On managers, security, BS7799 and morons
Monday, December 18th, 2006
Before joining my current company, I was working for a top software company in Chennai. The word Chennai brings up an image of thousand demons all trying to eat you alive. Yes, I am talking about the Auto rickshaw guys there. But that is for another post. In this post I will talk about an interesting experience I had at my office.
It was about three years back and my company was implementing a security initiative (BS 7799 - which stands for British Standards but I think BullShit is more appropriate to describe it) at workplace. I am not a fan of these initiatives since most of it is stupid anyway. It only restricts the freedom of employees and gives a false feeling of security.
One of the initiatives as part of the security drive was to classify all documents and company information into groups. For example - public documents, confidential documents, secret documents etc. So one day I posted the following joke to our company bulletin board (What is given below is a shortened version).
——————- BEGIN JOKE ——————-
One day our Vice president was visiting our canteen to see the facilities. He overheard the following conversation between two software engineers,
First guy: “Man, my project manager is a moron. He doesn’t even know ABCD of programming. He doesn’t know anything about software. This is pathetic.”
Second guy: “True man, Same with my manager.”
Next day the first guy was called by the company security group which is headed by the Vice President. Software engineer stood before the security committee.
Vice president: You are fired. Please talk to HR regarding your termination formalities.
Software engineer: Sir, sir, What did I do? (Almost beginning to cry)
Vice president: I overheard your conversation yesterday. You called your manager “Moron”.
Software engineer: Sir, I am very sorry. I will never repeat it.
Vice president: No excuses. You are fired.
Software engineer: Sir, sir, why are you terminating me for such as small issue. I will never repeat it sir…
Vice president: Son, you are not getting the seriousness of the issue. What you spoke about was classified as “Company secret”. We are terminating you as per BS 7799 for discussing a company secret publicly.
——————- END JOKE ——————-
After a while this joke became quite popular at our office. After a week or so I got a mail from HR asking me to report to the HR head. I went to the HR guy who turned out to be a Malayali,
HR guy: You need to remove your posting about BS 7799.
Me: Why?
HR guy: Someone at the top complained about it.
Me: But it is a joke!! Any way why should I remove it?
HR guy: You are ordered to remove it as it violates BS 7799. If you don’t, security committee will be forced to take action against it.
I was speechless. The irony of the whole thing struck me after sometime. I removed the post on the same day.
Technopark is Kerala’s silicon valley. Ok, that is a big statement but still you get idea, right? Technopark is spread over 300 arces and it hosts over 100 companies employing 14,000+ professionals.