RE: OT - Getting fired for database oops

  • From: "Freeman, Donald" <dofreeman@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "'cjnewman@xxxxxxxxxxxxx'" <cjnewman@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 13:26:41 -0400

I had a contract DBA try to sabotage me, got caught, and got fired.   He had 
been recruited by a consulting firm with a promise of a long term contract.  
When he arrived he found me, a full time employee, basically hired to do the 
same job.  I didn't have any experience so the story changed to, "He will 
mentor you."   He didn't do a lot of that.  He did not adjust the changing 
circumstance and decided to ignore me.  Since I was on probation and we 
actually reported to different managers, him to the project manager, and me to 
the DBA manager (who didn't like each other) we were doomed to have problems.  
I needed to make a good showing to get through my probation.   I couldn't do 
that if I was locked out of what was happening.

Long story short, I studied Oracle, took all the online courses I could, got my 
certification.   His attitude was noted and his contract, up in 2 months, was 
not renewed.   I had kind of a "graduation" exercise to migrate two of the 
environments to new servers.  While I was doing the second one things started 
going wrong.  I had moved a copy of the database and was trying to CREATE 
DATABASE RESET LOGS etc and started getting weird errors.  I kept going over it 
again and again and every time I got to the point where I was about to succeed 
something broke.   After hours of doing that, and him sticking his head in my 
office, I had a flash and realized he was doing something.   I looked at the 
pfile and noticed that the modified date/time stamp indicated something had 
changed at a time when I had not changed it.   I opened it and selected all the 
text and saw a blue line going off the page to the right.  I went to the end of 
that line and found a period inserted there.  

I saved the file as it was, made a copy, corrected it and started the database. 
 I showed my boss, the project manager, and the team lead.   Just before lunch 
he was asked to help me fix the problem as I was "stuck."   With all of us 
standing behind him he was steered onto the pfile and asked if he saw anything 
wrong with it.  He said he didn't.  We let him stew a few minutes and then 
adjourned for lunch.  He was told to leave it alone and we would reconvene 
after lunch and work on it together.   When I got back from lunch his 
consultant manager met me in the parking lot and announced that, "You were 
right, he went straight back to his desk and when I came in announced that he 
had found and fixed the problem.  When I asked him what it was he told me, 
'Corruption in the pfile.'"   The guy left early and was scheduled to return 
after hours and do some work.  They disabled his badge.  When he came in and 
couldn't get in he called his manager who told him to report to the consultant 
headquarters the next morning when he was fired.

Although he tried hard to screw me, to make me look like a dunce, and possibly 
get his contract renewed I feel management really screwed this up from the 
beginning.  I was horrified by what he did and what happened to him.  He could 
have gone to jail for what he did. He did call me later and apologize although 
there wasn't a thing I could do for him.  I still feel it was totally 
unnecessary for management to let us "sort it out."  It cost this guy his 
career.  

Donald Freeman
Database Administrator II
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
Department of Health
Bureau of Information Technology
2150 Herr Street
Harrisburg, PA 17103
dofreeman@xxxxxxxxxxx
 

-----Original Message-----
From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On 
Behalf Of Newman, Christopher
Sent: Friday, May 15, 2009 11:39 AM
To: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: OT - Getting fired for database oops

A colleague and I were just discussing DBA's getting fired for screwing 
something up/failing to do something (Not for being generally poor employees 
like showing up late, etc).  Neither of us had heard any stories of either 
scenario.  I know we sometimes have slightly off topic discussions on the list, 
so I was wondering if anyone would share any stories.

Chris Newman
Database Specialist
AITS, University of Illinois
217-333-5429

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