Managing a complicated computer network can be quite difficult, and it was even more challenging back in the 1990’s.

What would you do if you were in charge of a company’s servers and your boss told you to remove all the redundant servers as a way to save money?

That is what happened to the tech in this story, so he complied and made sure that he wasn’t working when the systems went offline.

Check it out.

You want to save money by reducing redundancy in our server infrastructure? You got it.

It was in the 1990s when I worked for a software company in Germany.

They developed telephone billing systems for major European carriers.

The IT infrastructure was based on Windows NT 4.0 Workstation and Server.

Sounds like a smart setup.

Each server had a redundant counterpart to ensure a functioning network all the time.

Name a server type and I am sure we had it and always in a redundancy.

One day, when I was working in the air conditioned room for the servers, I saw that the primary domain controller had some problems with the hard drives.

It seemed that the SCSI controller was about to give up.

And the database server wasn’t in a better shaped.

Immediately I informed the CIO about it and ordered the needed parts.

Why on Earth would they do that?

So far so good until the CEO and the CFO canceled the order and demanded that every redundant server needs to be deinstalled.

I tried to tell them that the current structure is needed and demanded by the major shareholder.

And to add insult to injury I explained them that canceling the order for urgently needed hardware components to keep the whole network running is irresponsible.

Both looked at me like Snape would sneer at Harry Potter and ignored my arguments.

They ordered me to do as demanded.

I thought to myself ‘OK, they want me to sabotage the company, then they will get what they want.’

To cover my bases I asked for a written order, which was given to me within an hour.

Great job covering for himself.

I made 3 copies of it and sent the original one to the CIO and to the HR together with my resignation and asking to have my overtime to be converted to free days.

When the ok came i started to do as requested even when I knew that the whole thing will end in a disaster.

Every redundant server was shut down, the hard drives formatted and the devices were returned to the storage facility.

At the end of the day I said my goodbye to my co-workers and left to never return.

When a hard drive is failing, it is pretty predictable.

I knew what would happen within a week or two but I didn’t care anymore.

I had been put through so much at this company that I was glad to have quit my job.

A few of my co-workers had become good friends and we still have a good connection and help each other once in a while.

Well, a few days later I got a frantic call from the CIO because the whole network was down and nothing was working.

The PDC crashed spectacularly and the database server had followed right after.

This sounds like it is not his problem anymore.

My reply was: sorry, but I don’t work for you guys anymore and I am on vacation.

Good luck and goodbye.

I complied with the request made by the upper echelon of the company while maliciously wishing them to be chewed by the major shareholder, which then happened and the company went down pretty fast.

What could these idiots have been thinking?

Let’s see what the people in the comments have to say.

The company likely was already struggling.

Sadly, this is very accurate.

Yes, they should trust the people they hire.

This would have been very smart.

These are the best stories.

The CEO and CFO were fools.

As they so often are.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.