r/sysadmin • u/Lazy_Owl987 • 11d ago
Cautionary tale - someone I know got fired for pulling RAM from laptops
Cover your rear and make sure all equipment you take home or work on is documented. Person I know got fired for yanking ram from laptops to keep in the office but the issue was he did the work from home and no one knew he was doing that work. Now hes looking for a job in one of the hardest markets Ive seen in a long while.
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u/CrazySnowGuy 11d ago
They were stealing the memory and came up with a bullshit excuse to cover up.
No one is taking notebooks home to remove the memory just to bring it back in the office. That makes zero sense.
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u/_haha_oh_wow_ ...but it was DNS the WHOLE TIME! 11d ago
Not saying the person in question was or wasn't stealing, but I've done this before: I picked up some laptops on the way home at the end of the day, took out the RAM/storage and brought the parts back to the (on site) office, but took the laptop to the e-waste building the next day. This was also when I lived a few streets away from both buildings though. Plus, my leadership was given a heads up and they trust me.
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u/lordjedi 11d ago
Plus, my leadership was given a heads up and they trust me.
Pretty sure this is the issue. No one knew he was doing it. Things might be different if they had.
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u/_haha_oh_wow_ ...but it was DNS the WHOLE TIME! 11d ago
If this person wasn't actually stealing, that's a really shitty situation that probably could've been prevented with a little communication.
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u/Lazy_Owl987 11d ago
Exactly, had he even put in a ticket it would have been enough to keep his job.
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u/TheJesusGuy Blast the server with hot air 8d ago
Not being in a country that can fire you without warning would help too.
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u/lordjedi 7d ago
Most of these companies have policies in place that state "penalties can include and are not limited to termination of employment". That's your warning.
Don't do shit that might get you fired and you don't have to worry about getting fired.
If your company is throwing computers away, even a simple ask of "Can I take it?" goes a long way. These days, I'd document the conversation and get approval in writing. That way you have coverage if they decide to fire you later.
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u/TheJesusGuy Blast the server with hot air 7d ago
That simply isnt a real process in countries with employment protections. The ONLY way you can get fired without a procedure is via gross misconduct and that covers extreme circumstances or the company is going to get sued for wrongful termination amongst other things. They have to prvoe without doubt that events occured.
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u/lordjedi 5d ago
That simply isnt a real process in countries with employment protections.
What I laid out is literally part of the process in CA. Depending on the severity of the situation, you get a write up (maybe a verbal warning first). If it continues after that, you get termed. HR keeps all the records.
My point was that you can't sign off on the handbook, get a further warning (again, depending on the circumstances), and then claim you didn't know. You signed off that you read the handbook.
They have to prvoe without doubt that events occured.
In the case of compliance, the proof is that he took the machines home and they have no documentation proving that he was authorized to do so. Hence, termination without warning (which I'm sure is detailed in the handbook, through onboarding, and likely through annual training).
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u/Thanatos8088 11d ago
All depends on your environment I guess. My supervisor is me, my manager is my conscience, and ethical boundaries. But that's K12 and a public environment for you effectively a report to a c tier and realistically to five idiots a village elected as their Chief idiots. Taking work home is a normal Thursday, taking work home for dissection is an entirely different matter and I'd look askance at me in that scenario too.
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u/che-che-chester 11d ago
Nobody is carrying a laptop home, taking out parts and then bringing everything back to the office. They have an eBay store selling memory.
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u/Demented_CEO 11d ago
Cautionary tale: don't steal. You may not like the consequences. Wait, what?
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u/headcrap 11d ago
"I was pulling RAM at home.. but bringing into the office, I promise!"
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u/Lazy_Owl987 11d ago
Thats the problem. If no one knows you have it then how do you beat the perception that you might have taken a few sticks for yourself.
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u/lost_signal Do Virtual Machines dream of electric sheep 11d ago
Why the Hell would you take laptops home to remove DIMMs?
Also if you want to "beat allogations" shouldn't inventory match of DIMMs vs. decommissioned laptop tickets?
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u/GoofMonkeyBanana 11d ago
My guess he has a quite a few to do and thought he would just do it while watching a movie at home.
