It was always about protecting his ego



Summary: After years of bullying and persistent lying by Sirius management (it had done this to colleagues, too) came a fabricated ploy/plot to remove dissenting workers

IT has now been over a month since I left my job and started writing about what had happened (not for 12 years but particularly the past 4 years, especially after Gates Foundation had passed money to the CEO under an NDA!).

It has since then been apparent that the company, Sirius 'Open Source' (Sirius now tries to get rid of these articles), is trying to gag me and censor me. That won't work. It'll only embolden me further.

As it turns out, Sirius is run by stalkers. Yes, what on earth do they even do all day? Spy on people. They should do their job, but they don't (we've provided ample evidence of their failings and inability to do very basic stuff like payslips -- a legal requirement!).

So while workers stay up all night (fixing flaws, incidents etc.) they go behind their backs reading years-old IRC logs, fishing for 'dirt' so as to avoid paying compensation or separation fees. Yes, the company was broke, so it decided to take this route.

Today I wish to share full communications (albeit redacted) about what happened in November. There was an account suspension, without any due process, as one insecure and insincere manager failed to follow protocols. The manager then did the equivalent of not just refusing entry to the building but handing a box with belongings from the desk. It is unjust and likely not legal (dubious as per British law given the circumstance). It is mean-spirited and vindictive. To be clear, I did nothing wrong, but the company was broke and wanted to deflect. In weeks that followed the manager was once again relying on truly poor legal advice, if any at all!

We assume they did the same to some colleagues, so we show their process for 'ousting' technical staff, based on lies, while moving their 'shells' into secret addresses (and instead placing the address of an accountant, impeding possible litigation against the company).

Here's how it all started:

Dear Roy,

Would we please have a call urgently to discuss a matter that has been brought to my attention?

Would you be able to join a video call at this link? [redacted]

I will telephone you shortly to discuss timing.

Kind regards, [redacted]

He wanted me to use Google.

I then responded:

Can we do the discussion over email instead?

Regards,

[Roy]

He then suggested Zoom.

Hello Roy,

No. I'm afraid not. We are required to have a call.

Please see the meeting details below.

The meeting will be brief.

Many thanks,

Later:

Hello again Roy,

We are waiting for you in the call now as soon as you are ready please.

Thank you,

Then:

Hi Roy,

We have successfully been able to use the technology to have a call with your household this afternoon, so we understand that it is not a technical issue that would prevent you from taking a Zoom call. I have also just tried to ring the landline which has now rung out.

It is very important that we speak as the matter is serious and urgent.

Can you please let me know if you are free to join a Zoom call now. Otherwise, you are due on shift at 17:30 and we will speak then.

Can I remind you that a failure to attend for work without a satisfactory explanation would potentially lead to disciplinary action under the terms of your employment contract.

Kind regards,

Notice they use my impending shift to make it seem like "disciplinary action"; they didn't even let me in (to carry out work).

Then he (there are two people above, only one talking though) suggested other proprietary things (yes, everything this "Open Source" company nowadays uses for communications is proprietary!), but that's not the main issue. As it turned out, they had blocked me from Slack too, so I wrote:

I cannot access Slack. I tried from several PCs.

Regards,

Roy

Then he said:

Hi Roy,

Thank you for your reply. I wasn't asking you to join via Slack, I sent you a link to a Zoom call.

Can you please join a Zoom Call now with the following details.

Many thanks,

I also said:

> Hi Roy, > > Thank you for your reply. I wasn't asking you to join via Slack, I sent you a link to a Zoom call. > > Can you please join a Zoom Call now with the following details.

Hi,

I think it must be done in writing so that things can be presented and checked within context.

Regards,

Roy

By this point I had already realised what it was about. He was reading years' worth of IRC logs and trying to build (frame) a 'case' against me. To be clear, simply talking (mostly in private) about the issues with the company is seen as unacceptable as if the company is a religion or cult. Even if nobody (not even the company) is named!

