VLAN confusion
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I guess it boils down to an understanding of one's job and the actual understanding of adulting and buyer's agents vs seller's agents.
I'm guessing most people, including most IT people (or whomever is making the decisions in general) don't adult.
Because of the lack of knowing their job and these other mentioned things - they don't see themselves as unethical. This is the cornerstone to why I don't see them as corrupt. So to you, they are corrupt because they don't even realize they are corrupt, because they don't understand their role.
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@scottalanmiller said in VLAN confusion:
@dashrender said in VLAN confusion:
@dave247 said in VLAN confusion:
@dashrender said in VLAN confusion:
@scottalanmiller said in VLAN confusion:
@dave247 said in VLAN confusion:
@coliver said in VLAN confusion:
@dave247 Sounds like your company has made a decision already.
The CIO has failed at one of the most basic life skills...
"Never take advice from a sales person."
Yes, I am aware of this sigh but I can only do so much. I don't want to get into the details of my work dynamic with my boss and all that, and long story-short, I have to do what he says as I am the only sysadmin/low man on the totem pole.
In a healthy company, that statement should get you in trouble - because knowing that you have a security / ethics breach and a rogue actor putting the company at risk should be something that the company doesn't just allow you to expose, but requires you to expose. Does the CEO really not want to know that he has a CIO abusing the company for personal reasons?
It's comments like this that make this hard to accept. It's not that it's not possible - but how do you know his CIO is abusing the company for personal reasons? It's every bit more likely that he's simply failing at his job of researching good solution - and that no reasons other than laziness are really involved here.
Yes, this. I 100% believe this is far more accurate description of what's going on vs corrupt employees "on the take".
Scott considers the act of not protecting a company from sale personal to be on the take/corrupt.
Let's pretend that the CIO is the company's bodyguard. He's paid to protect the company, to watch for danger, to take a bullet if necessary. That's his job.
Now as a bodyguard an assassin comes along and says "I'll buy you lunch if you leave your guard down. Just come sit at this table instead of actively protecting your target." If he takes that lunch, and still gets paid to be the bodyguard but intentionally looks away, that's corrupt. He's getting "favours" or more, in order to "look the other way".
Even worse, it sounds like the CIO likely sought out the assassins in this case. Invited them to make him an offer.
If you put it into a non-technical context - once someone is getting personal benefits (pay, less work, kick backs, free lunches, personal security, recommendations for the next job) in order to let down their guard and not protect something that they are paid to protect... that's the corruption.
More like, the bodyguard has eaten way too many sandwiches over the years and he has become overweight, slow and lethargic, and is now increasingly more unable to quickly get in front of all the bullets that are headed towards the CEO.
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@dashrender said in VLAN confusion:
@scottalanmiller said in VLAN confusion:
@dashrender said in VLAN confusion:
@scottalanmiller said in VLAN confusion:
@dave247 said in VLAN confusion:
@coliver said in VLAN confusion:
@dave247 Sounds like your company has made a decision already.
The CIO has failed at one of the most basic life skills...
"Never take advice from a sales person."
Yes, I am aware of this sigh but I can only do so much. I don't want to get into the details of my work dynamic with my boss and all that, and long story-short, I have to do what he says as I am the only sysadmin/low man on the totem pole.
In a healthy company, that statement should get you in trouble - because knowing that you have a security / ethics breach and a rogue actor putting the company at risk should be something that the company doesn't just allow you to expose, but requires you to expose. Does the CEO really not want to know that he has a CIO abusing the company for personal reasons?
It's comments like this that make this hard to accept. It's not that it's not possible - but how do you know his CIO is abusing the company for personal reasons? It's every bit more likely that he's simply failing at his job of researching good solution - and that no reasons other than laziness are really involved here.
Nope, you just made an impossibly illogical excuse to try to make it look like what I said isn't the obvious answer. That's how extremely irrational it is to try to defend.
The issue is NOT his ability to research or to know anything technical. The issue is a fundamental ethics breach of his job duties. Any mentioning of a lack of ability or skill in a technical or research area I see as meaning someone has agreed with the lack of ethics and is failing to attempt to rationalize how something so obviously unethical must have a viable excuse.
Stop and examine the situation. Obviously, something unethical has happened. It's so obvious, so clear, that the real issue is... how is everyone closer to the situation not pointing it out and talking about it?
I assume you're referring to the fact that he's talking to a sales person, and not a buyer's agent?
Right, he violated basic business ethics and common sense. This is often done because it results in personal benefit. It can be as simple as wanting to continue to get paid to not do a job and he feels that this will let him live on easy street while being hard to prove. That's the most common thing that I see. Not direct pay from the vendor, but the vendor using the situation to make the CIO's life easy in a way that doesn't flag the business quickly.
Why work and do your job, when you can "hire" a sales person to make it look like you are trying while you kick back and get paid to do nothing?
