yes, he's like a one man Sunshine Act
During the mayoral race the candidates met with the SEIU who were pitching the addition of many City Hall jobs to the union that were then being outsource to private companies especially the technical jobs. When I suggested that outside companies would be more efficient they said the reason they wanted to bring everything in house was due to the need for "institutional memory" and how there were really many problems dealing with private companies. Well it appears there are problems with unionized city hall employees too.
What a surprise!
Mike
Yes, one of the reasons Childs could not be fired (despite his apparently
quite serious disciplinary problems and poor job performance) was because
civil servants have such a powerful union, he could only be transferred to
another department.
Terry
Behalf Of Mike Denny
After doing more research on this fascinating story, a far different picture
of Terry Childs seems to be developing. There is some terrific reporting
going on in the technology press, whose investigative reporters are digging
much deeper into this bizarre incident than the mainstream media. Check out
the Wired Threat Level blog at
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/07/former-san-fran.html and pay
particular attention to the discussion thread that follows, which includes
some extensive comments from Dana Hom, the former Chief Operations Officer
for San Franciscos Department of Technology and Information Services, who
worked closely with Terry Childs as they were designing the FiberWAN network
together. He points out that Childs is one of the top Cisco Certified
Internetwork Experts in the area, and is an exceptionally talented
administrator who simply had no confidence in the ability of the citys
political appointees to manage the system. They arent even qualified to
log into a router to manage the configuration files, so he doesnt see any
need for them to know the passwords.
There are more details on the case at
http://news.oreilly.com/2008/07/coverage-of-terry-childs.html and at
http://weblog.infoworld.com/venezia/archives/017868.html where Paul Venezia
quotes some confidential sources from inside the DTIS who all seem to share
Childs opinion about their clueless managers who panicked over something
that was not a problem. The FiberWAN network is not locked out but is
functioning perfectly normally. No files have been lost, no services
disrupted, and no one has been unable to do their work. Childs
imprisonment has not brought the city to its knees because he designed an
incredibly complex but astonishingly robust network that has been operating
without a hitch even with its chief architect behind bars. They honestly
report that he wasnt always easy to get along with (and after all, what IT
geek is?), but they all had great respect for his ability and his integrity.
The DAs actions are far out of proportion to what happened (which involves
a clueless new Security Officer who was brought on board less than six
months ago with no understanding of the situation, and promptly decided that
everyone involved was a potential threat to National Security).
It appears that Childs may be irreplaceable in San Franciscos IT
organization simply because he put up with more shit than most technicians
of his caliber, and very few people with his skills would ever want to work
for DTIS no matter how much they paid him. Mr. Hom mentions on the Wired
Blog that he walked away from his $152,000/year job with DTIS four years ago
because he couldnt stand working for them anymore, and he stands by Childs
actions as those of a principled professional who put too much of his career
on the line for the network he designed, and wasnt about to let it be
brought down by power-hungry bureaucrats who dont know what they are doing.
It turns out that Childs job performance was only determined to be poor by
the Security Officer who felt he was insubordinate simply by pointing out to
her how little she knew about her own job.
Terry
Behalf Of Terry Floyd