• LCrawford (unregistered)

    compensation for impounding their company vehicles

    ??? the vehicles were owned by the company, why were they seen as employee property?

    Also, I thought zip crackers yielded the results faster than depicted here.

  • RobyMcAndrew (unregistered)

    I assume use of a company car was part of their contract, and removing that benefit during their notice period was a breach of contract.

  • DocMonster (unregistered)

    This is why no competes are a bunch of shit. You also typically find them in the worst environment to essentially keep you a prisoner there or punish you for daring to escape.

  • WonkoTheSane (unregistered)

    "I assume use of a company car was part of their contract, and removing that benefit during their notice period was a breach of contract."

    Excacty, It would be the same as withholding pay for their notice period.

  • Geg (unregistered) in reply to DocMonster

    Depends on how non competes are enforced. Here in Belgium this is regulated by law and the company which wants to enforce it has to pay half your wages for the time they want to delay your start at the new (competing) company. So if they want to prevent you from starting work at a competitor for a year after you quit, they have to pay you six months salary. AFAIK this clause, though present in most (if not all) IT contracts, is seldom enforced.

  • Paul Westerman (google)

    Surely a Star Wars fan would get Jango Fett's name right? ;o)

  • MaxArt (unregistered) in reply to Paul Westerman

    Maybe he was also a fan of Jenga, the game. Or maybe he meant the code was a wobbly pile or wooden bricks.

  • MoSlo (unregistered)

    The problem with burning bridges is that you often have to swim afterwards.

  • PeterK (unregistered) in reply to MoSlo

    Burning Bridges is fine, provided you get OFF them first.

  • Clint G. (unregistered)

    Holy crap, there are much easier and faster ways to crack a zip file.

  • Roman (unregistered)

    The REAL WTF is the fact, that they didn't crack the ZIP file easily.

    If the ZIP is encrypted and you have one or more files, which are inside, you can crack the ZIP password in seconds.

  • That one guy (unregistered)

    If the ones with the password were still under contract, couldn't they terminate employment the day they refused to give up the password? Maybe even charge them for time spent unlocking the file? Too me, it's like putting a lock on the server room door and refusing to let anyone have the combination.

  • t0pC0der (unregistered)

    I'm not sure where to begin with the WTF. Is it that I wasted my time reading another article written by Jane? Or that I didn't stop as soon as I saw 'Hiro'? “There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.”

  • Klimax (unregistered)

    Reminder: ZIP files can use AES.

    Anyway, pretty sure such nice action like those five did would be best ammunition for lawsuit. WTF are among other things lawyers. They failed at the job. Or WTF is management for not listening to them.

    if it weren't for that stunt I could have some sympathy to those five, but wit that stunt? It would be just to lose that gig...

  • (nodebb)

    Earlier in the article it was mentioned that there had been a timeframe in which there had been "security concerns" which caused a lot of things might've been locked down. This stunt with password-protected source code could have been a consequence of that action.

    The former 5 employees are not to blame for not wanting to give up the password: if it was a company mandate, it's up to the company to ensure that only authorised people still have access. In fact, those guys could've been in breach of contract if they had given them the password! After all, they are no longer authorised users and hence should no longer have possession over information about company assets.

  • (nodebb) in reply to Klimax

    Earlier in the article it was mentioned that there had been a timeframe in which there had been "security concerns" which caused a lot of things might've been locked down. This stunt with password-protected source code could have been a consequence of that action.

    The former 5 employees are not to blame for not wanting to give up the password: if it was a company mandate, it's up to the company to ensure that only authorised people still have access. In fact, those guys could've been in breach of contract if they had given them the password! After all, they are no longer authorised users and hence should no longer have possession over information about company assets.

    Addendum 2016-10-11 13:10: Sorry for the double post, was testing something as I got HTTP 500 errors...

  • Ralph Wiggum (unregistered) in reply to t0pC0der

    Good times when the GOP had reasonable presidential candidates ... I mean relatively speaking ...

  • Foo AKA Fooo (unregistered)

    Why didn't they just keep the old disks instead of wiping them? The hardware value of (I gather) years old, used, HDs should be in the low 2-digits, and putting in new, clean disks (or even SSDs) might not be a bad idea for a "new" workstation anyway. So at minimal cost they'd have useful backups (which, of course, would fail when needed, so the rest of the WTF would still play out the same ...).