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@dashrender said in VLAN confusion:
I guess it boils down to an understanding of one's job and the actual understanding of adulting and buyer's agents vs seller's agents.
I'm guessing most people, including most IT people (or whomever is making the decisions in general) don't adult.
Sure, because no one checks in on them, it's way more personally advantageous to accept pay for a job they don't do and just forego all those ethical complications that honest people have to deal with.
It's fine to be incompetent if he's only incompetent, he'll welcome being questioned and there is zero fear of retaliation.
But it's been stated that he IS competent and there is an assumption of retaliation. So his lack of adulting isn't in question, only his ethics.
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@dashrender said in VLAN confusion:
I guess it boils down to an understanding of one's job and the actual understanding of adulting and buyer's agents vs seller's agents.
I'm guessing most people, including most IT people (or whomever is making the decisions in general) don't adult.
Because of the lack of knowing their job and these other mentioned things - they don't see themselves as unethical. This is the cornerstone to why I don't see them as corrupt. So to you, they are corrupt because they don't even realize they are corrupt, because they don't understand their role.
Yeah, I agree with this. This is all I've really wanted to express. Nobody is maliciously corrupt here, but not everyone is the best at their jobs here either.
It's a trade off too. We are probably going to get ripped off in some way or another, and we've got to all try to do our best to stay educated and informed so we can ward off the saleswolves.
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@dashrender said in VLAN confusion:
Because of the lack of knowing their job and these other mentioned things - they don't see themselves as unethical. This is the cornerstone to why I don't see them as corrupt. So to you, they are corrupt because they don't even realize they are corrupt, because they don't understand their role.
People steal music, pirate movies, use Windows without a license... and don't consider themselves unethical. People make all kinds of excuses for their own behaviour because everyone believes that they are ethical and have a good reason for breaching everyone else's ethical believes. Rioters, looters, common thieves almost always feel that "they are good people" with a good reason for what they do.
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@dave247 said in VLAN confusion:
@scottalanmiller said in VLAN confusion:
@dashrender said in VLAN confusion:
@dave247 said in VLAN confusion:
@dashrender said in VLAN confusion:
@scottalanmiller said in VLAN confusion:
@dave247 said in VLAN confusion:
@coliver said in VLAN confusion:
@dave247 Sounds like your company has made a decision already.
The CIO has failed at one of the most basic life skills...
"Never take advice from a sales person."
Yes, I am aware of this sigh but I can only do so much. I don't want to get into the details of my work dynamic with my boss and all that, and long story-short, I have to do what he says as I am the only sysadmin/low man on the totem pole.
In a healthy company, that statement should get you in trouble - because knowing that you have a security / ethics breach and a rogue actor putting the company at risk should be something that the company doesn't just allow you to expose, but requires you to expose. Does the CEO really not want to know that he has a CIO abusing the company for personal reasons?
It's comments like this that make this hard to accept. It's not that it's not possible - but how do you know his CIO is abusing the company for personal reasons? It's every bit more likely that he's simply failing at his job of researching good solution - and that no reasons other than laziness are really involved here.
Yes, this. I 100% believe this is far more accurate description of what's going on vs corrupt employees "on the take".
Scott considers the act of not protecting a company from sale personal to be on the take/corrupt.
Let's pretend that the CIO is the company's bodyguard. He's paid to protect the company, to watch for danger, to take a bullet if necessary. That's his job.
Now as a bodyguard an assassin comes along and says "I'll buy you lunch if you leave your guard down. Just come sit at this table instead of actively protecting your target." If he takes that lunch, and still gets paid to be the bodyguard but intentionally looks away, that's corrupt. He's getting "favours" or more, in order to "look the other way".
Even worse, it sounds like the CIO likely sought out the assassins in this case. Invited them to make him an offer.
If you put it into a non-technical context - once someone is getting personal benefits (pay, less work, kick backs, free lunches, personal security, recommendations for the next job) in order to let down their guard and not protect something that they are paid to protect... that's the corruption.
More like, the bodyguard has eaten way too many sandwiches over the years and he has become overweight, slow and lethargic, and is now increasingly more unable to quickly get in front of all the bullets that are headed towards the CEO.
No, that's not at all what this is. That would require him to be senile. You are trying to tie in some lack of technical competence, but that cannot be a factor here. This is a situation where he asked someone to buy him food. If you feel he's that stupid that he doesn't understand the most basic adult behaviour, you would logically also think that he is wearing Depends and needing a nurse to feed him.
It's simply not reasonable to claim that your CIO is so brain dead that he can't tell who his friends are from his enemies. Is that really what we want to jump to instead of simply the logical, obvious "he sees a chance for personal benefit and leverages it like almost all people do in that position?"
Why is the obvious, logical, simple explanation not considered to be so and insane, impossible, illogical ones assumed?
