, that ruling was terrible. I don't think its reasonable to assume that a company could ever have full safeguards in place to ensure that a bad actor employee could never cause meaningful damage, unless you are okay with a completely trustless system. Companies must trust their employees at some level, generally the level of trust grows in relation to the employee's responsibilities. Its unreasonable to assume that any system can be 100% foolproof, if that's a requirement it just shouldn't exist. In the case of companies, they have to accept dome level of risk that employees can cause damage, whether intentional or not.

rglullis 3y ago
> Companies must trust their employees at some level, generally the level of trust grows in relation to the employee's responsibilities. Hard disagree. People should be trusted with the things they need to perform their role, and no more than that. You would not give access of a production database to a CTO just because they have more responsibilities than a sysadmin, and any CTO that tries to bludgeon their way into getting access to it should be considered unfit for work.
- _heimdall 3y ago
  It sounds like we actually see that the same, I'm trying to make a slightly different point. Say I'm a software developer specifically working on the frontend library for an authentication service. The company needs to trust me with access to parts of the system and infrastructure pertinent to that feature. I very much agree that I should be locked out of other areas that I don't need for the job, for example I shouldn't have access to employee records, accounting, etc. Once I am fired, though, the company has to continue to trust me to not misuse the parts of the system that I do already have access to. If I am fired but allowed to stay for a transition period and my permissions aren't revoked immediately, the company is trusting me. If I am fired and immediately blocked, its a sign that the company didn't trust me rather than an indication of my own mistrust for the company/institution.
  - rglullis 3y ago
    You could continue to work on things, but your access would be set to read-only and you'd lose commit rights, or you'd be working on a completely separate branch and as part of the transition process someone else on the team would have to be able to report they have successfully merged worked from your tree to the main one.
    - _heimdall 3y ago
      Going back to my original point in this thread, aren't you describing how the post-firing lockout is based on the company's mistrust of the employee rather than the other way around, right? My point was never that there aren't security protocols that could be used, only that its not relevant whether the employee trusts the company in that scenario.