How to lose your startup business 1

[zelgar]

Here's a story about a engineer without ethics:

http://www.wmcactionnews5.com/story...co-officials-son-to-prison-for-computer-crime

 

[MacGyverS2000]

"I had a desire to maintain continuity of the projects I started at A&H. I can see now in hindsight that continuing to access their system could give someone a competitive advantage, but I never intended to use that to gain an advantage."

"I never had a criminal intent," Needham insisted to the court. "It was a habit, like checking in with an extended family."

What a load of complete BS. He knew exactly what he was doing, he knew the illegal nature of it, and he did it specifically because he could get a competitive advantage (all of the benefits without any of the work).

I think judges should be allowed to slap an extra fat fine on top of whatever else is awarded any time a defendant makes a ridiculous claim that goes against the obvious facts of the case. This isn't an apology, it's a failed attempt at "It was just a joke."

Dan - Owner

http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com

 

[KoachCSR]

Sounds like his father may need his own trial too...

 

[IRstuff]

Seems to me that he got off easy. If the company had failed to lock out his access credentials, yeah, maybe. But, the reality is that he continued to BREAK IN and remove stuff long after any plausible reason there might have been. With the restitution at $170k and his obvious lying and lack of any credible remorse, he should have been convicted of grand larceny, which would normally be a 5 year kind of thing.

Not just no ethics, but no conscience; he's clearly a psychopath.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

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[CWB1]

Agreed, his statements are rather contradictory to both themselves and his actions.

I've often wondered what it would be like to be a judge as I'm honestly not sure if it would more aggravating or humorous in cases like this.

 

[IRstuff]

Mostly it's boring and mundane, and I'll bet that there's a high percentage that will be aggravating because someone who is obviously guilty will get off on technically or hung jury. I've been on a jury in the latter case; obvious aggravated assault, but one juror was totally confused, and refused to be unconfused.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

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[lacajun]

Wow! His actions were really over the top of wrong! At 45, he should be able to teach proper ethics and law to young engineers rather than needing training on those himself.

Pamela K. Quillin, P.E.
Quillin Engineering, LLC
NSPE-CO, Central Chapter

 

[drawoh]

lacajun,

Does ethics training make a person like this more ethical, or does it tell him when to make sure nobody is looking?

--
JHG

 

[IRstuff]

Ethics training is about what's legal, which mostly overlaps with what's right, but not always.

Most people, like the subject of this thread, know the difference, most of the time. But, anytime you respond by lying about what you're doing, it's likely to be neither ethical nor legal.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

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[MacGyverS2000]

Ethics may be about what's legal... but I imagine there are quite a few out there who could stand a good morals training course, too.

Dan - Owner

http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com

 

[drawoh]

IRstuff,

I have been through corporate ethics training. The manager doing the presentation was a lawyer. The thing he said that sticks with me was that the corporation is not immortal. The division is not immortal, and of course, our jobs are not immortal. He mentioned an incident in which some division faked QA[ ]paperwork. The corporation shut the division down, and moved the production to another division.

--
JHG

 

[IRstuff]

As with many such things, it's about plausible deniability; the company simply wants to be able to stand up in court and testify that they did their due diligence in training the employees and therefore, any wrongdoing was perpetrated by rogue elements. How can one tell that the company is low-side compliant? That's easy; on many training segments, the employee is asked whether they read and understood the material, but they are not asked to pledge to adhere to or follow regulations described in the same materials.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

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[MrHershey]

Knowing how things are usually done, I would speculate that 'hacked' is likely synonymous with 'guessed' and much could have been prevented with better IT practices. Actually having people change their password to something only they know, changing firm-wide passwords regularly and after someone who would know them moves on. Especially when someone moves on to start up their company and the temptation to just 'borrow' old resources to deflect or defer startup costs is high. When you just need to run a quick check, it's a lot easier to use old credentials to sneak a peek at the code/manual or do a quick analysis run than actually going through the process of purchasing everything.

Guy clearly knew what he's doing. He's in the wrong and there's no excuse for it. But would guess better IT practices could have prevented it.

 

[lacajun]

drawoh, some people are well beyond reach. Because Louisiana requires ethics training to maintain my license, I've attended ethics training taught by a law prof, from a local university. It isn't all about what is legal. He covers causes that have very subtle points of morality that cross into legal problems. His cases are very interesting as well as thought and conversation provoking. His classes have made me see the law and ethics training very differently.

Pamela K. Quillin, P.E.
Quillin Engineering, LLC
NSPE-CO, Central Chapter