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@dave247 said in VLAN confusion:
Yeah, I agree with this. This is all I've really wanted to express. Nobody is maliciously corrupt here, but not everyone is the best at their jobs here either.
Not an option. Either your CIO is competent and corrupt, or incompetent and would welcome your exposure of the problem.
So which is it... are you comfortable telling the CIO and CEO about the situation because they honestly want to do what is right, or do you have ANY fear that they will punish you to silence the exposure of what they plan to do?
You can't have it both ways.
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@scottalanmiller said in VLAN confusion:
@dashrender said in VLAN confusion:
Because of the lack of knowing their job and these other mentioned things - they don't see themselves as unethical. This is the cornerstone to why I don't see them as corrupt. So to you, they are corrupt because they don't even realize they are corrupt, because they don't understand their role.
People steal music, pirate movies, use Windows without a license... and don't consider themselves unethical. People make all kinds of excuses for their own behaviour because everyone believes that they are ethical and have a good reason for breaching everyone else's ethical believes. Rioters, looters, common thieves almost always feel that "they are good people" with a good reason for what they do.
yeah - I don't think most would agree with that.
If you asked a person stealing music if they thought that was ethical - they would probably tell you no.
But if you asked that same person, assuming you're the head of IT, and you need a phone system, would it be ethical to call cisco and ask for a purchase - they would say yes it is.
The difference is the expectation of understanding that difference, adulting as you've called it... I really think this is a missing concept to most.
of course, once you fully explain buyers and seller's agents.. they would likely turn on a dime and agree with you.
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@dave247 said in VLAN confusion:
It's a trade off too. We are probably going to get ripped off in some way or another, and we've got to all try to do our best to stay educated and informed so we can ward off the saleswolves.
It's NOT a trade off. And we've covered this, it requires no technical knowledge or education.
None of this is true. The wolf amongst the sheep is the CIO, not the salesman.
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@scottalanmiller said in VLAN confusion:
@dashrender said in VLAN confusion:
Because of the lack of knowing their job and these other mentioned things - they don't see themselves as unethical. This is the cornerstone to why I don't see them as corrupt. So to you, they are corrupt because they don't even realize they are corrupt, because they don't understand their role.
People steal music, pirate movies, use Windows without a license... and don't consider themselves unethical. People make all kinds of excuses for their own behaviour because everyone believes that they are ethical and have a good reason for breaching everyone else's ethical believes. Rioters, looters, common thieves almost always feel that "they are good people" with a good reason for what they do.
Are you an angel or something? LOL. No but seriously, I do get what you are saying and I totally see your points.
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@dashrender said in VLAN confusion:
@scottalanmiller said in VLAN confusion:
@dashrender said in VLAN confusion:
Because of the lack of knowing their job and these other mentioned things - they don't see themselves as unethical. This is the cornerstone to why I don't see them as corrupt. So to you, they are corrupt because they don't even realize they are corrupt, because they don't understand their role.
People steal music, pirate movies, use Windows without a license... and don't consider themselves unethical. People make all kinds of excuses for their own behaviour because everyone believes that they are ethical and have a good reason for breaching everyone else's ethical believes. Rioters, looters, common thieves almost always feel that "they are good people" with a good reason for what they do.
yeah - I don't think most would agree with that.
If you asked a person stealing music if they thought that was ethical - they would probably tell you no.
But if you asked that same person, assuming you're the head of IT, and you need a phone system, would it be ethical to call cisco and ask for a purchase - they would say yes it is.
No, both lie and say it is ethical. Seriously ask people who steal music, they always have an excuse. Just like the people calling salesman do. It's identical.
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@dashrender said in VLAN confusion:
of course, once you fully explain buyers and seller's agents.. they would likely turn on a dime and agree with you.
No, they don't. And as Panda said... he knows that they'd retaliate and fire him to cover it up. It's not just that they won't say that they agree, they'd agree so fully as to fully engage in an active cover up to the extent of firing the whistleblowers.
This isn't "kind of a grey area", this is outright "willing to destroy people's lives" unethical.
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@scottalanmiller said in VLAN confusion:
@dave247 said in VLAN confusion:
Yeah, I agree with this. This is all I've really wanted to express. Nobody is maliciously corrupt here, but not everyone is the best at their jobs here either.
Not an option. Either your CIO is competent and corrupt, or incompetent and would welcome your exposure of the problem.
So which is it... are you comfortable telling the CIO and CEO about the situation because they honestly want to do what is right, or do you have ANY fear that they will punish you to silence the exposure of what they plan to do?
You can't have it both ways.
Fear of reprisal does not inherently mean that the other party is corrupt. It is a symptom of the fact that you can never be fully certain of the other party's motives since you don't live in their head.
It is possible that there is evidence available that would point in one direction or the other though.
