So you accidentally told a million people they are going to die: What next? Your essential guide...

Re: In the confusion...

"WTF?" is exactly what people would likely respond with -- drawing them out of their inner world and, possibly, encouraging a re-assessment of matters, possibly putting an end to what will end up -- either way -- being a completely pointless flight response. Ideally, there are 0 alerts; very much at the other end of things, there will be 1 alert; what's going on when there are multiple alerts, all identical, over the course of the time it would take for nuclear annihilation to have occurred twice over? Things that make you go "hmmmmm", no?

Re: Management Mantra

>For a nice fee, he/she will willingly take the blame<

IT consultant. Notice how much IT consultants get paid? Notice how many external project fail? As the rats desert the sinking ship, failing projects are handed off to external contractors.

Been there. Done that. Got the paycheck.

Re: Management Mantra

" who would get the blame if the project when wrong"

When, not if.

Re: Work down the list ...

The big dog in DC is in bed by 6:30PM and still snoozing around 10AM. During the awake period, he's not too bright so please don't bring in any critical items, other than USA Toiday and his standings with the fox viewers.

Re: Cyber-attack

I dated a thespian once. I had to end if, everything felt a bit stage-managed...

Re: Good compendium of possible actions/inactions/mis-actions.

According to the usage logs for PornHub, many Hawaiians commemorated the lack of impending doom with a celebratory wank.

I buy it. At least in the federal civil service the two basic bases for dismissal of non-probationary employees are poor performance and misconduct. it is terribly difficult to terminate an employee for poor performance or even, sometimes, for non-performance.

I know of a case (this in a US DoD agency) in which a solid foot of paper documentation was diligently accumulated, over a period of over a year, of an employee's incompetence, non-performance of assigned duties, subbasement level annual appraisals, and failure to improve despite detailed counseling from his supervisor. The employee in question previously had been passed on by several other supervisors who noted the behaviour but were unable or unwilling to do the work of documenting it.

Finally, the I's and T's dotted and crossed, the day came when he was notified of termination on the basis of inadequate performance. Then followed the lawsuit, in which the African-American former employee alleged race discrimination by his supervisor, a white man, and manager, a white woman originally from southern Virginia. I knew both of them well enough to know the discrimination claims were rubbish, but under civil service procedures they still had to be adjudicated fairly. In the end, the employee was, indeed, terminated, but based on disability, complete with a pension based on standard Civil Service Retirement System rules.

On the other hand, I know of a case in in the same agency where a very competent and generally high performing employee fell into the habit of playing on-line games during working hours when, as sometimes happened in his branch, not busy with specific work-related tasks. Unfortunately, the employee's cubicle was adjacent to one of a few doors from a general work area to the building corridors and in plain view from the deputy department director's office. The employee also had fairly serious personal hygiene issues. Dismissal (based on misconduct) required no more than collection of some Internet traffic showing the online gaming, a few informal counseling sessions, a warning letter and meeting and, when the behaviour was later repeated, a dismissal letter. A sad part is that, after receiving the warning letter, the employee had passed up an early retirement opportunity that included a $25,000 lump sum payment at separation, although I heard later that she had, with legal assistance, arranged to obtain the lump sum as well as the annuity to which she was entitled in any case but otherwise would have been deferred for two or three years due to age and service requirements.

The Hawaii EMA might have been better off to have "found" porn on the hapless employees work PC.

Public sector unions are not that strong in the US

Must be a different US than the one I live in. Barnacles could take lessons from civil service employees.