Bonum Certa Men Certa

Comparing Technical Staff to Monkeys and Treating Them as Such

My wife Rianne never appreciated these insulting analogies (calling NOC staff "monkeys" and treating them accordingly)

5 Little Monkeys Swinging In The Tree + More! | Little Baby Boogie
5 Little Monkeys Swinging In The Tree



Summary: As per Rianne's departure message about Sirius 'Open Source' (tuxmachines.org post), the abuse endured since 2019 did a lot of damage and false accusations were the last straw; the role was created by people who called folks who would occupy it "monkeys"; that's how some would view the staff

THE staff will always remember what happened. The staff does not forget bullying. Witch-hunts are also impossible to forget. While Rianne strongly suspects that Matthew Garrett 'doxxed' her to her employer as part of his efforts to silence me, the more plausible explanation is that Sirius management was looking for excuses to quell technical dissent and moral defense. I've been arguing against many of the company's decisions for a long time (internally).



"Adding insult to injury, in Rianne's case her love of animals and regular donations to animal charities were sort of weaponised..."I wasn't alone though; other staff also felt unhappy and some found the courage to speak about it, not just to peers but also to management. We've already shown a bunch letters after videos on grievances and there might be a letter-ripping video after explaining and showing the chain of events.

Adding insult to injury, in Rianne's case her love of animals and regular donations to animal charities were sort of weaponised, hence the image below:

SiriUS no more

The company relied on truly 'flimsy' 'evidence'. The management said, without any evidence, that I had uttered something "defamatory"; it took two weeks to actually show something and what they then showed was some side IRC channel (that nobody reads) stating perfectly factual information about my experiences, without naming people or the company. It was a chat between just two people and didn't reveal anybody's identity. It was factual and necessary; it was moral to object to bad ideas. Blind obedience and unquestionable docility should not be seen as a merit.

"It was factual and necessary; it was moral to object to bad ideas."Based on a two-person chat, however, the company started breaching protocols and making up processes, as we shall show at a later date. The procedures set forth were disregarded and extreme measures taken for no good reason, so we resigned. It was done with immediate effect, as per the law; and "you are unlikely, in most circumstances, to need to continue the process," say the rules. So we're free to speak about what happened. We shall soon talk about labour union aspects as well. It's something I've spoken about with friends for almost 4 years already.

In a company where some technical workers are compared to "monkeys" and there are about as many "managers" as non-managers, something has truly gone wrong. We had a moral duty or felt an urgent need to explain what had gone wrong. We now have a wiki that maintains several sections, including: memes, videos, report, key facts in a nutshell...

"As we've said before, the company stands no chance of surviving."We've published about 45 videos with good titles (explaining in short the issues at hand), cases of clients (without naming them), openwashing, clown-washing etc.

As a reminder, we talk about a company that despite opposition from its own technical staff basically outsourced almost everything (Sirius also used to host for clients, on its very own premises). It used to self-host even the VoIP and file storage, but now, with no actual office, Sirius is just some account in another company's server.

"Then, in Freenode, there was already an outlet for staff to discuss issues."As we've said before, the company stands no chance of surviving. It's deep in debt and it doesn't know what it's doing. Even its own clients began accusing it of "incompetence" (direct quote). When I joined the company in 2011 the staff had extensive media contacts in the wiki (for outreach, promotion, advocacy). It deteriorated over time as management was dismissing people without informing staff what actually happened (not safe to rely on hearsay and misinformation). Then, in Freenode, there was already an outlet for staff to discuss issues. Tackling a tradition of secrecy (dishonest management, but not quiet management), the IRC channel about the company insisted that "management wasn't always right", hence the need for a space in which bosses could be scrutinised. Now we do this in Techrights. The "monkeys" speak out.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Datamation, Where I Used to Publish Articles, Appears to Have Been Sold to TechnologyAdvice Only to Become a Slopfarm
I'd prefer to not associate with that site anymore
 