Then he escalated (the mask fell) and showed his real intentions:

Hi Roy,

This call is not itself part of an investigation and is not in itself a disciplinary hearing.

We are simply trying to inform you of a matter that has been brought to our attention so that we have properly communicated with you and to confirm your working status.

Nothing needs to be presented or checked in this call, there will be time for anything like that later.

It really is in your interests to hear what we have to say and we can take matters from there.

As it is currently your formal work shift time, the management instruction that I am giving you is to join us on this call now, nothing else.

If you could please join the Zoom call now we can have a short call.

Regards,

And what is this "investigation" about? We'll come to that later. The short story, it's based on a lie.

I responded as follows:

> Hi Roy, > > This call is not itself part of an investigation and is not in itself a disciplinary hearing. > > We are simply trying to inform you of a matter that has been brought to our attention so that we have properly communicated with you and to confirm your working status.

By suspending my account I think you pre-judged my "working status" before we even had a chance to communicate or clarify.

> Nothing needs to be presented or checked in this call, there will be time for anything like that later. > > It really is in your interests to hear what we have to say and we can take matters from there.

I prefer to do this by E-mail or text, as it is more suitable a medium and 'paper trail' is needed.

> As it is currently your formal work shift time, the management instruction that I am giving you is to join us on this call now, nothing else.

I cannot even access my account. I think you pre-judged my status.

Regards,

Roy

Now the other manager got angry and fired off this E-mail with all caps and typos:

Roy,

You are employed by this company, and it is current your work shift.

The perfectly reasonable management instruction is that you join Andrew and me in the Zoom cal NOWl: [sic]

Failure to do so will be a clear breach of your employment contract and company policies.

[redacted] Sirius Founder and Group CEO

I responded as follows:

> Roy, > > You are employed by this company, and it is current your work shift.

My account is currently suspended. You took action before speaking to me.

Regards,

Roy

They knew I was right. It upset them. Then came this:

Hi Roy,

We have acted entirely within our rights as your employer and within the strict terms of your Employment contract and as communicated in our company Employee Handbook.

Nothing has been pre-judged, and no findings have been reached as the investigation process has not yet been carried out.

Indeed by failing to attend even a call and refusing to answer the phone, you are preventing yourself from receiving precisely the information that we are trying to provide.

Again, we are not at the stage where findings will be assessed, we are simply attempting to carry out the very first step of a process which is to communicate with you.

We have now been waiting in a call for nearly an hour, are you able to join us now?

If you do not join us on the call by 17:30 we will take this as a failure to comply with a properly issued management instruction, we will close the call and we will investigate this incident as a potential disciplinary issue too.

Regards,

He got the time wrong.

Correction, if you don't join us on the call by 18:30

They wanted me to dance to their music, which was lies and distortion of what I had actually said. I responded as follows:

> We have acted entirely within our rights as your employer and within the strict terms of your Employment contract and as communicated in our company Employee Handbook.

The contract is a 'two-edged sword' that also protects my rights as an employee. At the moment I see myself as prejudged with account suspension (without me even being made aware of anything).

Regards,

Roy

It had already become very obvious that they were trying to engineer 'departure' of people based on a construction of lies.

I later on the same day received what they had planned all along:

Dear Roy,

Despite our repeated requests, you have failed to follow a properly issued management instruction to attend a call to enable us to inform you of an alleged breach of company policy by you that may amount to gross misconduct.

You have therefore also potentially further breached company policy by failing to attend work for your designated support shift in the manner requested, despite very clear, written management instruction requiring you to do so.

Given your refusal to take a call that would allow us to inform you of the alleged misconduct, you have therefore left us no choice other than to act by email.

You are formally suspended from your role of Support Engineer with Sirius Open Source with immediate effect.

The attached letter provides further information about this action.

