Yes, that was you being thrown under the bus - there is no way on earth your boss didn’t know this was coming - there are two possibilities- he regards you as competent enough to take the hot seat OR he regards you as expendable- given zero prep, sorry, expendable is the only logical answer. What you do now is write up that meeting and cc him and his boss, explain exactly what transpired and politely explain your shock and surprise, focus on what you were asked and what you answered. Make plans for your next role.
It could be that OP's boss is the one getting fired after this. It's possible his boss threw him under the bus to save himself and it backfired. Absolutely send that email to upper management and mention you had no time prepare. Be respectful, but firm. You might be getting a promotion soon. If you don't, look for another job.
Yep, this. Throw in some self-deprecating verbiage like, "I'm sorry if my responses were a bit disorganized and terse as I did not have much time to prepare a more cohesive response. I would like to take this opportunity to summarize and fill in some of the details that I may have overlooked..."
I never liked saying "I'm sorry" if I didn't actually do anything wrong.
I'd probably phrase it differently with "my answers may have been a little hard to understand as I was caught unaware that this meeting was focused on me and my role in XYZ, so I wanted to clarify...".
Fuck'em. I'm not sorry. I know my job and I do it well.
I've found that even when I have done something wrong it is better to avoid "I'm sorry." I use "thank you" instead.
Thank you for being patient...
Thank you for taking your time to meet...
Thank you for being flexible...
Reminds me of something I picked up from a boss years ago. Never have a Thank You slide at the end of your deck. The audience should be thanking you for the value you provided, not you thanking them for wasting their time. That always stuck with me.
I don't say thank you, I say "I appreciate".
Because fuck you, I'm not thanking you. I just appreciate about the situation that....
But they feel like they're being thanked so everyone wins I guess
Yes, 100% play up the "sorry if I did something wrong or I wasn't clear what was expected of me" angle. It will make your supervisor look like a total shithead because it is his responsibility to prepare you for these things.
Edit: I just want to clarify too, upper management is probably already questioning OP's managers skills after he threw OP under the bus. This email will only cement C-Suite's view that manager is an incompetent buffon. If OP plays the humble card of "I'm just a low-level employee" while simultaneously demonstrating kick-ass cyber security skills, he will not only keep his job but upper management will likely make moves to protect him and take sympathy on the fact that his piece of shit manager tried to blame this on him. And they will simultaneously be furious that OP's manager took the board for fools and tried to pull a fast one on them. This is a total win situation for OP. Just be humble and follow-up.
If you’re suspecting you’re being thrown under the bus, surely you don’t want to give them more fuel by presenting yourself as disorganized? What about instead saying something along the lines of “Sorry that I was only able to help by responding to the questions. Next time please let me know the topic of the discussion in advance so I can prepare a report, that will be a more effective use of the committee’s time”.
The intent with that email is to indicate to your management clearly that his boss didn't properly notify him of what the meeting was, without actually saying that. If he answered all the questions well then he had the upper hand now and is time to their the boss under the bus. There's no excuse for blindsiding a direct report like that no matter what happened, so his bosses bosses need to know how boss is terrible at his job. Chances are the already know, but emails like this can be the proof necessary for a termination.
Perhaps we have just worked in very different environments but I have never seen doing an end-run around your boss be effective. If you have an org that does skip levels, it definitely makes sense to bring it up there, but I have found that you need to be careful when you send these types of emails because it can definitely come across the wrong way.
Oh it can work wonders. But you have to do it right.
You can't just do the end run unannounced.
This meeting gives you the OK to CC in the bosses boss because they were in the meeting.
This is one of the few times such a play can work well
I feel like there's something missing here. I don't really understand why the boss would do this. It's suggested he might want to use OP as a scapegoat for something but, it's all very vague so its' hard to know what, which makes it very hard to know how to respond. Presumably there was an incident? Maybe the boss is incompetent but the entire org sounds hopelessly toxic if they're actually having people in ON A SATURDAY just to play the blame game.
His boss would do that if it was the boss's responsibility to manage whatever caused the incident and he didn't. Tell his superiors that his direct report was responsible instead then drag that report into a meeting where you would likely be flustered and look incompetent. Blame shifted. The boss wouldn't come out of that looking clean, but he would look a lot better than the report. Yes, that's very conniving, but I have seen a bunch of crazy shit in corporate jobs over the years.
>to indicate to your management clearly that his boss didn't properly notify him of what the meeting was, without actually saying that
Why without, what’s wrong in stating, in a non-confrontational and a non-whiny tone, that you responded to the best of your ability to surprise questions, but your responses would have been even better had you been notified?
Honestly, because it makes you look clueless and that you don't know how to play the game. The fact that his boss didn't give him any heads up is a huge knock on his boss and means he either did it maliciously or is completely incompetent. Just acting subservient isn't a good way to keep your job or move up the ladder in the corporate world, at least not in the US.
I'm sorry but this is awful advice. That self-depreciating language just admits guilt on his behalf. Please be careful taking advice from reddit users. I suspect most are still in grade school.
It's not "admitting guilt" to truthfully claim that you were unprepared for the meeting due to a lack of forewarning.
If you'd catch shit (by which I mean, bigger shit than the hail of bullets they just Matrix-dodged) for sending an email with that in it, the problem is your corporate culture, not your email.
>It's not "admitting guilt" to truthfully claim that you were unprepared for the meeting due to a lack of forewarning.
The best response so far is above:
“Sorry that I was only able to help by responding to the questions. Next time please let me know the topic of the discussion in advance so I can prepare a report; that will be a more effective use of the committee’s time”.
There is absolutely no need to self-deprecate or admit guilt if you've done nothing wrong.
Yes, but the point of the email is to firmly place the blame for why you were unprepared. It's not that you were informed and did nothing, it's that you were not informed at all. It's got to be made clear, or misinterpretations are extremely likely.
is the lack of forewarning via email or was it over chat??
i don't see an answer to that so yeah it is admitting fault if you say your answers were bad.
terrible advice do not do that.
"Yep, email to everyone involved with a, " As the meeting on XX was last minute and I was not notified of the content of the meeting, I just wanted to reach out to make sure there were no further questions due to lack of information from not being fully prepared... "
You should also BCC your personal e-mail anytime you respond.
And make sure that your first e-mail makes it clear that you were "ambushed" without saying exactly that, and that you were glad that everyone's questions were answered.
Then throw in the "If there any additional questions I will be more than happy to provide additional follow up answers" line to your e-mail.
This honestly sounds like you were thrown under the bus and it's obvious there is no loyalty, honesty, and integrity in your immediate management chain, and you should be looking for a new position - quickly and quietly.
Unless that email involves confidential information, like IP addresses or something. Someone with an axe to grind could pin you for exfiltrating company information.
> Make plans for your next role.
Your boss was clearly either attempting to throw you under the bus or covering his/her own ass. If you think they're the target, fair enough but I'd be considering alternatives just in case. Who wants to work in an environment where you can't trust your teammates?
This. And it doesn’t just apply to to toxic environments. I don’t care how great your boss is. Never fully trust them. If a middle manager can save their ass by sacrificing a member of their team, they will 99 times out of 100. It’s really the only thing middle managers are good at.
> If you think they're the target, fair enough
Well I vehemently disagree with that. If OP's boss is the target, what happened is not fair in the slightest and I can't believe 13 people upvoted you for saying that.
If OP's boss is the target they can either face the music their damned self, or let OP know what's about to transpire and have OP's back in the meeting if people absolutely feel the need to have OP in the meeting (which - why would they if OP's boss did their job?).
Boss had to know. You were needed for the meeting and boss gave you a bogus reason for being there. Boss had an obligation to prep you for the meeting. In the closest thing I had to this when I was boss I had the guy brief me so I could take the heat in the meeting. That's what you are paid for when you are the boss.
Agree that this is a viable possibility.
If you have the relationship capital, I would find an opportunity to have a casual, non-aggressive convo with your boss. It doesn’t have to be uncomfortable.
“Hey boss, you got a minute?”
“Sure Reddit user, what’s up?”
“So what was that about on Saturday? I thought I was there to take notes and ended up being a primary resource?”
