Ex-McKinsey IT director claims he was fired for whistleblowing
- Reference: 1684923914
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/05/24/mckinsey_whistleblower_lawsuit/
- Source link:
Kamran Niazi alleges in the lawsuit, filed in Massachusetts on May 22 and seen by The Register , that he was put on a performance improvement plan (PiP) after he worked on a presentation reflecting poorly on the issues the company would have with data restoration, claiming in the complaint the organization might have had trouble withstanding "a malware attack or natural disruption event."
In his version of events, detailed in the complaint, Niazi joined the firm in February 2021 with his "primary focus" being to drive the IT Disruption Resilience (DR) program, which had previously been managed by three different employees. He went on to do work with the team that was trying to obtain FedRAMP certification for its Wave product – a program management solution which Niazi claimed the company had been selling to corporate clients for almost a decade "to begin generating revenue with governmental agencies."
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As readers selling software platforms into US government agencies will know, a company needs the FedRAMP (Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program) cert to comply with Uncle Sam's cloud services risk policies.
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The IT director claims the group then implemented a "tactical initiative named 'Cyber Step-up' to resolve gaps and issues to help improve the firm's preparedness in an effort to protect and respond to a ransomware attack."
The lawsuit goes on to claim that "given the lack of data and information available about the state of recovery capabilities of the Client Capability products," Niazi prepared a survey to run in June 2022 to assess the state of DR for approximately 50 of McKinsey's "most critical IT client-facing products." The complaint alleges that approximately 60 percent responded, with the results "solidifying" a preliminary assessment that the "DR capabilities were virtually non-existent in the Client Capabilities technology landscape."
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The lawsuit details what the IT director claims was a campaign to change the results presented, along with allegations that colleagues had asked him to sign off on an "inaccurate" slide deck, which he claims he refused to do. He alleges he was then told he would not be allowed to participate in the meeting, "even though he was director of DR."
The complaint claims that on August 5, "the same day that Mr Niazi's co-workers were presenting the knowingly inaccurate deck, Mr Niazi was told that his performance was unsatisfactory and that he would be placed on a PiP."
Niazi's lawsuit states he responded with a long rebuttal of several thousand words, much of which the complaint claims was "dedicated to disproving the bogus allegations of poor performance, and the other half dedicated to exposing the errors in the alternate deck that had been prepared for the meeting."
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The suit also details a test conducted in December, with the complaint alleging Niazi "helped the product team create a simulation and parameters of a recovery test to meet the FedRAMP testing requirements."
The complaint states:
The test itself was conducted in December and the product team failed to restore and recover the components of the product which were part of the test. This further validated the survey results and Mr Niazi's concerns that the Company's Client facing products were indeed not capable of recovery.
During a year-end review in November, Niazi was told he was being placed on a performance improvement plan on the same basis as what he had been told in August, which he refused to sign, the suit claims.
The complaint goes on to allege that on December 12, 2022, a senior HR manager offered Niazi "an ultimatum: accept the PiP or get terminated with a one month severance package offer." According to the document, Niazi retorted that he had been "set up" and alleged the company was "trying to cover up fraud." He claimed he then provided "ample documentation to substantiate his position." The complaint claims that "three days later, on December 15" the HR staffer pivoted "by claiming that the Company was looking to separate with Mr Niazi not for performance related issues, but due to communication gaps/issues, which, obviously, cannot be quantified."
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The IT director claims he then pointed out that his year end evaluation did not contain any references to problematic communication/interpersonal skills, which the suit alleges caused HR "to go silent."
The techie claims he was fired the next month, in January 2023. The suit is seeking damages from McKinsey as well as attorneys' fees and expenses. We've contacted Niazi's lawyer for comment and to confirm a monetary figure for the damages the IT boss is seeking.
We have also asked McKinsey for comment and will update this piece if we hear back. But we note that one of its spokespeople told legal news site [10]Law360 on Monday that Niazi had been "terminated for performance reasons," branding the complaint's allegations "meritless." ®
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[5] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/16/metaverse_mythbuster/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/08/uk_government_it_contracts/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/13/mckinsey_awarded_3m_8_week_contract/
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[10] https://www.law360.com/articles/1680245/mckinsey-fired-it-manager-for-whistleblowing-suit-says
[11] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
'Disruption Resilience'
In my day, DR was "Disaster Recovery". Unfortunately I too have experienced the:
"DR capabilities were virtually non-existent in the Client Capabilities technology landscape."
