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Contacting Former Employees

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  • 05-10-2020 8:28pm
    #1
    the-island-man
    Registered Users Posts: 488 ✭✭


    Hi,

    Just wanted to see what people's thoughts are regarding contacting Former Employees of a company?

    I'm currently working for an American Multinational and on a number of occasions my Supervisor has directed my colleagues to contact former employees regarding projects or issues that had cropped up.

    I would have always seen this as something you don't do (no exceptions). Sure in a personal capacity if you were friendly with them and just want to catch up but never to ask for help or input regarding work.

    I've never been contacted once I've left a company.


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    #2
    Talisman
    Registered Users Posts: 6,000 ✭✭✭Talisman


    Personally I would never do it unless it was a life or death situation, but I have been contacted by staff from companies where I worked.

    In the first situation I was happy to help because I personally knew the individual who contacted me, it was a week after I had left the company and I knew what the issue was as soon as they began talking about it. It took a couple of hours to resolve and had been an item on my personal to-do list that I had never got around to doing before I left the company.

    The second time I was contacted by the individual who replaced me in a specialist role, we had done a half a day hand over which I felt really guilty about and told them not to hesitate to contact me in the event that there was an issue.

    The third time it happened out of the blue and it turned out that the individual from the second situation had left the job and been replaced by two kids straight out of college. My contact details had been left on a post-it note and they figured it was just the sort of emergency case that justified reaching out. I listened to their tale of woe, sympathised with them and then told them that they needed the Financial Director to approve placing me on a retainer for resolving such issues or I could alternatively charge them an exorbitant hourly rate.


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    #3
    TuringBot47
    Registered Users Posts: 991 ✭✭✭TuringBot47


    I really would be uncomfortable ringing up some ex-employee.

    It's a sign of bad management, that there was no cross-training, they relied on one individual too much and there wasn't adequate documentation produced.


    30 days notice is a lot of time to produce that.
    I was over 16 years in a company and the last 30 days solid were hosting handover training sessions, enhancing the documentation, producing really simple diagnostic flowcharts etc.


    So humouring a previous employer would be a sign of good will and maybe to ensure you could continue to get a good reference from them in the future.


    But leaking your personal details to new employees in that ex-employers could be considered a GDPR/privacy violation.


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    #4
    OfflerCrocGod
    Registered Users Posts: 6,294 ✭✭✭OfflerCrocGod


    My company is always rehiring people who left or were made redundant in recessions. I can't think of an instance were someone was contacted about an issue though.


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    #5
    BrokenArrows
    Registered Users Posts: 7,500 ✭✭✭BrokenArrows


    I've been contacted by my previous company about projects I worked on. I made it clear that it would a chargeable fee. They were happy to pay at the time.

    Asking a former employee to work free of charge is crazy.


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    #6
    Jim2007
    Moderators, Business & Finance Moderators Posts: 9,988 Mod ✭✭✭✭Jim2007


    BrokenArrows wrote: »
    Asking a former employee to work free of charge is crazy.


    Asking people to work for free is not crazy.... agreeing to work for free is the crazy bit.


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    #7
    DublinWriter
    Registered Users Posts: 9,555 ✭✭✭DublinWriter


    TuringBot47 wrote: »
    It's a sign of bad management, that there was no cross-training, they relied on one individual too much and there wasn't adequate documentation produced.
    Amen.


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    #8
    beauf
    Closed Accounts Posts: 22,651 ✭✭✭✭beauf


    I've been asked by contracts after I've left. They've been willing to pay but I've not been in a position to go back or accept money, so I'll give them any advice I can over a phone call, or reply an email. But that's it.

    I would have been keen to establish consulting support gigs for old projects along side whatever I was working on at the time. But most places only want your full attention. That said I've worked with contractors who have a few part-time gigs running all at the same time.


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    #9
    14ned
    Registered Users Posts: 768 ✭✭✭14ned


    I've been contacted on many occasions by former employers regarding work done when employed there, sometimes years after. Generally speaking, it's not done lightly, they would be particularly stuck on some problem. Usually, if many years have passed, I can't remember in any case, but if it was more recent I can usually remember. If an employer used some open source I wrote, then the relationship in terms of support can last many years after the employment. And it's nice to get PRs with bug fixes for your stuff, shows they're still using it, they're happy users.

    I appreciate that I'm probably atypical in all this, however I have noticed that once you get very senior, it's commonplace to contact specific individuals if they can help irrespective of where they are currently employed. For example, recently a colleague currently working at Bloomberg contacted me about memory mapped file behaviour, because he knew I'd know the answer, and it's just quicker and easier to fire off an email to me. And that kind of thing goes the other way too, I've emailed people I knew would know an answer to a very niche question, and usually they give me the answer (occasionally not though, which I find rude, and I don't forget).