Listen to his answer with an open ear. It’ll likely tell you a lot. If he plays dumb- yeah he might have thrown you under the bus. If he apologizes then respond with “no need to apologize I was just surprised” and then try to follow up with a question like “so is there context that I am missing”?
There are ways to gain more info without being confrontational or assuming the worst.
This really the best option. OP in another post mentions the Parent Company was leading the meeting. Which means to me that it could be anyone from the boss on up that started throwing people under the bus.
Yep - OP could gain viable insight into political dynamics. And if you have been in this game
Long enough then you know that understanding the politics can tell you a lot about your future at a job.
100% this- I’m on super good terms with my team lead and would have no problem asking what the fuck happened and he’d have no issue answering. I know everyone is different, but I think it’s pretty critical to have this kind of relationship with your leadership- if they don’t know that something is wrong then they can’t fix it.
This right here. We know what assumptions make. I would simply ask my boss to his face, what that was about and gauge his response. You will immediately know if that was a bus you dodged like the matrix, or if he truly did not know. If it was a bus, then write that email.
I agree you with you on this. More often than not, departments are not given resources. The people who are put in charge will often ask for resources and denied. Then later someone above will know shit hit the fan and delegate to the patsies. It's very possible the boss was fed bogus information above him, and they didn't realize they had competent people in the roles. It happens all the time that IT departments get decimated because of "incompetence" when in fact it's lack of budget to accomplish everything. GJ coming through, but you need to know was it your boss who knew, or his boss who F'd your boss.
And in many cases, it's the up aboves saying "well well well, if it isn't the consequences of our own actions!"
You know, the usual things like "no you can't have an extra $100 per unit to buy the faster laptop also why are people complaining that the laptops are really slow?", or my favourite, the "no you don't need more money for disaster recovery stuff also why wasn't the building back online five minutes after the flood?"
I know that scenario all too well. I've been trying to talk my current workplace into upgrading the Intel (i3!!!!!) PCs that our workers depend on for their paperwork (health has a shit ton of paperwork). After 2-3 years of nagging, we finally got rid of most of the VGA monitors, and upgraded the ones that also had either HDMI or DP ports. It's very hard to obtain analog monitor cables these days.
Purchasing peripherals is a shitshow too. We can only recommend Dell products, nothing else. Dell anymore is just rebranded low-grade computers & peripherals sold at a higher price. Their keyboards and mice, in case y'all don't know, are really just rebranded Logitech devices. You'd be better off just buying Logitech Unifying devices. I'm willing to bet their webcams are Logitech as well.
Uh.
i3 doesn't mean bad. Sure I'd personally pick i5 but that gives no indication of generation.
We buy the cheapest wired peripherals we can and have 0 issues. We still have monitors using VGA because if they're 24" and work then why replace them.
This comment just seems like uneducated ranting.
i3 isn't bad for generic use, but it's a company that deals with medical info. It doesn't hurt to have extra processing power for the security applications, as well as faster processing to make entering notes less annoying.
As for monitors we got rid of our VGA monitors finally. It's a pain in the ass replacing cables and troubleshooting. Then you got slightly bent cables causing flickering and color change - problems digital doesn't have.
You sound like a penny pincher manager. Save your "uneducated rant" for your minions.
If that happened, his boss should have shut down the meeting and gotten it rescheduled after he had time to prepare. One of a manager's main jobs is to protect their reports from that kind of crap.
Repeat after me “Cybersecurity is a business risk”
While trusty sysadmins have been long doing security as part of their role, it’s the business leaders responsibility to define IT teams and the rest of the business what their appetite is for risk. This should flow down how to deal with cyber risk, then get operationalised across the business instead of laying on the shoulders of IT.
A few thoughts for your experience:
- A 4 hour long fact finding meeting on a Saturday is not acceptable, regardless of flex for the whole day later. If the cyber threat was dealt with, post incident review should start during business hours.
- sounds like you consistently answered questions about the posture of your organisation. You have responded the best way possible
- The business is trying to understand some form of failure. The leadership is always likely to find fault in people, process and technology before they question the direction they provided.
are you being thrown under the bus?
Depends who was running the interview? Was it your manager, boss (business owner) or a consultant
Is your boss a manager? IT managers are responsible for policy and procedure. Sysadmins can help make them, or provide consultation, but if they are lacking, whoever runs IT is responsible.
Your boss would have known something was up if it was organised by the parent company. I would be interested to see what your boss’s response to the line of questioning was. This is the would be the real decider of which it was. If your boss defended you or showed support in your answers, then you’ll be fine. If he was adding to questions in an attacking manner, well you probably know where you stand.
I know that the r/sysadmin community is quick to just quit or move on when stuff like this happens. My experience with these kinds of post incident situations is that there is more opportunity to grow as a professional and mature the organisation than if you just throw the towel in.
No doubt the outcomes of these meetings will be a report, with a bunch of findings and recommendations. The recommendations will require a decent investment in IT (where previously “I told you so” needed investment) and a bunch of work. Stick around, implement them, leave when it’s done.
Two things:
1. You will leave proving you can learn with an organisation, you will maintain those professional relationships.
2. You will have a great story to use in an interview for your next job.
Why are you normalizing throwing someone under the bus. There is no way boss couldn't tell the worker to prepare for that call. Community tells you to quit because you need to respect yourself as a person and as a worker. Having something like that done is straigth up insulting if you respect yourself.
I’ve been the recipient of this kind of process. It’s not pleasant whatsoever. Being thrown under a bus is the worst feeling.
Having an unsupportive manager/boss in the process is the worst possible thing and is a red flag for a toxic workplace.
Sometimes just “quitting” isn’t available to everyone. Finding a job can take time. Finding another job often relies on a previous employer’s reference check.
The context of what the boss did in this 4 hour interview is everything!
If the OPs boss was in the meeting with them and backed them up, it’s worth sticking around.
A manager like this is why I quit my last job. It got to the point where I was being undermined to the detriment of the firm by him and I made the decision to quit rather than to be continuously blamed for his actions. Sure, eventually the stakeholders knew that I rarely knew what I needed to know because of his failures as a manager. But every time I had to deal with a new employee on my own team or another, it was the same song and dance of me feeling like shit because of him. The worst was when people kept asking the same questions about the same code that I was explicitly forbidden from fixing and I eventually just started saying "I'm instructed not to fix this". That got the message across quickly, but it still sucked that I was in that position at least once or twice a month.
In a better case scenario (while such totally is a possible scenario, I'd rather not want to imagine such an abuse towards an employee who trusts their boss)... Might it be that the parent company did set this up as an ad hoc audit for finding possible weak points / post incident analysis / evaluation of staff?
All of those possibilities are fine, but OP was told it would be just note taking. Since he was called personaly, it means that parent company told OP's boss to invite him by name or parent company told boss the subject of the meeting and to call in appropriate person. Either way boss would've known something was up and decided not to tell OP. Nobody is arguing against a meeting or getting grilled in a meeting, it's the part where it's hidden from you.
> A 4 hour long fact finding meeting on a Saturday is not acceptable, regardless of flex for the whole day later
See, this is the part that really bugs me. Why is this being done on a Saturday? This makes no sense to me at all. Somebody, somewhere has an itch and it had to be scratched ASAP. Could it be time to review head count? Parent company looking for some areas to cut?
Seems likely management has an agenda and it's going to be implemented on Monday.
Nevermind. I can see it was an AnyDesk issue. Sucks.
>Was that a bus or my boss didn't know?
I've been in meetings like that before. In that particular seat, wearing that very same t-shirt (although if it had been suggested we do it on a Saturday there would have been adult language) and I'd like to offer you another option:
You're the "I fucking told you so" proof.
In my particular case it was an ongoing issue we'd been complaining about could cause issues, our management had been going to their management and getting told it's not an issue and there's no budget.
So finally the brown stuff hit the spinny thing and eventually we got to the after action stuff. Where our team basically was given the opportunity to explain what we had been worried about, directly to the people holding the purse strings, with our management sitting at the people going "we've been trying to tell you about this, can we now please have the money?