Basically, to 'save' money, a senior manager 'decides' not to bother with paying for effective DR facilities, despite what the contract says, because otherwise there'd be insufficient 'profit' on the deal, and the manager might not get that shiny bonus. This, of course, does fall foul in the event that an honest person does an audit or, Heaven forfend, there is one of your actual disasters*.
That's the trouble with honesty and integrity, it can land you in an awful lot of trouble.
I wonder whether McKinsey & Co. can provide documentation of invoices for the DR equipment, its installation and maintenance contracts, rosters for the DR staff, accounts showing how it was all paid for in time, electricity bills showing that it was, in fact operational during the time in question and that Mr Niazi was not factually correct in his assertions. Time and the courts will tell, assuming they do not settle before trial.
*Say, one of your data centres, build out of shipping containers goes 'phoom'.
Re: 'Disruption Resilience'
That's the trouble with honesty and integrity, it can land you in an awful lot of trouble.
Definitely, and any whistle blower in any circumstances goes out on a limb, if nobody listens to the whistle or the businesses closes ranks then you've blown it. Might as well clear your desk.
There are many potential whistle blowers out there who will not risk picking up the old Acme Thunderer.
Re: 'Disruption Resilience'
That's the trouble with honesty and integrity, it can land you in an awful lot of trouble.
Yup. I flagged a project we were supposed to simply backfill the documentation because the client would have wasted several millions implementing it without ever seeing the benefit of it. The problem: it appeared some of my superiors had already been planning to acquire a good deal of that, so doing the ethical thing and speaking up went the way of a lead balloon.
The lead on the job tried to entrap me by having me present the issue to the most consulting hating person they could find with the idea they could continue as before after I got shot down, only that didn't happen because aforementioned hater didn't hate me on account of being direct, clear and concise (read: avoiding the sort of BS language that caused his hate in the first place) - I was even complimented.
So they found some excuse to put me on a PiP (their standard tactic to avoid having to pay redundancy), and that I sank too by laying the facts and evaluation on the table and announcing that they could choose between paying me properly or face a court case for constructive dismissal. They caved when they realised I knew full well a constructive dismissal conviction would end their acces to any further government pork - it was the cheaper option..
Personally, I have found that the biggest problem with any consulting: the bigger the company gets, the more likely they drift off the pure facts. I just liked solving problems, the politics and dishonesty is what made me leave.
“Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you. You think about it; it’s true. If you hire somebody without [integrity], you really want them to be dumb and lazy.” - Warren Buffett
Minority position
“Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you. You think about it; it’s true. If you hire somebody without [integrity], you really want them to be dumb and lazy.” - Warren Buffett
That's definitely a minority opinion. In my experience, the primary quality desired is complaisance -- a talent for accepting without making waves whatever is handed down from above. I was once "responsible" for incident response planning for a multinational, where, despite my advice, the UK HQ "DR kit" finally consisted of a self-contradictory policy document and a cardboard box of stuff on the top of a filing cabinet in the IT office. The plan was never tested for real -- the execs just sat down once a year with an external "consultant" and discussed how they would evacuate the building or something equally trivial, regardless of the current threat landscape. I'm really glad this was before the ransomware age.
Ah, the age old management method of "solving" a problem by shooting any messengers providing bad news, to ensure that everybody falsifies data so that everything looks great on paper. The shortcoming with that approach is that while paper reports look great nothing actually works in practice, and the higher management has (by their own a deliberate policy of not wanting to know what the actual situation is) no idea what's actually going on in the company and so any plans they make are near certainly based on false premises and almost certainly undeliverable.
One hopes that they now actually sort out their disaster recovery systems, preferably before they need to recover from a disaster and discover that they can't.
Peter2: "One hopes that they now actually sort out their disaster recovery systems"
LOL, that's a good one, that would mean admitting to a 'mistake', can you see McKinsey & Co doing that?
Say it ain't so
People from McKinsey would never do anything untoward. Just ask Puneet Dikshit, Navdeep Arora, Rajat Gupta, and Jeffrey Skilling.
Re: Say it ain't so
$588 million in fines https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/mckinsey, and a whole page of dodgy dealings being tracked by ProPublica https://www.propublica.org/series/mckinseys-rules
Communication issue
Was the communication issue that he did not understand his job was to get McKinsey certified with minimal expense and not actually investing all the efffort and money necessary to have a working disaster recovery?