I was reading these tales of IT horror and woe and was recalling some of my own.

There have alas been many such tales that I’ve been part of – some of which I’ve caused and even more that were thrust on me like some foul gift.

One that immediately springs to mind is starting a new job – a huge promotion compared to my previous position– and walking into an organization using some off-brand mail server that had been compromised quite long ago by Chinese hackers and which was being used to send more than 120,000 pieces of spam mail a day (all it could handle as it was old and slow).

Being as it was off-brand, and virtually unknown, there was no documentation and even less support from the vendor.

Eventually I discovered and hacked enough to stop the deluge of spam emanating from the office.

The company was still on every blackhole and spammer list in the entire fucking world, and I spent the next month getting the company removed from all of them. But of course since I was the new IT guy I was blamed for why “the email isn’t getting through.” This despite the fact that the problem had started long, long before I’d arrived.

In fact the prior IT person was fired for incompetence. Given the situation and other lapses I’d found, this termination was 100% justified.

This was the same IT person who had pirated nearly every bit of software installed in the office and then called the BSA, triggering an audit, after he was let go.

Another thing I had to deal with about six months from the email server incident.

Nothing like walking into an office on your first day that is in utter chaos, with people mostly not able to send email, that has also been utterly pwned by Chinese hackers, all combined with nearly-unmaintained systems.

It took me a year to get that company straight. But I did it, then got bored and left.