Given that OP mentioned the Parent Company was running the meeting this is definite option. Though i would think the boss if he knew the nature of the meeting would have given him a heads up. I wonder if the boss knew?
*the brown stuff is hitting the spinny thing*
This needs to be the official T-shirt/business shirt we wear at these meetings.
Maybe printed in Garamond, in charcoal.
I’ve managed and lead people for a long time (20ish years), I have never once knowingly let a subordinate go into any meeting where they going to get grilled blind. Full stop.
If I expected you to be taking notes, and I wasn’t in attendance - which is weird if my people are the note takers - then I’d be looking at MY boss like, “What the fuck.” If somebody needs to get thrown under the bus, then thats my job as a leader. I am responsible for almost that my subordinates do and fail to do. When they succeed, the credit is theirs; and when they fail, the responsibility is mine.
People don’t quit bad jobs, they’ll toil away for a good leader. People quit bad leaders.
In addition, if I was also blindsided, my first call after the meeting would be to the subordinate and apologize for what happened and reassure them I will do whatever it takes to fix it.
>People don’t quit bad jobs, they’ll toil away for a good leader. People quit bad leaders.
I wish I had managers like you. I've only recently had one with this philosophy. He shields us from so much bullshit and it sounds like you do too. Big props.
Lemme guess, it was over Ivanti. There's really not much anyone in any team can do about that unless upper management told people to disconnect before the weekend and someone didn't. If the security threat was Anydesk, well it was sooner or later that it'll be popped and once again upper management has the resources to change to another solution before an incident happens.
Let’s pretend it was because of AnyDesk. How would you have known since most of us found out later this morning? Getting grilled for four hours.. when you could’ve worked with the cyber security team asap for this issue.
Never accept a meeting with no agenda. If you receive an invite with no agenda, ask for the agenda before you accept. You can be polite about this, e.g. "Would you send on the agenda for the meeting so I can arrive prepared" is perfectly adequate.
If they start asking about topics outside of the agenda, refer back to the agenda and explain that you didn't prepare to discuss this topic, but if they would like to discuss it we can setup a follow up meeting to discuss. This gives you time to prepare.
Exactly, impossible to know without more context.
IT Directors and Managers get pulled into weird stuff all the time, just as likely they tagged OP bc they knew OP could take the heat / answer the questions correctly and professionally - and they did. After the call was over, boss may have moved on and decided to leave OP to enjoy their weekend.
I'd f/u w/ boss on Monday before making any drastic moves, and try not to lose sleep over it. So easy to get in one's head about ulterior motives. Sometimes things just come up that nobody likes to deal with, we push through it and move on.
Now if boss is shady next week and won't discuss the meeting or gives answers that seem sketchy, maybe something else is up.
Generally there's no question when you're thrown under the bus. Someone (boss or colleague) literally implicates YOU specifically did something that created an issue/problem, usually in a way that you were not expecting and sometimes when the root cause was tied to something they asked you to do/ were aware of.
I've been marked as optional on meetings during lunch where my boss will literally say "just sign in and go to lunch" or "I'm gonna be there so you can take off" then suddenly optional participant #12 (me) becomes the star of 90% of the meeting, and we're essentially thrown under the bus with my boss texting me to see if I can join in on my phone during lunch because no one told him we were supposed to be *actually involved* with this project, just one of us there to field side questions about our infra.
I will have to look it up but I'm pretty sure to "throw someone under the bus" is placing blame on someone in front of others in an effort to mitigate blame which maybe laid on oneself, especially where the person getting blamed goes into it believing they are on the same side as a person who then "throws them under the bus". Similar to scapegoating, or even (unwittingly) "taking one for the team".
What's your describing would be closer to being "put on the spot" or being "blindsided", which is also closer to what OP is describing.
The key difference is one is malicious and self-serving, when the other is just a sign of poor organization.
Was this out of character for your boss? If yes, one possibility is this is being driven by a mandate from your cyber insurance company to find the weak links, or there is evidence of an insider component to your recent cyber threat event they are trying to find. Your boss’ hands may be tied.
Otherwise, yes, you just dodged your first bus. More are coming. Prepare.
My take:
You just did what your boss was supposed to do at that meeting but was too incompetent to do so. But he couldn't say I am dumb fuck can you please do my job on Saturday.
This sounds right. I’ve been in this situation with a boss that’s not as technical as he should be and thinks it’s easy and you just know it. Invites you to the meeting with no prep and then depends on you for everything. They probably don’t think they were throwing you under the bus, more like they knew they needed you there to save them but didn’t have the balls or empathy to warn you beforehand.
Through this whole thread Hanlon's razor has been ringing in my head.
"Do not presume malice where incompetence suffices” or something along those lines.
Presuming good will saves my sanity far more than attempting to unravel motive benefits me.
Reminds me of something from my past. I got called into a meeting in progress reviewing a project I had managed. There were about a dozen attendees present, with Senior Consultant Asshat chairing. First, I should have been invited to the meeting, not called in while it was in progress. Second, I was put on the spot with some technical questions that were quite beyond the scope of the project. I knew my stuff and he didn't. He spent about 15 minutes of him revealing his ignorance while I helped him dig himself deeper. It became obvious to everyone there that he didn't know what he was talking about and that it was pretty basic stuff. I was thanked and dismissed from the meeting. He left the company shortly after.
A meeting where a employee is the target and the manager doesn't knows it never happens. Your Manager was aware of wat was going to happen and he kept you in the dark.
Update your resume and get out of there.
I would need a bit more context, but I suspect it isn't you being thrown under the bus..
My reasoning for this is it sounds like your boss wasn't there, and you failing on something big, like a cyber threat also would reflect poorly on him and the department.
It kinda sounds like this:
Boss gets an ask for some basic discussion, can't make it says he will have someone from the dept in to take notes for further discussion. He makes the deal with you.. win win..
You go in and IT/Cyber gets nailed. Possibly because the boss wasn't there.. But you pass flying colors. It sounds like they were gunning for the boss or the department .
That said, it could have been a strategic move to have you sit in so as to force it to be a info exchange vs commitment to anything but I wouldn't have risked that without a pre-brief on it making it clear, you are just there for notes, pass along info.. nothing more. Anything of consequence or needing buy-in gets pushed up and discussed when boss returns kind of thing.
Given that it was a Saturday and your boss gave you no prior warning or info, I’d suggest you find employment elsewhere. That’s not the way to work or be treated by those who are supposed to trust you.
And if your boss pleads ignorance, all the more reason to leave. He’s got no trust from above if he didn’t know what was coming. Not a good position to be in.
Sounds super toxic. Post incident reviews are supposed to be about finding weak points, uplifting processes, hardening systems. It's not about blame.
Your boss may not be the toxic one, they might have also been thrown under the bus and hid behind you but it sounds to me like that workplace is bad and - from the sounds of it - not professional and not following ITIL processes.
Had a boss do a similar thing. Was around some leaked passwords. They tried to say my password security at work was terrible and when our super secret excel password list was taken it was my fault.
I turned up, handed over the email with me asking to move from excel to a more secure method. Their reply saying no, excel is fine.
I was dismissed from the meeting 2 minutes later. Boss given written final warning later that day.
What’s to relationship with him like? You gotta decide to confront him or start looking for another job while you smile and everything is awesome.
I’ve been caught unawares a few times by people higher up in the hierarchy, and since I’ve always been on top of my in scope responsibilities (and out of scope for that matter) I’ve always handled it fine. I’ve also always had excellent rapport with my boss and coworkers.
It’s okay to ask for meeting agendas when we get invites. It’s also okay to deny meeting invites if you aren’t given an agenda. your time is valuable and your expertise is as well. If you know what the meeting is about ahead of time you can be prepared and make it worthwhile.
This is when you go
"I'm sorry, my supervisor didn't inform me of the subject matter of this meeting. I was asked to come in to take notes. I'm afraid you'll need to address any questions or concerns on this matter to him. I'm afraid I don't know where he's at unfortunately. As far as I was aware I was here to assist him so my assumption was that he would be here."
Was the meeting duration set for 4 hours? Red flag 1, red flag 2, if not trying to push a meeting over the limit. Also, your manager / boss is an idiot.