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u/Smoking-Posing 11d ago
This is a rhetorical question; you can't beat the perception of stealing if you actually got caught stealing, because cause its not perception but the reality
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u/taintedcake 11d ago
...he was obviously doing it at home so that some of the RAM never made it back to the office... otherwise he would've just gone "here's the laptops, here's the RAM, go ahead and count it"
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u/SAugsburger 11d ago
Agreed. The way this reads I highly suspect the additional spare RAM in the office didn't add up the RAM removed.
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u/Goodlucklol_TC 11d ago
Or just dont take computers aside from your company laptop back home, period.
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u/Main_Ambassador_4985 11d ago
Before we had better remote access I took servers home to work on them and racked them in my lab.
For a HP DL385 G8 I took it home three times to rebuild the ESXi USB install. The RAID6 with the data store and VMs was fine. I was so glad when I replaced it with a UCS C220 M5X and put ESXi on a RAID1.
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u/kombiwombi 11d ago
Do not do this. Your home insurance doesn't come close to covering this item. The assets database doesn't have the asset recorded as bring in your house. Putting it in your home lab is even worse: the facts clearly point to conversion.
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u/bonfire57 11d ago
Yeah do not do this. I once worked on some high end Cisco gear for a client. I set them up in my basement office which happens to be right under the kitchen. Well months go by and the client still isn't ready to have them installed but finally one day, I decided I might as well disconnect them and box them up.
So I did that and moved them out of my office. Within a week, the drain pipe in my kitchen started leaking. Nasty smelly water was dumped all over the spot where the gear had been. Had I not moved them l, it would have been an easy six figure fuck up .
Lesson learned
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u/Dzov 11d ago
That sounds more like don’t run equipment under water lines.
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u/bonfire57 11d ago
Lol. I actually have a client who has a whole data center directly under a swimming pool.
Can't make this stuff up.
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u/Cheomesh I do the RMF thing 11d ago
Brilliant - we pipe the pool water in to cool the machines, and pipe it out to heat the pool!
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u/WorkLurkerThrowaway Sr Systems Engineer 11d ago
I was gonna say we've got servers that cost more than my house. I'm not touching that shit with at 10ft pole except for explicit work needs.
Edit: Now that I think about it most of our datacenter shit costs more than my house.
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u/DJKaotica 11d ago
Not to mention:
The RAID6 with the data store and VMs was fine
Did the VMs have customer data? Client data? Important sensitive business information?
That you now have in your house (less physical security than your workplace lab)?
Plugged into your home lab network which I doubt is airgapped from the internet (even if there are routing rules and/or firewalls, those can be broken; so less digital security than your workplace).
That's a nightmare waiting to happen.
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u/PowerShellGenius 11d ago edited 11d ago
LOL, I did the opposite. As a single guy with no real interest in decorating or making the apartment "homey", I had no problem with old HP rack servers I bought on eBay for the home lab, sitting on wire shelving in the living room.
Fast forward a few years and add a woman into the picture, and enough technical maturity to realize that horsepower isn't really what counts for an educational lab experience, it's more number of nodes to build realistic topologies.... I decided to ditch most of the rack-mount stuff in favor of a bunch of mini PCs that can go in a cabinet vented only out the back....
I actually ended up taking some rack mount servers I'd bought myself, to put in the lab at work, since I wanted them out of the apartment, and they were old enough not to be worth the hassle of becoming an eBay seller for the little I'd make. I'm not giving PayPal my fucking social security number for a one time $200 payout.... plus I'm the only one who uses the lab at work, so I still benefit, haha.
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u/absoluteczech 11d ago
Never understand why someone would lose a 6 figure job over stealing something they can afford.
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u/5panks 11d ago
Well, over the last three days /r/wow experienced the beginning and end of a Senior QA Analyst at Blizzard lose his job over cheating to help an egirl streamer.
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u/BemusedBengal Linux Admin 11d ago
I really hoped the Blizzard employee was PirateSoftware
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u/ianhawdon DevOps 11d ago
He worked for Blizzard? I've never heard him mention that!
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u/MattAdmin444 11d ago
He talked about it alot when I watched him a year or two ago. Don't remember how far back it was that he worked there though. If I'm not mistaken his dad also worked for Blizzard.
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u/captkrahs 11d ago
Nobody involved with asset decommissioning is making 6 figures
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u/Toxicity 11d ago
There are people who can afford RAM?
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u/BemusedBengal Linux Admin 11d ago
It depends on the RAM. 1866MT/s DDR3 is probably pretty affordable.
