On what grounds can a company sue their sysadmin [closed]

Question

Our IT Manager is about to leave and most of his sysadmin duties are being given to me. I am unprepared for this role but I have little choice in the matter.

If in the future through incompetence or ignornace I cause the company down time or lose data, what is the worst the company can do to me. I think being sacked is probably justifiable in this case but what about being sued is that a possibility?

Thanks for any advice in this area and sorry if this is the wrong place to ask these sorts of questions.

Answer 1

I am not a lawyer, of course, but here is my general advice:

Learn to write proactive e-mails describing your current state and giving concrete reasons with supporting evidence for your plans and requests. That is, consistently let management know what you need to perform your duties (training, tools, licenses, etc.) and provide some metrics or other evidence to justify it (for example, that you have not been trained on "X Product" that is critical to your enterprise, request some formal training, and list a few things that you are doing on your own to make up your gap such as purchasing and reading a book, manuals, joining an online group, etc.). Similarly, if you are about to make a major change that might involve some downtime, send a memo explaining what you are going to do and why (Because "X Server Version" is going out of support from its vendor, I am going to upgrade to "Version Y". I have requested a new server to do a migration rather than an upgrade per best-practices [cite source of best practices if necessary], but the requisition has been denied due to lack of funds. As I believe that the lack of vendor support is a major issue that must be addressed, I am therefore going to perform the upgrade on our existing hardware after performing a standard backup of our resources. I would like to schedule potential downtime for .... etc. etc.)

These are just examples, and you don't have to be quite that wordy or deferential. The important elements are that:

1. You let management know what you are doing and give them time to evaluate any decisions they may need to modify.

2. You provide reasoning for your decisions and requests that is backed up by some verifiable evidence. Especially when dealing with constrained resources (too few people, not enough budget) you need to explain your tradeoffs and prioritization without implying blame.

3. You always have a plan in place should problems occur and inform management of best and worse case scenarios.

4. You can demonstrate that you are proactively trying to improve your practices and skillset, and that you are acting positively on any direct guidance that you are being given from above. The purpose of these messages is not to shift decision-making in IT to others, but to provide a universal record of your decision-process, recommendations for future improvements, current activity, and skill set.

5. Above all, be honest and informative. Your copy of this correspondence will help you if you are in trouble, but hopefully through it you won't get into any trouble in the first place but rather be an asset to the company. The worst that happens when you do this is that you get a reputation for being overly verbose and cautious, but since the stereotype of the sysadmin is the opposite (the proverbial BOFH), it's better to be on this side.

You can ALWAYS be sued, since the bar for initiating a lawsuit is fairly low. But being successfully sued requires that they prove negligence on your part, and a long paper trail demonstrating your reasoning and informing management of your state will go a long way towards disproving it. Of course, it will also help in a positive way as you will gain a reputation as either someone who shares information and makes grounded decisions.

Answer 2

IANAL....

To be honest, unless the company could prove criminal intent they don't have much to stand on given they're asking you to perform duties you were never hired for and that you have no training for. Even if they ever did dismiss you, it would be you that would likely have grounds to claim for unfair dismissal.

Answer 3

Usually they would have to prove malicious or criminal intent to sue. The fact that you're not qualified for the position and/or doing a job outside your initial job description would more likely land in your favor.

However, you do have an option. Talk with the company, explain the situation and tell them that in order to do the job, you're going to need to take some continuing education courses so that you can do the job properly. Document this in a memo/email/letter so that you have a copy of it in case you need to refer to it later. Take the courses, do some of the learning on your own, after a few months ask for a raise for your extended duties and promotion that you received.

Answer 4

If you're in the UK unless you do something literally criminal I think you'll find the worse they can do is sack you.

Easy for me to sit here and say this but someone has offered you the role (or shoved it upon you) - what's their view on your concerns?

Answer 5

You should ask your local union, as this is something they are supposed to be able to help you with. The laws/rules tend to differ quite a bit between countries, so you must ask someone with good knowled about the laws in your country.