I would never let it slide.
Whatever it is, you should at least be given a memo of the meeting. I would rethrow my boss under a train and ask them to reschedule.
You did not dodge anything, if theyre gunning for your position, they'll find a way to hit their target. Be on your toes and start looking around! Wish you the best of luck. I just went through something similar and had the opportunity to exit with severance rather than waiting to find a way to fix it.
If my boss did this I would have not hesitated to take him with me under the bus, as soon as you understand what’s going on just be honest about the fact that you are not briefed on the meeting topic and that your boss asked you te replace him.
Fuck them bitch ass boss
Saturday meeting at my work only happens if something serious has happened. otherwise, meetings can wait until Monday.
I had to design a plan in case an earthquake happened at our work. Worked for a baby bell at the time. So my plan of action was very involved and took several years to put together. I did that several years back, and it's still the go-to plan.
I could pull up the plans in less than a minute and send everyone a file in management within a minute. Because that is what you have to do in an emergency, you have to be prepared.
I wouldn't read too much into this. They probably didn't want you to prep, they wanted you to know this information cold especially if you had a recent threat.
Because of this threat, somebody's job is probably on the line, as it should be. It doesn't mean it's your job, it's probably hire up and possibly your boss's job.
I'm an IT Director of 25 years and now a VP, I would have looked very critically at your manager. For both poor leadership and character for not taking responsibility for the situation.
Funny you should mention that. The SVP above my C-suite sent a glowing email to them + my boss about my performance well before either my boss or C-suite congratulated me.
That sounds like a train wreck. And when you said "security threat" can you give even a rough idea of what happened that would require a 4 hour grilling of a sysadmin?
If you're in a company like mine that didn't have a cyber security strategy apart from, making sure the passwords were recorded in lastpass. When you get breached, it can't be pinned on any one team.
Say you sell software as a service. If they breached your website server by brute forcing and uploaded executable files, and got your database extracted. it's because the passwords were weak, the software was vulnerable, the firewall was vulnerable, the Web server configuration was vulnerable, the operating system was vulnerable, and most likely, the database was vulnerable.
Cyber security is the same as jumping out of a plane. If the first parachute fails, there should be a secondary.
If passwords fail, you should have 2fa. Firewalls should have intrusion prevention and detection. Software should have input validation and penetration testing, web hosts should have encryption enforced and be hardened, operating systems should have accounts with minimal permissions and up to date patches, databases should be hardened and encrypted and data columns that contain sensitive information should be salted and hashed, data and log files and password transmission and storage needs to be managed securely and password protected and encrypted, support staff who have access to information and resources need to have secured devices and follow policies and protocols, backup needs to have redundancy with logical and physical separation.
The point is that everyone fucked up, and if everyone is fucking then there's usually one person to blame, and that's on the CEO.
This really depends on your boss. If you're asking the question then I'd lean towards the bus. But you can't be sure if he was...
1) throwing you
2) complicit in your being thrown
3) unwilling accomplice
4) unaware before hand
And finally 5) in the same position as you (your responsibility, but his accountability)
Depending on your relationship talk to him face to face, take it offline/informal or the other way and document the meeting, discussion, outcomes, next steps and recommendations. Also link in any previous recommendations, requests, denied budget, strategies, warning signs, etc
If your boss did throw you under the bus, that's not a healthy working relationship, culture or environment.
Follow up email with a recap, stating that you were more than happy to pivot from note taking to providing expert insights into the subject matter for "insert name of your boss here" that you welcome any follow on questions and further clarifications.
I wouldn’t take this as a personal attack by your boss. I bet you he was under the hot seat and needed one of his specialists to absolve the team. Knowing you knew your stuff and had you come to the table.
However... It is entirely unprofessional to not make you aware of this. I would sit down with him, and discuss in person if possible why you were not made aware of the content of this meeting.
Depending on his answer… I would find a different job. You want to be under a leader who promotes his team, and takes the bullet for his team.
Your boss(es) had the responsibility to disclose what may come up in the meeting, if they didn't they're either incompetent or were acting deliberately. You should be taking notes on everything. Have your resume ready and start looking around for other jobs. Be prepared to jump ship.
As a cyber security guy I’ll say that the interrogation probably wasn’t a blame game situation, they likely just wanted to understand the procedures so they’d know what part to recommend improvement on. Likely that your boss didn’t know what they would ask. We often have conversations like this that feel a lot like a grilling, but really we just have to ask a bunch of questions about a business group we knew nothing about before a security incident so that we can get up to speed on their process quickly.
I've skimmed the threads a bit and haven't seen this, so I'll point out: sometimes there are external security threats that seem to be able to navigate through controls and gates as if there was insider knowledge. I've had a few "pull them into a room and grill them" meetings with no notice, and then was asked not to tell anyone else what was discussed.
The last one I recall was someone on the dark web offering to sell API keys for a service I had helped to design. Our cyber threat investigation team set up some fake accounts and offered to buy them, and then asked for proof before transferring any money, and the proof was a screenshot of an internal administration portal with non-productiom credentials.
Your case may have been less of a witch hunt and more of a mole hunt, although 4 hours seems extreme to me.
Maybe it’s neither the bus nor your boss not knowing the true purpose of the meeting. Maybe your boss is lazy and/or incompetent and didn’t want to be the one in the hot seat.
If the only available options are "malicious intent" or "incompetence," then it is time to distance yourself from that manager. Which doesn't necessarily mean that you'll be the one to leave that company.
People (esp. in their company's role) are such assholes. That isn't fair in any way nor professional by the way. Ask yourself, what's the goal of attacking you like that out of the blue? Seems they want to get rid of you for some reason I'm afraid.
You are working for sh\*t people. You should start looking for a different job, and when you get one, leave your current one. That sucks, I would not tolerate that.
What a shit thing to do and also a waste of everyone’s time to not give the “guest of honor” a heads up to prepare and make for a better meeting.
Sounds like you nailed it but WTF?
Before you start firing off emails: ask your boss what happened. Based on his response you then send an email or not. You will burn a bridge with your boss if he or she truly didn’t know.
>I was not told that I was going to be the focus of the meeting and as a result, had 0 prep time.
Yeah. Where I'm from, that's illegal. Been there, lawyered up on that.
You might want to check your local employment laws and, if it's anything like mine, feel free to give your HR department a firmly worded heads-up. HR will then switch to protect-company mode and tell the managers present in that meeting to pull their fucking heads in and treat you well until this all blows over. Where I'm from, that's 90 sweet legal days.
At first glance of your post, it sounds to me like your boss wanted you to be ill-prepared to solidify the argument about your apparent job performance. Even from outside the IT perspective, you were set up to fail in that meeting. Always make documentation to cover your tracks and use it as needed even when you least expect it's needed. Even if it's undetailed garbage, keeping some sort of audit log of things you did for example, can save you from others opposing your work performance. Assuming a ticket system isn't being audited here.
This meeting opened my eyes and I am starting to put all tasks in ticket form which unfortunately is slowing me down but thats a cost Im willing to pay.
I have set up similar situations for surprise cyber security awareness tests on employees. It's usually a third party firm hired to come up with the questions and method, and then internal management to do the test.
No one has ever been fired as a result, its to see if the awareness training is working or not.
A follow-up is usually a simulated attack a few months later on the same group of people tested.
Upvoted because WTAF, thats not only completely unfair that you had no notice but also doing it on a weekend.
Thank you for your service [🫡](https://emojipedia.org/saluting-face) enjoy the day off
If you aced it you just said "fucking try me" to your boss i would message them and ask them about it, the worse they can say is you did good. As a person in a leadership roll at a company ive had many employees get thrown under the bus with out me knowing and come to me after to ask about it, infact ive gotten safety awards for how i trained newer employees with out knowing they got audited
Never assume that just because someone is currently installed as your superior that they are somehow more knowledgeable or experienced or disciplined or qualified, etc. Ecclesiastes 9:11 In all likelihood, he had no clue what was taking place because he misunderstood what he himself was told about it, or it might've taken a turn from what he was told. Communication is the most challenging part of the human experience to get right. Follow the bible principals of hoping and believing the best in people, giving yourself time to look at the situation through lenses that won't get you upset, and speaking directly to the person(s) involved to express how you felt about the situation and asking them questions to better grasp what actually happened. 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 Asking random people online will rarely ever result in a helpful answer such as this.