How Software Patents Were Viewed or Their General Status Changed Over Time
A rough summary
We Are Turning 19 in One Month, FSF Turns 40 in 3 Hours (CET)
For our anniversary next month we still have no concrete plans
Patent Docs (or PatentDocs) Learned the Wrong Lessons From the Death of TypePad
Had they gone ahead with an SSG, they'd become a lot more future-proof
USPTO Patent Bubble Already Imploding, After Decades of Artificial Inflation, Entire Offices Close for Good
we can deduce that financial pressures (lack of "demand" for monopolies) play a role
TikTok is Not Harmless (Being CheeTok in the US Will Advance Orange Agenda)
Social control media isn't "fun and games"; it's a digital weapon that lets hostile groups or nations infiltrate others, then turn them against themselves
Andy Farnell and Helen Plews Explain What "Modern" Tech Does to Old People
Imposing terrible tech "religion" on people is not helping them
Tomorrow the Free Software Foundation (FSF) Turns 40 and Its Web Site is Still Slow Due to DDoS by LLM Slop Bots
For an advocacy group, uptime is important (for its message to remain accessible)
Slopwatch: Google News as a Firehose of LLM Slop About "Linux"
Google News is really bad
Links 03/10/2025: "NPR’s Economics Lessons Come With Neoliberal Spin" and Canada Post at Risk
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/10/2025: Panic Attacks and Food Adulteration
Links for the day
Links 03/10/2025: Lawyers Caught Using LLM Slop Explain Why They Did It, LibreSSL 4.1.1 and 4.0.1 Released
Links for the day
FSF Board Grew 50% Since Last Year, Has New President, Turns 40 in Two Days
It's a good move for the FSF and - by extension - for software freedom
Links 03/10/2025: Conflicts, Death of TypePad, and TikTok/CheeTok Gives a Boost to Far Right Groups in Europe
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 02, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 02, 2025
Slopwatch: Linux Journal, Google News, and LinuxSecurity
They carry on polluting the Web with fake articles
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: Kubernetes With FreeBSD and robots.txt
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: 'Open' 'AI' Resorting to Gimmicks and Fake Funding, Europe’s ‘Drone Wall’ Discussed
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: Brave Passes 100M Users Milestone, Kodak Selling Its Own Film Again
Links for the day
Michael “Monty” Widenius: It Started in 1983 With Richard Stallman (RMS)
The other co-founder of MySQL is a bit notorious for confronting RMS rather viciously
For the Second Time in a Few Weeks Microsoft Lunduke Makes False Accusations Against Senior Red Hat Staff to Incite a Despicable 'Troll Army'
Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims of says can be trusted
su lisa && rm -rf /home/ibm/power
Novell was ruined by another person from IBM, Ronald Hovsepian
A Record Demand at Microsoft: Demand to Cancel
What we're witnessing is a very ungraceful destruction of XBox
Microsoft is Losing Europe
Hence all the "support" and "discount" offers that are limited to Europe
The Free Software Foundation Starts Fund-raising for 40th Anniversary
New pop-up 2-3 days ahead of the 40th anniversary event
Systemd Breaks Networking in Debian and Microsoft Staff Rushes to Make Face-Saving Excuses in LWN
Microsoft's bluca is already there in the comments, his Microsoft money pays for LWN to let him leave comments early
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 01, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 01, 2025
What the End of XBox Will Look Like: a Fiery Crash
XBox is the next Skype. It won't last much longer. Expect many more layoffs.
Richard Stallman is Going to Finland to Give a Talk Next Thursday
A day later he speaks in Sweden
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: SMTP Pipelining and End of ROOPHLOCH 2025
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Plagiarism, Fake Articles, and FUD About Linux
not a day goes by without Google News feeding FUD from slopfarms
Gemini Links 01/10/2025: Chat Control and End of Life
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: Long Covid Risk Reiterated, "Bitcoin Queen" Caught
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: EA $55 Billion Deal is Debt and Slop "Raises Vishing Risks"
Links for the day
Bluewashing at Red Hat Means Redundancies
The man who sold Red Hat to IBM meanwhile became a Microsoft Mono booster
After Killing OpenSource.com, IBM ('Red Hat') and OSI Told Us OpenSource.net Would Replace It (But That Didn't Happen)
Now it's time to move on, perhaps tarnishing the "Open Source" label some more (for whatever sponsor wants this)
Linux is Not a Community Project, It's a Wall Street Product
The core goal should be freedom
Bad Actors Abusing the Free Software Community, Vandalising It Using Rogue Politics and Old Tactics
Oil giants have long attempted to do this; now, the digital equivalent of Big Oil does this in technology
Social Control Media Isn't the Future, The Federation or Fediverse Isn't Growing, People's Accounts Vanish for Good
users' accounts will get deleted, not just become inactive
IBM is Failing, This Helps Show Wall Street is Entirely Detached From Actual Commercial Performance
IBM is unable to grow, it's just constantly shrinking
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 30, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 30, 2025
Clerical Aspects of Publishing and Development
In Free software, the management aspects are considerably reduced
Slopwatch: Fake Articles and Google News Promoting "Linux" Spam or Bot-Generated Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD)
These slopfarms help misplace blame
Third Wave of Microsoft Layoffs in September, This Time Many in Liverpool Affected
Be ready for more waves of layoffs ahead of the so-called "results" in late October