It starts quietly and secretly. The IM or side conversation, out of earshot/sight of others in our open office space. One of two people, usually the HR person, will ask me to "back up so-and-so's data". This is the sign of the end, the last 4 words you want me to hear.
Depending on the urgency, this is when I immediately or in the next few hours, start hacking into your desktop computer, your user folder and whatever else I can find and make copies of everything there. It's why I have two 40 gig hard drives (and need more storage space) as well as a stack of burnt CDs. I'm the guy they call first when you are going to be fired or are threatening resignation. You may not even know you're going to be fired, you may not even know that you are in "trouble" or that someone is unhappy with your job performance or whatever. But I know, and I usually know first.
What some people don't know, is that I have been asked to back up their data on several different occasions, only to be later told that I don't need to bother anymore. Somehow, between the time I was asked to do my thing and then later told to not bother anymore, something got worked out, some misunderstanding was ironed out and that person dodged a bullet, perhaps unawares of how close they came to getting the boot.
And this is a very egalitarian process because it can happen to any employee, regardless of payscale, title or longevity within the company. It's all just data to me. Sure I see some interesting emails, embarrassing personal photos and sordid discussions about weekend activities, but in the end I'm just the guy who gathers up the bits and bytes before the impending collision. I move it all to another location, archive and burn a back up copy, and eventually dump most of it. I don't have time to read it, sift through it, or organize it. It's just the raw accumulation of days, weeks, months, even years of work product for the company. Amazingly enough, I get very few requests for access to someone's data after they have gone. Along with the memory of them, their work product and it's value, fades with time.
The purpose behind this effort is to get to the data on someone's computer before they have a chance to edit it, delete it, move it elsewhere. Unlike the paper world of days gone by, in a "paperless" office, it's much harder to spot the company documents going out the door when one only has to email them, a few at a time, to a personal email address or burn them to CD and walk out with the disk in your bag, purse or coat pocket. And the company got burned once by an employee who managed to get wind of their impending demise and pre-emptively deleted a whole slew of created documents. They even managed to get the IT guy who help them with the effort because no one in IT knew the person was going to be fired. So IT unwittingly aided in the crime. That little oversight took two years worth of litigation, a forensic hard drive examination, and large lawyers fees to sort out. Now I'm the first person to know. Sometimes I'm backing someone up for weeks.
Having this knowledge is a powerful, yet humbling experience. Sometimes I'm secretly pleased to see someone lined up for dismissal, other times I'm saddened to know that someone isn't cutting it, for whatever reason. When the moment finally arrives, I'm seldom "happy". Even the worst person gains some sympathy from me, if for no other reason than I wouldn't want to be in their shoes.
The standard joke in my corner of the office is that it's not clear who will be told to back up my data someday, should the need arise. Should I be asked to back up myself? Or how will I be asked to back up the HR person, who currently carries me this last rites request? In my case, I imagine that I will quit voluntarily long before being fired. In which case, I will simply turn it all over to whoever, including all the data from the people who have gone before me. Someone else can sift through it all and see if I had anything of value as well. In the meantime, I will have moved on as well.
Ah, the mystery continues then, though not for you. It seems like an opportunity to know more about an employee, even more than what the HR knows. It makes the office seem a little smaller somehow.
Posted by: Clinton Harvin | August 25, 2011 at 11:44 AM