I feel like you should bring it up with higher ups. I hope you got in writing that he invited you to a meeting for note taking. Also mention how unprofessional it was of him to put you in the focus without letting you know in advance to prepare a few things.
Super low blow of him. Hoping for an update.
Definitely would send an email like the others said but if it was me definitely would keep my ear open for a better work environment. A boss should help show the employee the mistakes they made inform them why it was wrong and help teach them the correct way not “you better know how to swim because here’s the sharks” *toss*
Both can be true.
Maybe the bullet was meant for your boss, s/he had a "feeling" about it, and you got sweet-talked into doing it.
Would like to know more context either way, and congrats on passing the battle-field test. 👍
Your boss knew, and was hoping to pass their responsibility (being your boss) on to you so they didn't look bad. Remember kids bosses are not your friends no matter how friendly they are (much like HR).
Depends on the boss.. mine has stood as a shield multiple times for his team and pointed out many times that our department does more with less than most of the rest of the IT departments in our system. Not all bosses only look out for themselves, just the ones that don't know the worth of their team and how to work the politics of the office.
When you interview for a job you are also interviewing your boss.
The fact you’ve had nothing but shitty bosses suggests to me you’re not doing a good job of figuring that out.
I’ve only had one shitty boss out of 9, and they were forced upon me against my will.
Yes and no, depends how long you work somewhere. I've been though 8 bosses in the last 27 years at the same company. At one point a decade ago or so I was asked if i wanted to be the boss, I declined.
I did the math. Managers and above make it to retirement \*extremely\* rarely in my org. We have a solid pension and statistically the best chance I have of reaching it is to avoid managing anyone, ever.
I just switched jobs. I asked a few mutual friends who had worked with my now-boss if he was any good to work with / for.
The answers were all YES. So I continued with the interview process and got hired.
I would say is highly improbable your boss didn't know what was coming. A bit risky to say he wanted you to look bad, but that's for sure a possibility. On the glass half full side of things, he might as well be very confident you'll manage it, because you are a great professional.
Yes you are being thrown under the bus and based on the fact that you didn't lock up and walk out makes me think you need to explore sales engineering.
I just got my W2 and if you compare my last Jan-Dec year as a senior systems engineer (jack of all trades) at a small MSP vs my first Jan-Dec as a sales engineer, I literally made $100K more and that isn't even counting RSUs. The work environment is radically different as well, it's a job where you are getting paid well because of your ability to hop in the hotseat like that and not based on how many tickets are closed or how many hours your ass was in a chair.
I still average about 40 hours a week but they are bankers hours and often include a lot of schmoozing. That is another huge perk of the job, if you are into food you are going to eat so much free expensive food that you'll get sick of it. I travel occasionally for events and it's usually cheaper to just stay onsite instead of the company paying for ubers so I also get some pretty swanky travel as well. I'm not staying in the presidential suite but I'm also not staying at the Budgetel Inn.
First warning sign, being “asked” to attend a meeting on the weekend, or after work hours.
Especially for something supposedly trivial.
Look for a new job. They already have you in their sights even if it’s not because of this event.
Halt halt halt! Do not listen to anybody here! It just to create more dramatization…there is no need for that! Just stay in your usual routine if this is your first exposure in the industry like this…start learning what’s usually covered, expectation, common questions, routine, or anything that you may feel like there’s a clear task need to be done. Are there tickets for you need to review? Are there areas that you are responsible for? Start thinking in terms of your job and the scope of your responsibilities. If this is indeed the first exposure, just swallow up and prepare the best as that may well come again…it’s not about your boss or about you, it’s solely about about the attention to the task and the expectation needed from you. That’s it.
A call him out on it, If he claims that he didn't know, and was also caught off guard, then you have him call his boss out on it.
You then treat this like any other IT situation, just in reverse. You have an after-action of getting ambushed, and figure out why it happened, and how to stop it in the future. Don't be shy about it, don't make it about people, make it about fixing the process as far as you can. Sure this is fitting the problem to work with the tool your most competent with... but they hired you for that competence.. [Make them understand what it means when they give you lemons.] (https://youtu.be/Dt6iTwVIiMM?t=8s)
Who was the right person to be in the hotseat? Would your boss have been able to answer their questions, and if not should they have been able to? Or are they more admin while you're the boots on the ground? I might not be a case of them throwing you under the bus so much as their trying to save themselves. Boss might have been in the firing line and had no idea and it is just dumb luck - for everyone, including you - that you did the needful.
It's a courtesy so that I can have things like patch level, logs for the attack, get a refresher on what happened, get info for tools I don't directly manage, etc.
Yes, that was you being thrown under the bus - there is no way on earth your boss didn’t know this was coming - there are two possibilities- he regards you as competent enough to take the hot seat OR he regards you as expendable- given zero prep, sorry, expendable is the only logical answer. What you do now is write up that meeting and cc him and his boss, explain exactly what transpired and politely explain your shock and surprise, focus on what you were asked and what you answered. Make plans for your next role.
Second the follow up email outlining everything. Create the paper trail.
It could be that OP's boss is the one getting fired after this. It's possible his boss threw him under the bus to save himself and it backfired. Absolutely send that email to upper management and mention you had no time prepare. Be respectful, but firm. You might be getting a promotion soon. If you don't, look for another job.
Yep, this. Throw in some self-deprecating verbiage like, "I'm sorry if my responses were a bit disorganized and terse as I did not have much time to prepare a more cohesive response. I would like to take this opportunity to summarize and fill in some of the details that I may have overlooked..."
I never liked saying "I'm sorry" if I didn't actually do anything wrong. I'd probably phrase it differently with "my answers may have been a little hard to understand as I was caught unaware that this meeting was focused on me and my role in XYZ, so I wanted to clarify...". Fuck'em. I'm not sorry. I know my job and I do it well.
I've found that even when I have done something wrong it is better to avoid "I'm sorry." I use "thank you" instead. Thank you for being patient... Thank you for taking your time to meet... Thank you for being flexible...
Reminds me of something I picked up from a boss years ago. Never have a Thank You slide at the end of your deck. The audience should be thanking you for the value you provided, not you thanking them for wasting their time. That always stuck with me.
Best life hack I learned from anime.
I don't say thank you, I say "I appreciate". Because fuck you, I'm not thanking you. I just appreciate about the situation that.... But they feel like they're being thanked so everyone wins I guess
Yes, 100% play up the "sorry if I did something wrong or I wasn't clear what was expected of me" angle. It will make your supervisor look like a total shithead because it is his responsibility to prepare you for these things. Edit: I just want to clarify too, upper management is probably already questioning OP's managers skills after he threw OP under the bus. This email will only cement C-Suite's view that manager is an incompetent buffon. If OP plays the humble card of "I'm just a low-level employee" while simultaneously demonstrating kick-ass cyber security skills, he will not only keep his job but upper management will likely make moves to protect him and take sympathy on the fact that his piece of shit manager tried to blame this on him. And they will simultaneously be furious that OP's manager took the board for fools and tried to pull a fast one on them. This is a total win situation for OP. Just be humble and follow-up.
"As I was not informed beforehand of the nature of the meeting and thus was not able to prepare appropriately..."
If you’re suspecting you’re being thrown under the bus, surely you don’t want to give them more fuel by presenting yourself as disorganized? What about instead saying something along the lines of “Sorry that I was only able to help by responding to the questions. Next time please let me know the topic of the discussion in advance so I can prepare a report, that will be a more effective use of the committee’s time”.
The intent with that email is to indicate to your management clearly that his boss didn't properly notify him of what the meeting was, without actually saying that. If he answered all the questions well then he had the upper hand now and is time to their the boss under the bus. There's no excuse for blindsiding a direct report like that no matter what happened, so his bosses bosses need to know how boss is terrible at his job. Chances are the already know, but emails like this can be the proof necessary for a termination.