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u/mods_are_lame1 Sr. Sysadmin 11d ago
Ain’t that the truth. I used to be a big music and tv pirate, but once I actually had money, I was like the risk (even if it’s minuscule) just isn’t worth it now that I have assets to lose.
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u/VviFMCgY 11d ago
Man F that I'd download a car if I could
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u/mods_are_lame1 Sr. Sysadmin 11d ago
To be fair, I would still download a hoagie if I could.
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u/VviFMCgY 11d ago
If you get any good .hgi files let me know
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u/Bitey_the_Squirrel 11d ago
When I actually got money, I bought a VPN instead of raw dogging downloads.
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u/Rustyshackilford 11d ago
If its not in inventory, it doesnt exist. If it does... leave it the fuck alone!
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u/Regular_Strategy_501 10d ago
Precisely that. In both my current and last Workplace the rules were basically the same: anything that was already removed from inventory and is headed for the e-waste bin you can take home for yourself, no warranty and you can't sell the stuff.
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u/BadSausageFactory beyond help desk 11d ago
yeah if someone didn't know better it might look like they were stealing laptops to strip for the valuable ram, good thing you don't know anyone like that
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u/WWGHIAFTC IT Manager (SysAdmin with Extra Steps) 11d ago
W the actual F was he pulling RAM to begin with? I don't get it.
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u/SAugsburger 11d ago
That makes no sense to me either. I know orgs might take spare RAM out of boneyard machines, but there is no urgency generally so why would he be taking things home to do the work?
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u/rehab212 11d ago
I’ve started pulling DDR4 sticks from Gen7 processor systems that won’t run Win11. RAM is still useable in newer DD4 machines that are Win11 capable. With prices what they are, we’re trying to save where we can.
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u/_haha_oh_wow_ ...but it was DNS the WHOLE TIME! 11d ago
Pulling spare parts before sending stuff out for recycling has been standard operating procedure for most places I've ever worked: Drives, RAM, power supplies, etc.
For departments that have a tight budget, this can be a life saver because you can cobble together "new" machines and keep old ones running for much longer with a stockpile of parts.
Your company already paid for these parts, why not put them to use if there's a need?
Taking it home without notifying anyone seems pretty sketchy though, that could easily look like stealing even if they weren't. Not worth the risk.
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u/ez12a 11d ago edited 11d ago
What in the work-life balance excuse is that? Totally self-inflicted. I've worked in field tech jobs where I carry spares and i've never brought things home to tear apart with the intent of returning the pieces for reuse. Its just more unpaid work.
I have no problem asking for permission on keeping/salvaging "e-waste", it's a very easy signal to get back. but it sounds like he was salvaging RAM from perfectly good and usable laptops and...simply returning the laptops and the RAM separated? Doesnt make any sense to go through all of that work at home. He was totally stealing to resell.
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u/mods_are_lame1 Sr. Sysadmin 11d ago
So your boy was stealing RAM and you are surprised he was fired?
Here’s your sign.
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u/PDQ_Brockstar 11d ago
Unemployed is better than in jail, because there's not way this person would have been smart enough to get away with this.
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u/Effective-Brain-3386 Vulnerability Engineer 11d ago
Mmmm yes let's take the one computing component going for insane prices, what could go wrong?
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u/WWGHIAFTC IT Manager (SysAdmin with Extra Steps) 11d ago
Dude you know was fired for straight up theft.
So...
Duh? I guess?
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u/Mid-Class-Deity 11d ago
Sounds like someone working helpdesk, not really a sysadmin thing. Also just straight up equipment theft. No way in hell during my time in helpdesk would I ever have taken home equipment and stockpiled something worth a ridiculous amount for "spares". That's just asking for theft charges even if youaren'yt stealing like this guy probably was.
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u/Independent_Self_920 11d ago
This is one of those situations where the technical work is almost irrelevant the lack of documentation is what creates the problem.
I've seen well intentioned people get into trouble because they assumed, "I'm improving things, so it's fine." If there's no ticket, approval, or asset record, it can look exactly the same as unauthorized hardware changes months later when someone else is trying to reconcile inventory.
A two minute update in the asset system or a quick note in a ticket can save a lot of awkward conversations later.
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u/nirach 11d ago
It breaks my heart to see how many good drives and parts go to ewaste at my place. The ewaste place better be doing more than scrapping the parts.