    To be honest, I'd take each on a case by case basis. It's common courtesy to answer an email from someone who genuinely needs help. Doing work for free I'd not do, unless they've supplied a bug repro to one of my open source projects.


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    #10
    the-island-man
    Registered Users Posts: 488 ✭✭the-island-man


    14ned wrote: »
    I appreciate that I'm probably atypical in all this, however I have noticed that once you get very senior, it's commonplace to contact specific individuals if they can help irrespective of where they are currently employed. For example, recently a colleague currently working at Bloomberg contacted me about memory mapped file behaviour, because he knew I'd know the answer, and it's just quicker and easier to fire off an email to me. And that kind of thing goes the other way too, I've emailed people I knew would know an answer to a very niche question, and usually they give me the answer (occasionally not though, which I find rude, and I don't forget).


    It sounds like you would be on the opposite side of the fence regarding this which is fair enough but the paragraph above would seem to me to be describing something a bit different. It would appear to be describing a network of Engineers who help each other out from time to time irrespective of whether or not one of them is still at the company where they met which I see no harm in. The scenario I mentioned is a case of where the company is continuously allowing knowledge silo's to expand and not encouraging production of the necessary documentation.


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    #11
    14ned
    Registered Users Posts: 768 ✭✭✭14ned


    the-island-man wrote: »
    It sounds like you would be on the opposite side of the fence regarding this which is fair enough but the paragraph above would seem to me to be describing something a bit different. It would appear to be describing a network of Engineers who help each other out from time to time irrespective of whether or not one of them is still at the company where they met which I see no harm in. The scenario I mentioned is a case of where the company is continuously allowing knowledge silo's to expand and not encouraging production of the necessary documentation.

    Well, sorta. I'd more say that because we all flit regularly between employers in order to seek out more pay and more interesting work, there is a good chance you'll end up back somewhere where you worked before, and if not, how people where you worked before think of you matters to you getting your next role e.g. referrals, networking, etc.

    The problem of documentation exists everywhere. Even if you get your devs to write comprehensive documentation, then your problem is that other devs won't read it if it's "hard" i.e. they have to actually study it rather than skim it. So it's wasted effort to write docs of any substance.

    Finally, most of the network you describe is not of people who know each other directly. Rather, it's common courtesy, if someone reaches out with a well phrased reasonable question not easily answered by a Google search or on Stackoverflow, I think it only right that you should answer if it doesn't cost you more than say 30 mins to do so. Doing so builds goodwill, and you never know who reaches out five years from now to offer you a job paying 250k a year.

    Niall


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    #12
    grassylawn
    Registered Users Posts: 489 ✭✭grassylawn


    I gave explicit permission for this because I was the only developer on a key project and my employers were worried. They never needed to contact me though. (I didn't expect them to as I left everything pretty clear for whoever took over.)

    On the other hand I was contacted a long time ago by a different employer and was annoyed by it.

    So it depends on the context. I wouldn't be madly comfortable cold-calling someone who might not welcome it. There's implicit criticism involved as well as it bring intrusive. Either you should be able to understand what was there, or they should have left it in an easier to read state.


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    #13
    nullObjects
    Registered Users Posts: 1,298 ✭✭✭nullObjects


    I worked for a startup which pretty much had a skeleton staff and I've been contacted a few times after I left.
    Don't mind it so much in that case but think if it was a larger company with more resources I'd be less inclined to help out


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    #14
    smacl
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 15,707 Mod ✭✭✭✭smacl


    14ned wrote: »
    Finally, most of the network you describe is not of people who know each other directly. Rather, it's common courtesy, if someone reaches out with a well phrased reasonable question not easily answered by a Google search or on Stackoverflow, I think it only right that you should answer if it doesn't cost you more than say 30 mins to do so. Doing so builds goodwill, and you never know who reaches out five years from now to offer you a job paying 250k a year.

    How many of those do you answer in any given week though? I own and run a small software house and also spend a fair amount of time on different technical forums and as well as LinkedIn and, to a lesser extent, Stackoverflow. When I spend extra time helping someone out with a technical problem, I'd usually get them to post about it afterwards and get a quid pro quo that way. I find this works excellently in terms of new sales and reduced need for direct advertising. While I haven't been involved in contracting or worked for anyone else for a long time, I imagine building a personal brand in this manner could prove highly advantageous.


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    #15
    10000maniacs
    Registered Users Posts: 4,797 ✭✭✭10000maniacs


    I was made redundant as a software developer about 15 years ago, and a few weeks into my unemployment, managed to get a similar job.
    The MD who made me redundant called me one Saturday and needed me to fix an issue with a production server and deploy the fixed solution. Nobody remaining in the company had an iota on how to fix it, let alone deploy it. LOL.
    I said I would come in on the Sunday for an upfront fee of €1000 and €100 per hour on top of that.
    He called me every name under the sun but agreed to the terms.
    I have been called in over 10 times since. LOL.


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