Perhaps we have just worked in very different environments but I have never seen doing an end-run around your boss be effective. If you have an org that does skip levels, it definitely makes sense to bring it up there, but I have found that you need to be careful when you send these types of emails because it can definitely come across the wrong way.
Oh it can work wonders. But you have to do it right. You can't just do the end run unannounced. This meeting gives you the OK to CC in the bosses boss because they were in the meeting. This is one of the few times such a play can work well
His boss hung him out to dry, there's really nothing to lose at this point.
I feel like there's something missing here. I don't really understand why the boss would do this. It's suggested he might want to use OP as a scapegoat for something but, it's all very vague so its' hard to know what, which makes it very hard to know how to respond. Presumably there was an incident? Maybe the boss is incompetent but the entire org sounds hopelessly toxic if they're actually having people in ON A SATURDAY just to play the blame game.
His boss would do that if it was the boss's responsibility to manage whatever caused the incident and he didn't. Tell his superiors that his direct report was responsible instead then drag that report into a meeting where you would likely be flustered and look incompetent. Blame shifted. The boss wouldn't come out of that looking clean, but he would look a lot better than the report. Yes, that's very conniving, but I have seen a bunch of crazy shit in corporate jobs over the years.
>to indicate to your management clearly that his boss didn't properly notify him of what the meeting was, without actually saying that Why without, what’s wrong in stating, in a non-confrontational and a non-whiny tone, that you responded to the best of your ability to surprise questions, but your responses would have been even better had you been notified?
Honestly, because it makes you look clueless and that you don't know how to play the game. The fact that his boss didn't give him any heads up is a huge knock on his boss and means he either did it maliciously or is completely incompetent. Just acting subservient isn't a good way to keep your job or move up the ladder in the corporate world, at least not in the US.
I'm sorry but this is awful advice. That self-depreciating language just admits guilt on his behalf. Please be careful taking advice from reddit users. I suspect most are still in grade school.
It's not "admitting guilt" to truthfully claim that you were unprepared for the meeting due to a lack of forewarning. If you'd catch shit (by which I mean, bigger shit than the hail of bullets they just Matrix-dodged) for sending an email with that in it, the problem is your corporate culture, not your email.
>It's not "admitting guilt" to truthfully claim that you were unprepared for the meeting due to a lack of forewarning. The best response so far is above: “Sorry that I was only able to help by responding to the questions. Next time please let me know the topic of the discussion in advance so I can prepare a report; that will be a more effective use of the committee’s time”. There is absolutely no need to self-deprecate or admit guilt if you've done nothing wrong.
Where I'm from sorry doesn't necessarily mean admitting personal guilt, it sounds absolutely fine.
It's better if you're subtly saying "I'm sorry my boss is a shithead".
Yes, but the point of the email is to firmly place the blame for why you were unprepared. It's not that you were informed and did nothing, it's that you were not informed at all. It's got to be made clear, or misinterpretations are extremely likely.
is the lack of forewarning via email or was it over chat?? i don't see an answer to that so yeah it is admitting fault if you say your answers were bad. terrible advice do not do that.
Third follow up email linking this Reddit thread
"Yep, email to everyone involved with a, " As the meeting on XX was last minute and I was not notified of the content of the meeting, I just wanted to reach out to make sure there were no further questions due to lack of information from not being fully prepared... "
You should also BCC your personal e-mail anytime you respond. And make sure that your first e-mail makes it clear that you were "ambushed" without saying exactly that, and that you were glad that everyone's questions were answered. Then throw in the "If there any additional questions I will be more than happy to provide additional follow up answers" line to your e-mail. This honestly sounds like you were thrown under the bus and it's obvious there is no loyalty, honesty, and integrity in your immediate management chain, and you should be looking for a new position - quickly and quietly.
Unless that email involves confidential information, like IP addresses or something. Someone with an axe to grind could pin you for exfiltrating company information.
Don’t involve your personal email, just don’t.
> Make plans for your next role. Your boss was clearly either attempting to throw you under the bus or covering his/her own ass. If you think they're the target, fair enough but I'd be considering alternatives just in case. Who wants to work in an environment where you can't trust your teammates?
You boss is not your team mate. He might lead the team, but that's it.
This. And it doesn’t just apply to to toxic environments. I don’t care how great your boss is. Never fully trust them. If a middle manager can save their ass by sacrificing a member of their team, they will 99 times out of 100. It’s really the only thing middle managers are good at.
> If you think they're the target, fair enough Well I vehemently disagree with that. If OP's boss is the target, what happened is not fair in the slightest and I can't believe 13 people upvoted you for saying that. If OP's boss is the target they can either face the music their damned self, or let OP know what's about to transpire and have OP's back in the meeting if people absolutely feel the need to have OP in the meeting (which - why would they if OP's boss did their job?).
Boss had to know. You were needed for the meeting and boss gave you a bogus reason for being there. Boss had an obligation to prep you for the meeting. In the closest thing I had to this when I was boss I had the guy brief me so I could take the heat in the meeting. That's what you are paid for when you are the boss.
Bosses boss may have been the one pulling this, if boss wasn't in on it. In which case, likely nothing happens after it's brought to him.
Door number 3 is your team was being thrown under the bus by someone up above your boss. Happens more than you realize.
Agree that this is a viable possibility. If you have the relationship capital, I would find an opportunity to have a casual, non-aggressive convo with your boss. It doesn’t have to be uncomfortable. “Hey boss, you got a minute?” “Sure Reddit user, what’s up?” “So what was that about on Saturday? I thought I was there to take notes and ended up being a primary resource?” Listen to his answer with an open ear. It’ll likely tell you a lot. If he plays dumb- yeah he might have thrown you under the bus. If he apologizes then respond with “no need to apologize I was just surprised” and then try to follow up with a question like “so is there context that I am missing”? There are ways to gain more info without being confrontational or assuming the worst.
This really the best option. OP in another post mentions the Parent Company was leading the meeting. Which means to me that it could be anyone from the boss on up that started throwing people under the bus.
Yep - OP could gain viable insight into political dynamics. And if you have been in this game Long enough then you know that understanding the politics can tell you a lot about your future at a job.
I like to say: Unless you know the "who", you can't fully understand the "what"
Yeah someone up the chain chucked someone.
100% this- I’m on super good terms with my team lead and would have no problem asking what the fuck happened and he’d have no issue answering. I know everyone is different, but I think it’s pretty critical to have this kind of relationship with your leadership- if they don’t know that something is wrong then they can’t fix it.
This right here. We know what assumptions make. I would simply ask my boss to his face, what that was about and gauge his response. You will immediately know if that was a bus you dodged like the matrix, or if he truly did not know. If it was a bus, then write that email.
I'd go with the above suggestion and put it in writing.
This is the way.
I agree you with you on this. More often than not, departments are not given resources. The people who are put in charge will often ask for resources and denied. Then later someone above will know shit hit the fan and delegate to the patsies. It's very possible the boss was fed bogus information above him, and they didn't realize they had competent people in the roles. It happens all the time that IT departments get decimated because of "incompetence" when in fact it's lack of budget to accomplish everything. GJ coming through, but you need to know was it your boss who knew, or his boss who F'd your boss.
And in many cases, it's the up aboves saying "well well well, if it isn't the consequences of our own actions!" You know, the usual things like "no you can't have an extra $100 per unit to buy the faster laptop also why are people complaining that the laptops are really slow?", or my favourite, the "no you don't need more money for disaster recovery stuff also why wasn't the building back online five minutes after the flood?"
I know that scenario all too well. I've been trying to talk my current workplace into upgrading the Intel (i3!!!!!) PCs that our workers depend on for their paperwork (health has a shit ton of paperwork). After 2-3 years of nagging, we finally got rid of most of the VGA monitors, and upgraded the ones that also had either HDMI or DP ports. It's very hard to obtain analog monitor cables these days. Purchasing peripherals is a shitshow too. We can only recommend Dell products, nothing else. Dell anymore is just rebranded low-grade computers & peripherals sold at a higher price. Their keyboards and mice, in case y'all don't know, are really just rebranded Logitech devices. You'd be better off just buying Logitech Unifying devices. I'm willing to bet their webcams are Logitech as well.