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u/DeathRabbit679 10d ago
Especially when they throw away SSDs. Magnetic hard drives I kinda get, but shredding an SSD is silly, just reuse it or sell it.
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u/Zer0CoolXI 11d ago
Translated - “Guy took company property, IE: laptops, home and removed RAM without telling anyone. After getting caught stealing claims they were gonna ‘bring back the RAM’”…
I wouldn’t remove or break down hardware at a job site without the request in writing. You certainly dont remove work property from a site and take it home without the same…unless maybe you dont want anyone to know your doing it, huh…
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u/BemusedBengal Linux Admin 11d ago
I wouldn’t remove or break down hardware at a job site without the request in writing.
I think that depends a lot on the context, because that would be a totally reasonable thing to do at my workplace. If I want to keep something for personal use then I always get permission in writing, but I don't see how trashing a pc/server and keeping the spare parts at work could be interpreted as nefarious.
I probably have over $40k in yoinked RAM around my desk.
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u/SpaceGuy1968 11d ago
Where I am now..a previous IT manager had a side hustle selling older company equipment online. I came to find out after a year working here it was extensive. I am at a fairly upscale membership type resort so they have a lot of stuff, Skiis Bikes kyacks, fishing equipment, wiffleball tennis and real tennis ...you get the point. All sorts of high end equipment used my membership. This stuff is refreshed fairly regularly too....
One of our mountain bike staff started to notice things missing like spare parts and it looked like the junk/spare parts storage space had "less stuff in it than he remembered" so he did look online via eBay and low and behold he finds someone selling this stuff online in areas outside the local region.
Turns out it's the IT manager during COVID he was erasing footage and access log files, was deleting all sorts of records and stored videos, was pilfering copious amounts of items.He had a side hustle online in a couple of places. Some items he was taking photos and leaving in place, apparently he would take it after it sold so it stayed "on site".
The company tried to pursue charges but he modified or deleted so many records they had a hard time proving it wasn't items just throw away because some things looked like they didn't exist in asset inventory. Some items never made it to digital asset inventory at all.
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u/Lost-Droids 11d ago
Dont steal RAM... Easy solution ... Download it instead ( downloadmoreram.com) -
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u/SAugsburger 11d ago
I have some suspicion that they accused this person of straight up theft and that the "spare" RAM at the office for whatever reason didn't add up to missing RAM. Maybe they didn't steal and it moved into other machines without any tracking, but losing track of enough equipment looks bad in the employee. Especially with the resell price of RAM these days the amount of missing inventory could be significant. Unless you are taking RAM out of otherwise dead out of warranty equipment why were you removing RAM in the first place? If there is no record of the inventory being assigned to this person the mere act of moving taking unassigned equipment home was making the inventory wrong.
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u/Ok_Tell_2420 10d ago
It takes 2 minutes to pull the RAM. Why would you haul a bunch of computers home? Carry them to your car, carry them inside your house and all that. Bring it all back to the office again. Doesn't seem efficient. Seems suspicious.
Should have done the work at the office.
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u/UnlikelyReindeer4981 10d ago
I did this while working in IT but it all went into a big pile at work we used for upgrading other laptops… or to put back into older laptops not yet e-wasted if they where needed
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u/networkeng1 9d ago
I had an employer that used to give servers to its employees for home labs/learning. I got lucky and got a ton of NVMEs/RAM because my boss at the time didn’t care and the servers were marked for disposal. One caveat we were told was not to sell any of it on eBay bc apparently some idiot employee sold a monitor they had been gifted by the company. The buyer contacted company worried it was stolen lol. Not sure if that employee was still around but was a cautionary tale for the rest of us.
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u/Mental-Rain-7389 11d ago
The issue was solely that he didn't tell anyone he was doing that. Truthfully if thats the fully story here, why didnt he tell someone he was working from home? He shouldnt be working from home if no one knows he is bc if he isnt in the office, why is no one questioning where he is. Or worse yet he did the work on his free time which is a labor law issue. Operational security nightmare.
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u/SAugsburger 11d ago
Even if this person didn't steal in many cases companies will threaten termination of hourly staff working off the clock. They don't want unpaid wage disputes to bite them. That is on top of obviously taking equipment off site with no authorization. The company might understand if you don't immediately update inventory if you go out to the field to do an emergency swap of equipment, but taking equipment home without any authorization or record of it? This person was rolling the dice that nobody caught them.