Regards,

To be very clear, what they allege to be "misconduct" is me wanting a proper conversation based on facts. They did not want that. Then they alleged that me not being able to cover my shift (before they had suspended the account) was "misconduct". They basically set up the whole thing like this.

There was no due process as severe/drastic action had been taken before even hearing the 'accused'.

So of course I consulted an employment lawyer about this. I spoke to a couple of people, who were rather shocked by the way Sirius had handled it. It seemed like it about one man's ego (the manager) and he was stalking staff outside work, looking to 'punish' people who didn't tolerate lies.

Even two weeks later the management was still desperate to arrange a 'kangaroo court' session:

Dear Roy,

Please see the attached letter regarding your attendance at an investigation meeting tomorrow.

Kind regards,

It was getting so pathetic that he even stalked out some personal YouTube account of mine to sniff out an E-mail address and add an appointment to something called "Google Calendar". That's sad... he was so desperate to 'interrogate' for his ego's sake.

Then he kept sending reminders again... and again... and again. There were like 5 reminders sent in total, followed by these assertions:

Dear Roy,

Thank you for your reply.

Please see the attached letter regarding your attendance at a re-scheduled investigation meeting.

Kind regards,

It was a PDF made with proprietary software, asserting that for failing to face a kangaroo court after I had already been prematurely 'judged'. It clearly wasn't about fact-finding.

The same letter would later be sent by post, along with screenshots that are taken out of context and lack URLs.

Days later he once again sent a message via "Google Calendar", clearly (and increasingly) desperate to get me to dance to his tune. It would be a sham "investigation"; it was meant to be this way.

He then sent yet more letters trying to get me to submit myself, despite having already received messaged explaining why it was not possible. All those .ics files (he uses Apple stuff, not "Open Source") were piling up, maybe 12 of them in total, all in vain. It was getting rather embarrassing at this point. He was starting to frame this as "disciplinary hearing" (as was the case all along; they were engaged in posturing).

Either way, from my own end I sent a clear message, based on consultation from lawyers. Of course the company chose to ignore that.

The same day I spoke to lawyers I sent the following:

Dear all,

I believe I was unfairly treated on several grounds, including relevant protocols pertaining to several aspects. I will spare you the details but can elaborate if needed.

Here is the gist of the issues:

1. No due process 2. Verbal/oral distortion of claims 3. You misrepresented alleged evidence, but conveniently presented it as facts to my wife 4. No hard evidence presented (just a reference to a handbook we lack a copy of) 5. Rather gross accusation inflation against a person whom you did not even speak to

There are more point, but I shall keep this brief.

The company has a history doing this to couples, e.g. one blind colleague based in Germany; it was very serious and it went to court, based on a trusted source (it cost the company and/or its Directors -- xxxxx and xxxxx -- a lot of money, as went on for a long time; allegedly got settled at the end but injured the company).

We visited lawyers on Friday and on Monday. We spoke about the facts in length and have a good understanding of our rights.

We agreed that we don't yet wish to escalate this matter and would rather settle amicably.

Regards,

Roy,

[Your longest-serving employee (aside from the founder)]

Of course the company more or less ignored this reality.

When they kept inviting me to things they knew would not qualify as a proper hearing (explanation of this point due tomorrow) I sent:

Hi,

Under the European Convention on Human Rights Article 6 (England is in the European Court of Human Rights) I am entitled to have a representative and access an objective tribunal. You will hear from my lawyer soon.

At this stage it was abundantly clear, also to lawyers, that there was merely a malicious witch-hunt.

On December first I sent the following:

Hi,

I've been receiving some relatively solid and professional legal advice for several weeks already. To put it quite bluntly, the impression legal professionals get is that the company cannot afford lawyers and thus makes wild guesses, based on a gut feeling at best.

In Rianne's case, the allegations are shockingly weak. This, in turn, makes the trail of correspondence work very strongly in our favour. We're not impulsive, we just follow the law. We've both followed the law all along. We know our rights and we have people to assess the law.