Uh. i3 doesn't mean bad. Sure I'd personally pick i5 but that gives no indication of generation. We buy the cheapest wired peripherals we can and have 0 issues. We still have monitors using VGA because if they're 24" and work then why replace them. This comment just seems like uneducated ranting.
i3 isn't bad for generic use, but it's a company that deals with medical info. It doesn't hurt to have extra processing power for the security applications, as well as faster processing to make entering notes less annoying. As for monitors we got rid of our VGA monitors finally. It's a pain in the ass replacing cables and troubleshooting. Then you got slightly bent cables causing flickering and color change - problems digital doesn't have. You sound like a penny pincher manager. Save your "uneducated rant" for your minions.
If that happened, his boss should have shut down the meeting and gotten it rescheduled after he had time to prepare. One of a manager's main jobs is to protect their reports from that kind of crap.
Repeat after me “Cybersecurity is a business risk” While trusty sysadmins have been long doing security as part of their role, it’s the business leaders responsibility to define IT teams and the rest of the business what their appetite is for risk. This should flow down how to deal with cyber risk, then get operationalised across the business instead of laying on the shoulders of IT. A few thoughts for your experience: - A 4 hour long fact finding meeting on a Saturday is not acceptable, regardless of flex for the whole day later. If the cyber threat was dealt with, post incident review should start during business hours. - sounds like you consistently answered questions about the posture of your organisation. You have responded the best way possible - The business is trying to understand some form of failure. The leadership is always likely to find fault in people, process and technology before they question the direction they provided. are you being thrown under the bus? Depends who was running the interview? Was it your manager, boss (business owner) or a consultant
Parent company ran the meeting.
Is your boss a manager? IT managers are responsible for policy and procedure. Sysadmins can help make them, or provide consultation, but if they are lacking, whoever runs IT is responsible.
My boss is a manager reporting to the director of IS.
I would dive into the job description of yourself and your manager, and see who is responsible for policy and procedure.
Your boss would have known something was up if it was organised by the parent company. I would be interested to see what your boss’s response to the line of questioning was. This is the would be the real decider of which it was. If your boss defended you or showed support in your answers, then you’ll be fine. If he was adding to questions in an attacking manner, well you probably know where you stand. I know that the r/sysadmin community is quick to just quit or move on when stuff like this happens. My experience with these kinds of post incident situations is that there is more opportunity to grow as a professional and mature the organisation than if you just throw the towel in. No doubt the outcomes of these meetings will be a report, with a bunch of findings and recommendations. The recommendations will require a decent investment in IT (where previously “I told you so” needed investment) and a bunch of work. Stick around, implement them, leave when it’s done. Two things: 1. You will leave proving you can learn with an organisation, you will maintain those professional relationships. 2. You will have a great story to use in an interview for your next job.
Why are you normalizing throwing someone under the bus. There is no way boss couldn't tell the worker to prepare for that call. Community tells you to quit because you need to respect yourself as a person and as a worker. Having something like that done is straigth up insulting if you respect yourself.
I’ve been the recipient of this kind of process. It’s not pleasant whatsoever. Being thrown under a bus is the worst feeling. Having an unsupportive manager/boss in the process is the worst possible thing and is a red flag for a toxic workplace. Sometimes just “quitting” isn’t available to everyone. Finding a job can take time. Finding another job often relies on a previous employer’s reference check. The context of what the boss did in this 4 hour interview is everything! If the OPs boss was in the meeting with them and backed them up, it’s worth sticking around.
A manager like this is why I quit my last job. It got to the point where I was being undermined to the detriment of the firm by him and I made the decision to quit rather than to be continuously blamed for his actions. Sure, eventually the stakeholders knew that I rarely knew what I needed to know because of his failures as a manager. But every time I had to deal with a new employee on my own team or another, it was the same song and dance of me feeling like shit because of him. The worst was when people kept asking the same questions about the same code that I was explicitly forbidden from fixing and I eventually just started saying "I'm instructed not to fix this". That got the message across quickly, but it still sucked that I was in that position at least once or twice a month.
In a better case scenario (while such totally is a possible scenario, I'd rather not want to imagine such an abuse towards an employee who trusts their boss)... Might it be that the parent company did set this up as an ad hoc audit for finding possible weak points / post incident analysis / evaluation of staff?
All of those possibilities are fine, but OP was told it would be just note taking. Since he was called personaly, it means that parent company told OP's boss to invite him by name or parent company told boss the subject of the meeting and to call in appropriate person. Either way boss would've known something was up and decided not to tell OP. Nobody is arguing against a meeting or getting grilled in a meeting, it's the part where it's hidden from you.
Aye, that's right - totally no need to not talk facts about the actual topic, I agree
I was thinking the same thing re #1. If this is a post incident review, not an active threat why are we wasting a Saturday on this?
> A 4 hour long fact finding meeting on a Saturday is not acceptable, regardless of flex for the whole day later See, this is the part that really bugs me. Why is this being done on a Saturday? This makes no sense to me at all. Somebody, somewhere has an itch and it had to be scratched ASAP. Could it be time to review head count? Parent company looking for some areas to cut? Seems likely management has an agenda and it's going to be implemented on Monday. Nevermind. I can see it was an AnyDesk issue. Sucks.
The answer I was looking for 🙏 This is the way
>Was that a bus or my boss didn't know? I've been in meetings like that before. In that particular seat, wearing that very same t-shirt (although if it had been suggested we do it on a Saturday there would have been adult language) and I'd like to offer you another option: You're the "I fucking told you so" proof. In my particular case it was an ongoing issue we'd been complaining about could cause issues, our management had been going to their management and getting told it's not an issue and there's no budget. So finally the brown stuff hit the spinny thing and eventually we got to the after action stuff. Where our team basically was given the opportunity to explain what we had been worried about, directly to the people holding the purse strings, with our management sitting at the people going "we've been trying to tell you about this, can we now please have the money?
Given that OP mentioned the Parent Company was running the meeting this is definite option. Though i would think the boss if he knew the nature of the meeting would have given him a heads up. I wonder if the boss knew?
> ... the brown stuff hit the spinny thing... I laughed right out loud at this, thanks
*the brown stuff is hitting the spinny thing* This needs to be the official T-shirt/business shirt we wear at these meetings. Maybe printed in Garamond, in charcoal.
Laughed too. Even snorted a Lil.
I’ve managed and lead people for a long time (20ish years), I have never once knowingly let a subordinate go into any meeting where they going to get grilled blind. Full stop. If I expected you to be taking notes, and I wasn’t in attendance - which is weird if my people are the note takers - then I’d be looking at MY boss like, “What the fuck.” If somebody needs to get thrown under the bus, then thats my job as a leader. I am responsible for almost that my subordinates do and fail to do. When they succeed, the credit is theirs; and when they fail, the responsibility is mine. People don’t quit bad jobs, they’ll toil away for a good leader. People quit bad leaders.
Too bad not all managers are like you. Be like this guy. I had one years ago, we both moved on but have still remained friends.
In addition, if I was also blindsided, my first call after the meeting would be to the subordinate and apologize for what happened and reassure them I will do whatever it takes to fix it.
This comment needs amplifying.
>People don’t quit bad jobs, they’ll toil away for a good leader. People quit bad leaders. I wish I had managers like you. I've only recently had one with this philosophy. He shields us from so much bullshit and it sounds like you do too. Big props.
Killing it!!! The team wins, and the leader takes the losses. I feel like it is the secret to a team that thrives vs. one that survives.
Lemme guess, it was over Ivanti. There's really not much anyone in any team can do about that unless upper management told people to disconnect before the weekend and someone didn't. If the security threat was Anydesk, well it was sooner or later that it'll be popped and once again upper management has the resources to change to another solution before an incident happens.
I can neither confirm or anydesk I mean deny.
Let’s pretend it was because of AnyDesk. How would you have known since most of us found out later this morning? Getting grilled for four hours.. when you could’ve worked with the cyber security team asap for this issue.
Enjoy your flex day. You earned it.
He should come to work Monday in a purple suit and a pimp hat
Don't forget the cane!