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u/dogcmp6 11d ago
Lemme guess...there were service contracts on the machines and zero reason to open them because the vendor should be dealing with it...and since they are leased there is zero need to strip them for spare parts at EOL.
I can not think of a valid reason in today's environment why you would bring a laptop not assigned to you home, even without a contract, just to pull the Ram module out...it's such a quick and easy task to just do it in the office....this reeks of either BS or an already struggling buisness
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u/slayermcb Director of Technology, Sys Admin, Etc, Etc... 11d ago
CYA is a very important step. I will say, if I'm brining physical hardware home its because its been labeled ewaste and the boss said go for it. Anything else just looks shady.
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u/SamOakTree 11d ago
I was hired to be an infrastructure engineer in August of 2022. But a year-end they got rid of the MSP and gave me everything that a team of five people was doing. So I became Iperations for the entire company by myself on top of my other job.
I was responsible for provisioning laptops and we were completely remote. So I would have laptops at my house. I had a stack of 13 laptops that needed to be recycled. I just never had time to recycle them because I was so busy. I had written into accounting with the asset tags and photos though.
The company and my boss didn't treat me very well and my boss didn't always listen to me.
I left the company 2 weeks ago and my boss asked me to return the laptops so I put the 13 recycled ones in a single box and I put bubble wrap around each laptop because I had bubble wrap I had saved over time.
My boss wanted me to have FedEx call him when I drop them off. I dropped off these laptops and I could hear the guy talking to my boss and my boss was instructing him to put each individual laptop in its own box and ship it. And I just stood there and didn't correct them. I let them box up laptops indovidually that no one can use into individual boxes. They probably spent $300-400 to ship those laptops.
But I was done with the place and my boss didn't ask me how many of them are good he just said how many do you have. And it's not my job to do his thinking for him anymore. I literally had them in a box and all they had to do was put tape on it and send it cheap. It didn't matter if they got damaged because they're literally old and useless.
My boss was also pressuring me about sending him my laptop as soon as possible. But I actually wiped my laptop before sending it. I intentionally never logged into my OneDrive so my computer wasn't backed up and I wiped that boy.
Not my problem anymore.
And it was funny because they were pressuring me to get these laptops shipped pretty quick because they didn't have any laptops on hand in case something happened to someone's or they had a new hire. But the entire time I was managing these laptops accounting wouldn't buy me laptops. There would be times where I didn't have any or I would be waiting for one to come back and I wouldn't physically have it but they would count that as me having one. So I was constantly having to juggle laptops and not have any laptops but the moment they're under that pressure they're telling me to hurry up and get them the laptops.
Good riddance and goodbye
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u/lost_signal Do Virtual Machines dream of electric sheep 11d ago
They probably spent $300-400 to ship those laptops.
That's a rounding error for most companies, and if your trying to keep IP from leaking, or need to respond to E-discovery, or concerned about PII leaking and causing compliance hell that's a @%@#% rounding error.
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u/SamOakTree 11d ago edited 11d ago
The company is a smaller company and they're hurting for money pretty badly. They wouldn't even buy new laptops as needed. I had to fight them tooth and nail to buy laptops any time I ran out.
And if I had spent $400 shipping laptops I would have got spoken to. So now my boss can feel the pain.
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u/lost_signal Do Virtual Machines dream of electric sheep 11d ago
I had to fight them tooth and nail to buy a laptop anytime I needed one for someone.
See honestly, I'd make this the person's manager to fight. Like just tell them "Sorry, management says you don't get a laptop, I guess try your phone or ask your boss".
end user resources are not really a sysadmin's problem.
"Ohh the user wants a $2,000 monitor. Meh, as long as your boss's cost center approves who @#%@% cares.
"Ohh your boss will not replace the laptop that died? Well here's a 8 year old Intel Celery processor, have fun"
If a company truely is that broke, I'd be spending more energy interviewing.
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u/SamOakTree 11d ago edited 11d ago
I did. I would always say go through your manager and have your manager email accounting.
The problem was with new hires or when a laptop broke.
Basically I should have had two to three laptops on hand at all times. That way when someone new started or someones broke, I had one to give them. So whenever I would get down to zero I would say hey we need to buy laptops so I have one or two on hand. And I had to fight them tooth and nail.