The latest invitation is legally problematic for several distinct reasons. It would not constitute a fair 'trial', on a number of different grounds. What you're trying to apply here is the controversial Reid method, which isn't just notorious but also unlawful in some jurisdictions. No proper protocols and procedures were followed until (probably due to a lack of legal advice) more recently. In fact, "Investigation Meeting" suddenly and disingenuously became "Disciplinary Hearing". The process embarked upon did not respect the employee's right to privacy (setting out the importance of confidentiality) and it seems to be more of a personal vendetta than a real, justifiable case.

Regarding any such hearing, where possible the employer should get somebody who's not involved in the case to carry out the investigation, for example another manager or someone from HR. HR does not exist in Sirius per se, so the company needs to contract outwards, just like several years ago where HR sided with us, not with the harasser in chief. We never received an apology after that incident. And moreover, I wish to make it known that I am referring to a single example of many such incidents. I can elaborate later.

The sudden and very much unprovoked-for suspension is problematic on a number of legal grounds. There's consensus among legal professionals (visited or spoke to several) that it was inappropriate and over the top. Perhaps the purpose of it was to obstruct the accused from accessing defensive/supportive evidence. There's no reason for a suspension of someone who for 12 years never ever did something "dodgy" to company or client assets; quite the contrary. Unless the employer thinks there is a risk that the employee might tamper with evidence or influence witnesses, a suspension is entirely unnecessary. I have no history of tampering with evidence or influencing witnesses. In fact, the "evidence" presented (only a fortnight later!) is actually controlled by me rather than the company. The IRC logs are very informal and have nothing to do with Sirius.

There is also consensus that what's proposed constitutes a kangaroo court and the reason you don't want an independent HR agency to handle this (like before) is that the case will be thrown out with prejudice and the company may be held accountable for a lot more than just frivolous accusations and moral damages (twofold).

On deciding whether to suspend an employee, there are also clear legal guidelines. If there's a serious issue or situation, an employer might consider suspending someone while they investigate. But in this case, the nature of the accusations makes it abundantly frivolous. An employer should consider each situation carefully. Suspension will only be needed in some rather rare situations. This is why, right from the very beginning, the letters and demands sent were legally invalid. If an employer feels they need to suspend someone, it's important to consider alternative options to suspension and the wellbeing of the person they're thinking of suspending (unless the intention is to shock and seek reprisal). The employer should think about who will handle matters if further action is needed, but in this case it seems like one or two person control the process from beginning to end. Where possible, a different person should handle each step of the disciplinary procedures: the investigation, the disciplinary hearing and outcome, and the appeal hearing (if an appeal is raised).

It might moreover be useful to document (e.g. write in great length) and to show a clear, systematic pattern; I can prove and neatly present a pattern of evidence which points to the actions by the CEO being vindictive. It would not be unprecedented either. Expect a 50-page report quite soon. A legal team is looking into it.

The process has in general been a travesty and a potential source of disgrace to the company. In this particular case, someone acting as a judge for oneself is not looking good. In principle, recusing oneself is one option, but the process is already tarnished by irregularities that hamper any perception of objectivity and fairness.

This is not a good way to end a relationship with the company. It didn't have to end like this.

A good company values its workers, listens to workers, instead of treating them like enemies to be deceived and marginalised. Apropos, only minutes ago: https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/30/lastpass-goto-breached-customer-information/ If only someone kept warning that LastPass was trouble...

Twelve hours later I sent the report:

The report is now ready.

See [Att].

I resigned the following day. It was abundantly clear, as noted in the report, that this was just part of the ongoing bullying, which had gone on for years.

In the next part there will be focus on what was done to my wife, who had worked in the same company since 2013. In her case, it's even far worse. It's far worse that they picked on her after she had done absolutely nothing.

After the weekend we'll show that this whole witch-hunt was in fact initiated based on a Big Lie. ⬆