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@dashrender said in VLAN confusion:
of course, once you fully explain buyers and seller's agents.. they would likely turn on a dime and agree with you.
Everyone who has bought a house has this explained to them. Sure, lots of people have never bought a house, but most CIOs have.
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@ndc said in VLAN confusion:
@scottalanmiller said in VLAN confusion:
@dave247 said in VLAN confusion:
Yeah, I agree with this. This is all I've really wanted to express. Nobody is maliciously corrupt here, but not everyone is the best at their jobs here either.
Not an option. Either your CIO is competent and corrupt, or incompetent and would welcome your exposure of the problem.
So which is it... are you comfortable telling the CIO and CEO about the situation because they honestly want to do what is right, or do you have ANY fear that they will punish you to silence the exposure of what they plan to do?
You can't have it both ways.
Fear of reprisal does not inherently mean that the other party is corrupt. It is a symptom of the fact that you can never be fully certain of the other party's motives since you don't live in their head.
It is possible that there is evidence available that would point in one direction or the other though.
Good companies will generally have policies guaranteeing that reprisal cannot happen. One of the best things that we had at the hedge fund was that everyone had to sign agreements that they would...
- Never punish whistleblowers
- Never hold back a critical opinion
You could (and should) have been fired for NOT reporting something like this, but were protected that you could not be fired for pointing it out. Most companies want the flexibility of covering things up and either skip policies of this nature, or actively oppose them. Because most companies in the SMB are endemically corrupt at their core.
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@scottalanmiller said in VLAN confusion:
@dave247 said in VLAN confusion:
Yeah, I agree with this. This is all I've really wanted to express. Nobody is maliciously corrupt here, but not everyone is the best at their jobs here either.
Not an option. Either your CIO is competent and corrupt, or incompetent and would welcome your exposure of the problem.
So which is it... are you comfortable telling the CIO and CEO about the situation because they honestly want to do what is right, or do you have ANY fear that they will punish you to silence the exposure of what they plan to do?
You can't have it both ways.
ok. I could make a big stink about this, claiming that Cisco and the Cisco partner are just taking our money when we could be getting something for a lot cheaper, and it would probably work and I could probably convince them to not go with Cisco at all and instead let me find something that would be cheaper. But then, I would be responsible for finding that product and implementing it myself (I assume), such as FreePBX, which I know nothing about. I don't know anything about phone systems and I don't want to get myself into a mess and have my boss say, "see we should have gone with Cisco and had them set it up the right way" or something.
Now I'm sure this will devolve into a discussion about how I'm not fit for my job then and all that, etc... fizzles out
EDIT: side note, we did go down this road with Sh---Tel voip and C------Link ISP where the ISP was responsible for installing the voip but really sucked at it so we pulled out of our contract due to my efforts at showing how they were doing a bad job, etc. So my say does count, but I don't want to make another bad case about Cisco and avoid going with them -- a setup that we know we can get installed correctly and supported well, vs going with some exotic and obscure cheaper voip solution..
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@dave247 said in VLAN confusion:
ok. I could make a big stink about this, claiming that Cisco and the Cisco partner are just taking our money when we could be getting something for a lot cheaper, and it would probably work and I could probably convince them to not go with Cisco at all and instead let me find something that would be cheaper.
- The core claim is around fundamentally bad business practices. Not the Cisco situation.
- Then that leads to the Cisco SALES people being the wrong people to engage.
- Then it leads to why there has been NO evaluation of needs AT ALL. Zero. No IT done, whatsoever.
- Then it should lead to hiring a phone consultant, the word you misused about the salesman
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@dave247 said in VLAN confusion:
But then, I would be responsible for finding that product and implementing it myself (I assume), such as FreePBX, which I know nothing about. I don't know anything about phone systems and I don't want to get myself into a mess and have my boss say, "see we should have gone with Cisco and had them set it up the right way" or something.
Why make this assumption? This is not, in any way, a logical place to have arrived from the discussion. I feel that you are caught up on the technical value of FreePBX vs. Cisco, which we are not discussing at all, and glossing over the business ethics and basic IT business process discussion that we are having. This isn't about Cisco being a bad solution, it's about how the solution was arrived at and how is benefiting and who didn't do the job that they are paid to do.
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@dave247 said in VLAN confusion:
EDIT: side note, we did go down this road with Sh---Tel voip and C------Link ISP where the ISP was responsible for installing the voip but really sucked at it so we pulled out of our contract due to my efforts at showing how they were doing a bad job, etc.
Right, so you identified a basic issue with how vendors are chosen, and they got confuse and switched from one inappropriate vendor relationship to another.
Everyone seems to be confusing problems with a bad decision and a bad decision process. Looking at Cisco vs. FreePBX, for example, is trying to make a decision. But clearly, the underlying issue is that decision-making processes are bad and are being ignored.