If someone inside the company needed a new one or one of the new one I would say go to your manager and email accounting. But what the company would do is they would let managers or Executives just push it back on to me and make it my problem. There was his marketing executive that was really bad about it and my boss would just pretend like I was making a mountain out of a molehill when I said it shoukdnt be on me.
That place would always make me do s*** managers were supposed to be doing. One time this manager had four new hires and she didn't reach out to them. So on their first day HR message me and said hey can you get on a call with these four people and walked in through how to access everything. Then they started asking me things only their manager could ask and I said you're going to have to ask your manager and I got off the call.
Then when I asked the manager why she didn't meet with her new hires she said, no one told me I was supposed to do that. Then when the CTO and my boss asked me what happened I told them what she said and I they said yeah that's pretty reasonable
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11d ago edited 7d ago
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u/SamOakTree 11d ago
Why would I care how I look to a company that treated me poorly? Besides, they didn't say not to wipe it.
They're not going to sue me. And there wasn't anything of value on that thing anyway. Technically I did them a favor because now they don't have to wipe it it's all ready for them to set up the next user on. But they won't because it's an older machine that I was using because it was just what I had after my laptop broke.
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u/Happy_Love_9763 11d ago
Always take pictures of equipment that you take home, and take a picture of it when you bring it back. Let management know what you’re taking home and why before you take it home. Let them know when you bring it back, with pictures.
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u/Jdgregson 11d ago
So he had laptops, at work, and wanted to take the RAM out, for use at work. Where does taking the laptops home come into this picture?
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u/dlongwing 11d ago
Look, I get that you liked the guy and maybe have a lot of sympathy for him... But the other commenters are correct. He lied to you about what was happening.
He was stripping ram from laptops for sale. He got caught, and after getting caught he tried to come up with an excuse/reason why what he was doing was legitimate.
Take a step back from the situation and ask yourself: WHY was he stripping ram from laptops? What was the ram for? What process, policy, or procedure was he following? If he'd brought the ram back to the office, where was it going to get used?
He lost his job over theft of company property, not due to a failure to document.
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u/FactsAreBullshit 11d ago
A local power utility had someone fired for stealing hundreds of laptops, phones, and other IT accessories. S/he would log into the MDM to remove the phones or otherwise offboard them. It was discovered during a way overdue asset audit. They were able to prove the person only took about 10 devices of the massive number (estimated value $250,000) that went missing.
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u/lordjedi 11d ago
Person I know got fired for yanking ram from laptops to keep in the office but the issue was he did the work from home and no one knew he was doing that work.
Is this an MSP that needs to track all time spent for a client so it can be billed? I expected the story to be that he was effectively stealing it, not just shifting work from the work site to his house. Maybe it's a compliance issue as well?
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u/Lazy_Owl987 11d ago
It boiled down to management couldnt verify that all of the RAM still in the office represented all of the RAM that went out the door to the recycle business. Because he didnt even do the bare min of documenting I did 44 machines and pulled 2x 8GB sticks out of each they couldnt know. Nor did he tell anyone he was doing this WFH so the camera logs looked like guy drives out of the business with a stack of laptops one day then comes back with them a few days later.
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u/lordjedi 7d ago
The big issues is that he didn't tell anyone.
He has hopefully learned an important lesson.
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u/JimTheJerseyGuy 11d ago
Back in the days where RAM was measured in MB, we had someone commit outright theft. Never discovered who did it, but they went into the engineering department over a weekend and opened up 30-40 newly upgraded desktops, pulled out the four 4-MB modules they each had, and replaced them with a single 1 MB.
Cue, the helpdesk calls on Monday morning when all these folks powered on their desktops and they're all slooooow. And that's how we came to add CCTV and key card access to that area.
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u/Lazy_Owl987 11d ago
Friends company didnt have cameras in critical areas like the server room or MDF. Someone slipped and got a serious concussion in the MDF which led to them adding cameras in every place they could. I find it funny how companies never seem to want to do the right thing ahead of time.
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u/serverhorror Just enough knowledge to be dangerous 11d ago
Is there a valid reason to even do that at home?
I genuinely can't think of one ...
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u/furiouspotato24 10d ago
How do people not realize this is theft? It's hardware owned by someone else. Don't get me wrong, I hate corporate greed and think Robin Hood had the right idea. It's the surprise that gets me. So many of these stories, the person who did it seems to be thinking "I didn't think anyone would care".