  • Meir (unregistered) in reply to Ralph Wiggum

    ...i.e., ones who got called "Hitler" a lot anyway...

  • Barf4Eva (unregistered)

    "Moving to version control is hard. It's a necessary step as a company grows into developing more complex software"

    That really should simply say "It's a necessary step." New developers should get used to Version Control from day 1 and use it on personal projects as well.

  • Carl Witthoft (google)

    howz to do that PLZ? Purely for educational purposes, of course!
    ( replying to that Roman fellow)

  • Herby (unregistered)

    Moving to version control SHOULD be easy. Unfortunately in lots of cases it is more difficult than it needs to be. Done "correctly" it is almost automatic, and it should be "learned" (pounded into the brain with a hammer!) by anyone who "does" software. If you don't have some sort of version control you are ASKING for a big WTF moment. It may not happen now, but it will catch up with you.

    Me? I've done simple ones by just creating a date named directory, and putting changed files in there. Simple script. Sure it isn't GIT or SVN, and it probably wastes lots of space, but for the files (about 4 in the project) I use it for it works nicely.

    Life goes on!

  • linepro (unregistered)

    "moving to version control is hard" / 2moving to version control should be easy"

    I give you git.....

    Now we're not in Kansas anymore....

  • BLTCollector (unregistered) in reply to linepro

    Setting up a git project is easy.

    Using it is when things get tricky.

  • isthisunique (unregistered)

    I tend to ignore non-competes. They say things like you can't work in the same industry for many months after. I kid you not. Twice I have a contract like that and it's not reasonable so I just sign it. We have unreasonable contract law here so I can get away with that and I have a good level of sense about these things. I can't see that flying in court unless they have a real reason. It would be like not being able to work for Tesco as a shelf stacker for half a year after terminating a contract for the same job in Sainsburies most of the time. It's the kind of clause where the burden of proving a burden is on them.

    There have only been less case than I can count with one hand where there might be a competitor in the same industry I could go to where there would be some possible issues. That's because of knowledge of business plans relating to them. They aren't even in the same country half the time though. Often they are competitors, allies, clients and providers all at the same time.

    Even in those cases it's legally questionable because they should simply be able to hold you to the NDA instead. To dictate your job options based on mere potential, the risk factor would have to be high, likely and reasonably argued. Some cases for example, it may be quite difficult not to apply certain privileged knowledge incidentally.

    After writing that, I checked the law in my country and it basically says what I figured it would say. So there you go.

  • Leep (unregistered)

    I can't believe no one has WTF'd the fact that all that was in source control was a zip file! How do you get history on a single source file? How do you merge from working branches back to the main branch? They lost some of the most useful features of source control. :/

  • Pista (unregistered)

    "Then the budget cuts came, and the team continued to grow" - you don't see this too often...

  • mopan (unregistered) in reply to Pista

    Maybe budget cuts like laying off onshore workers and replacing them with two or more offshore workers...

  • Anon (unregistered)

    Why was Elle jealous? Was she dating her colleagues? And what exactly were these "benefits" being offered to them?

  • Dave (unregistered)

    Non-compete clauses are generally meaningless unless you're poaching your former employer's business (and are daft enough to let them know, and are in the same jurisdiction, etc etc).

  • jay (unregistered) in reply to Leep

    Yes: Putting one zip file into source control rather defeats about 90% of the advantages of source control. You now have one big binary file. So every update is "something somewhere changed", and that's about all it can tell you. You can't tell which individual source modules changes. You certainly can't tell what the change was.

    I have this sudden image of someone saying, "I read in a book somewhere that we should use source control. I read in another book somewhere that we should use zip files. So let's do both!" Well apparently having no idea why either one is a good idea in its place.

  • smf (unregistered) in reply to isthisunique

    Non compete clauses are generally unenforceable if they sack you, the only way round that is for them to pay you to stay at home for the duration.

    They can be drafted in a way that means they are enforceable when you leave, but you'd need to either hope they don't pursue it or get some advice on the matter.

  • Shork (unregistered)

    My comment is rather long, so here, I'll just push the Make It Smaller button!

    Attached: MyComment.zip

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