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> I considered that an appropriate punishment would have been a pay cut for a few months This can absolutely cripple a family, I'd be really cautious wishing t

by ghxst 1y ago

> I considered that an appropriate punishment would have been a pay cut for a few months This can absolutely cripple a family, I'd be really cautious wishing that upon someone if they wronged you without malice, though I completely understand where you are coming from. In this case at the very least, I'd want to know what went wrong and what they’re doing to make sure it doesn’t happen again. From a software-engineer’s standpoint, there’s probably a bunch of low-hanging fruit that could have prevented this in the first place. If all they sent was a (generic) apology letter, I'd have switched banks too. How did you pursue the matter?

adrian_b 1y ago
After the big surprise of seeing at work a list with all my personal purchases included in a big set of documents to which I, together with a great number of other colleagues, had access, I went immediately to the bank and I reported the fact. After some days had passed without seeing any consequence, I went again, this time discussing with some supervising employee, who attempted to convince me that this is some kind of minor mistake and there is no need to do anything about it. However, I pointed to the precise law paragraphs condemning what they have done and I threatened with legal action. This escalation resulted in me being invited to a bigger branch of the bank, to a discussion with someone in a management position. This time they were extremely ass-kissing, I was shown also the guilty employee, who apologized herself, and eventually I let it go, though there were no clear guarantees that they will change their behavior to prevent such mistakes in the future. Apparently the origin of the mistake had been a badly formulated database query, which had returned a set of accounts for which the transactions had to be reported to my employer. I had been receiving during the same time interval some money from my employer into my private account, corresponding to salary and travel expenses, and somehow those transactions were matched by the bad database query, grouping my private account with the company accounts. Then the set of account numbers was used to generate reports, without further verification of the account ownership.
- ghxst 1y ago
  Thanks for sharing. Sounds like they have (hopefully _had_) a really messy system in place. And just to be clear, I didn’t mean to downplay what happened to you, I completely understand how serious it is.
- Xss3 1y ago
  Behavior isn't what needs to change here. It's a poor system design. Humans make mistakes. Systems prevent mistakes. Do you think the mistake would have happened if a machine checked the numbers vs the address? How about if a 2nd person looked it over? How about both? In this case a computer could have easily flagged an address mismatch between your account number and the receiver (your work).
  - ghxst 1y ago
    Thank you, that's what I intended to say.

by ghxst 1y ago

adrian_b 1y ago

After the big surprise of seeing at work a list with all my personal purchases included in a big set of documents to which I, together with a great number of other colleagues, had access, I went immediately to the bank and I reported the fact. After some days had passed without seeing any consequence, I went again, this time discussing with some supervising employee, who attempted to convince me that this is some kind of minor mistake and there is no need to do anything about it. However, I pointed to the precise law paragraphs condemning what they have done and I threatened with legal action. This escalation resulted in me being invited to a bigger branch of the bank, to a discussion with someone in a management position. This time they were extremely ass-kissing, I was shown also the guilty employee, who apologized herself, and eventually I let it go, though there were no clear guarantees that they will change their behavior to prevent such mistakes in the future. Apparently the origin of the mistake had been a badly formulated database query, which had returned a set of accounts for which the transactions had to be reported to my employer. I had been receiving during the same time interval some money from my employer into my private account, corresponding to salary and travel expenses, and somehow those transactions were matched by the bad database query, grouping my private account with the company accounts. Then the set of account numbers was used to generate reports, without further verification of the account ownership.

ghxst 1y ago
Thanks for sharing. Sounds like they have (hopefully _had_) a really messy system in place. And just to be clear, I didn’t mean to downplay what happened to you, I completely understand how serious it is.
Xss3 1y ago
Behavior isn't what needs to change here. It's a poor system design. Humans make mistakes. Systems prevent mistakes. Do you think the mistake would have happened if a machine checked the numbers vs the address? How about if a 2nd person looked it over? How about both? In this case a computer could have easily flagged an address mismatch between your account number and the receiver (your work).
- ghxst 1y ago
  Thank you, that's what I intended to say.