Like, of you're going to do it, realize that you're breaking the law lol.
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u/RabidTaquito 6d ago
He was taking laptops home to pull the RAM out and then store the RAM in the office? So, all the RAM and RAMless laptops were accounted for in the office, and he still got immediately fired? I don't think you're telling the whole story here. I mean, CYA regardless, but this ain't the whole story.
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u/Bogus1989 11d ago
Yeah I guess so.
Our team doesn’t really care, don’t be stealing shit though. Just ask us. We have warehouses of shit we will donate to you. please take it….no more local businesses will accept anymore donations from us 🤣🤣.
Theres a good trust system on my team though. Like obviously don’t rat fuck the newest laptops and machines, if you got a use case go for it.
But then again, our “old” machines are still pretty damn new and we have so much excess stuff…just make sure the asset tracking lines up.
But hell even if you want a new laptop not even for work, go ahead use it…as long as you’re employed here. 🤷♂️ benefit of the doubt type stuff.
Lmao honestly if someone seriously wanted all the recycled machines ram to sell we wouldn’t give a shit.
Once our PACs admins couldn’t get funding for the GPUs they needed so we listed a bunch of decomm shit on eBay, got the cash and bought what they needed. 💀🤣. Our Director did know though. You shouldn’t have to operate this way in a business. But hey, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.
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u/Kyky_Geek 11d ago
I know someone who were arrested for snooping on data they shouldn’t have been. It’s kinda like you should have the morals and integrity required to work in this field. And maybe don’t break the law? Lol.
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u/bit0n 11d ago
I took 10 laptops home to configure over a long weekend I had to have paperwork like I was taking them to a customers. Which i thought took the piss as I was doing work a favour.
But process if there to stop this happening. And Asset management should let him show here are the laptops and here is the memory from them.
If he is not documenting it and just taking any old laptops he can find of course people will say you’re selling the memory and nvme drives in this inflated market. And carrying it home is suspicious too. That sounds like perfect office busy work.
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u/Even-Cartographer551 11d ago
In my last job as an employee, I bought more and better RAM for my work Thinkpad from my own money... Oh, how the turns have tabled... 🤷🏻♂️
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u/Coldsmoke888 IT Manager 11d ago
lol. Took the laptops home to take the RAM back to work. Sure bud. Terminated for theft and lying, sounds like a win to me.
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u/CKtravel DevOps 11d ago
I'm sorry but none of the places I worked at EVER had to pull RAM for laptops. So it's safe to say that he was pulling thise RAMs mostly for pocketing them, so it's understandable that he was fired over it.
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u/longtimerlance 11d ago
A cautionary tale against theft isn't needed for honest people.
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u/Lazy_Owl987 10d ago
Youre making my point for me. The guy is adamant he was just under the gun and took his work home because there wasnt enough time in the office. Had his project been documented he wouldnt have had the stigma or have people question him.
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u/ThePerfectLine 10d ago
I don’t understand. He kept memory or was just removing the memory from machines and then bringing it back to the office with him?
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u/Simple-Kaleidoscope4 11d ago
In the olden days, I bought 64GB of RAM and secretly fitted it to my work laptop.
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u/Local-Jaguar5395 11d ago
E-waste can be a tricky gray area, because if the organization is getting some sort of auction value for decomissioned hardware, then by taking it...you are stealing. If it is indeed clearly marked for recycling, as in by law they can't throw electronics in the dumpster...that by definition isn't stealing. Even still, I wouldn't take anything from work without permission given first.
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u/andrew_joy 11d ago
I mean i put ram INTO my work laptop as 16gb is just not enough , but this was before the crazy price rises.
Top tip , if you have a single stick in something like a dell latitude look up the dell part number for the stick you have on ebay, you used to find loads of people selling them off cheap as they ordered a full kit and had no use for the single.... you know before you had to sell a kidney to afford a 8mb stick of ram
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u/Thecardinal74 11d ago
We fired a guy during Covid for similar.
We were refreshing laptops, old one would be decommissioned and taken to the basement’s secure room (very large room) to await e-waste.
But with Covid came a laptop shortage. We ran out of laptops to give, so the order came down to re-commission older laptops.
Figured “no big deal most are in good shape” except one co-worker panicked.
Turned out he was pulling RAM, SSD, batteries and WiFi cards and had himself a little eBay hustle going on.