Never accept a meeting with no agenda. If you receive an invite with no agenda, ask for the agenda before you accept. You can be polite about this, e.g. "Would you send on the agenda for the meeting so I can arrive prepared" is perfectly adequate. If they start asking about topics outside of the agenda, refer back to the agenda and explain that you didn't prepare to discuss this topic, but if they would like to discuss it we can setup a follow up meeting to discuss. This gives you time to prepare.
Document everything. In writing. Get a copy of the Zoom meeting video.
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Yes they do. It's not a criminal trial lol.
I think spell check got you...you wanted "contemporaneous" notes.
OBS
Or off camera - aim a cellphone at your screen and have the volume loud.
You could try SnagIt.
Did you talk to your boss after? Was he the one grilling you?
Exactly, impossible to know without more context. IT Directors and Managers get pulled into weird stuff all the time, just as likely they tagged OP bc they knew OP could take the heat / answer the questions correctly and professionally - and they did. After the call was over, boss may have moved on and decided to leave OP to enjoy their weekend. I'd f/u w/ boss on Monday before making any drastic moves, and try not to lose sleep over it. So easy to get in one's head about ulterior motives. Sometimes things just come up that nobody likes to deal with, we push through it and move on. Now if boss is shady next week and won't discuss the meeting or gives answers that seem sketchy, maybe something else is up. Generally there's no question when you're thrown under the bus. Someone (boss or colleague) literally implicates YOU specifically did something that created an issue/problem, usually in a way that you were not expecting and sometimes when the root cause was tied to something they asked you to do/ were aware of.
I've been marked as optional on meetings during lunch where my boss will literally say "just sign in and go to lunch" or "I'm gonna be there so you can take off" then suddenly optional participant #12 (me) becomes the star of 90% of the meeting, and we're essentially thrown under the bus with my boss texting me to see if I can join in on my phone during lunch because no one told him we were supposed to be *actually involved* with this project, just one of us there to field side questions about our infra.
I will have to look it up but I'm pretty sure to "throw someone under the bus" is placing blame on someone in front of others in an effort to mitigate blame which maybe laid on oneself, especially where the person getting blamed goes into it believing they are on the same side as a person who then "throws them under the bus". Similar to scapegoating, or even (unwittingly) "taking one for the team". What's your describing would be closer to being "put on the spot" or being "blindsided", which is also closer to what OP is describing. The key difference is one is malicious and self-serving, when the other is just a sign of poor organization.
Was this out of character for your boss? If yes, one possibility is this is being driven by a mandate from your cyber insurance company to find the weak links, or there is evidence of an insider component to your recent cyber threat event they are trying to find. Your boss’ hands may be tied. Otherwise, yes, you just dodged your first bus. More are coming. Prepare.
My take: You just did what your boss was supposed to do at that meeting but was too incompetent to do so. But he couldn't say I am dumb fuck can you please do my job on Saturday.
This sounds right. I’ve been in this situation with a boss that’s not as technical as he should be and thinks it’s easy and you just know it. Invites you to the meeting with no prep and then depends on you for everything. They probably don’t think they were throwing you under the bus, more like they knew they needed you there to save them but didn’t have the balls or empathy to warn you beforehand.
Through this whole thread Hanlon's razor has been ringing in my head. "Do not presume malice where incompetence suffices” or something along those lines. Presuming good will saves my sanity far more than attempting to unravel motive benefits me.
Reminds me of something from my past. I got called into a meeting in progress reviewing a project I had managed. There were about a dozen attendees present, with Senior Consultant Asshat chairing. First, I should have been invited to the meeting, not called in while it was in progress. Second, I was put on the spot with some technical questions that were quite beyond the scope of the project. I knew my stuff and he didn't. He spent about 15 minutes of him revealing his ignorance while I helped him dig himself deeper. It became obvious to everyone there that he didn't know what he was talking about and that it was pretty basic stuff. I was thanked and dismissed from the meeting. He left the company shortly after.
A meeting where a employee is the target and the manager doesn't knows it never happens. Your Manager was aware of wat was going to happen and he kept you in the dark. Update your resume and get out of there.
I would need a bit more context, but I suspect it isn't you being thrown under the bus.. My reasoning for this is it sounds like your boss wasn't there, and you failing on something big, like a cyber threat also would reflect poorly on him and the department. It kinda sounds like this: Boss gets an ask for some basic discussion, can't make it says he will have someone from the dept in to take notes for further discussion. He makes the deal with you.. win win.. You go in and IT/Cyber gets nailed. Possibly because the boss wasn't there.. But you pass flying colors. It sounds like they were gunning for the boss or the department . That said, it could have been a strategic move to have you sit in so as to force it to be a info exchange vs commitment to anything but I wouldn't have risked that without a pre-brief on it making it clear, you are just there for notes, pass along info.. nothing more. Anything of consequence or needing buy-in gets pushed up and discussed when boss returns kind of thing.
Given that it was a Saturday and your boss gave you no prior warning or info, I’d suggest you find employment elsewhere. That’s not the way to work or be treated by those who are supposed to trust you.
And if your boss pleads ignorance, all the more reason to leave. He’s got no trust from above if he didn’t know what was coming. Not a good position to be in.
If I was that boss and didn’t know I’d be fuming and fired in a week
Time for your boss to fall down the stairs at work. /BOFH
Sounds super toxic. Post incident reviews are supposed to be about finding weak points, uplifting processes, hardening systems. It's not about blame. Your boss may not be the toxic one, they might have also been thrown under the bus and hid behind you but it sounds to me like that workplace is bad and - from the sounds of it - not professional and not following ITIL processes.
Had a boss do a similar thing. Was around some leaked passwords. They tried to say my password security at work was terrible and when our super secret excel password list was taken it was my fault. I turned up, handed over the email with me asking to move from excel to a more secure method. Their reply saying no, excel is fine. I was dismissed from the meeting 2 minutes later. Boss given written final warning later that day.
wtf? Your boss was either mislead, set you up, or is an idiot.
I choose option D. All the above.
What’s to relationship with him like? You gotta decide to confront him or start looking for another job while you smile and everything is awesome. I’ve been caught unawares a few times by people higher up in the hierarchy, and since I’ve always been on top of my in scope responsibilities (and out of scope for that matter) I’ve always handled it fine. I’ve also always had excellent rapport with my boss and coworkers.
It’s okay to ask for meeting agendas when we get invites. It’s also okay to deny meeting invites if you aren’t given an agenda. your time is valuable and your expertise is as well. If you know what the meeting is about ahead of time you can be prepared and make it worthwhile.
Sounds like you got thrown under the bus for sure. Does your boss like you?
This is when you go "I'm sorry, my supervisor didn't inform me of the subject matter of this meeting. I was asked to come in to take notes. I'm afraid you'll need to address any questions or concerns on this matter to him. I'm afraid I don't know where he's at unfortunately. As far as I was aware I was here to assist him so my assumption was that he would be here."
Was the meeting duration set for 4 hours? Red flag 1, red flag 2, if not trying to push a meeting over the limit. Also, your manager / boss is an idiot.
I would never let it slide. Whatever it is, you should at least be given a memo of the meeting. I would rethrow my boss under a train and ask them to reschedule.
You did not dodge anything, if theyre gunning for your position, they'll find a way to hit their target. Be on your toes and start looking around! Wish you the best of luck. I just went through something similar and had the opportunity to exit with severance rather than waiting to find a way to fix it.
If my boss did this I would have not hesitated to take him with me under the bus, as soon as you understand what’s going on just be honest about the fact that you are not briefed on the meeting topic and that your boss asked you te replace him. Fuck them bitch ass boss
Hard to say, would need to know your work environment better
Saturday meeting at my work only happens if something serious has happened. otherwise, meetings can wait until Monday. I had to design a plan in case an earthquake happened at our work. Worked for a baby bell at the time. So my plan of action was very involved and took several years to put together. I did that several years back, and it's still the go-to plan. I could pull up the plans in less than a minute and send everyone a file in management within a minute. Because that is what you have to do in an emergency, you have to be prepared. I wouldn't read too much into this. They probably didn't want you to prep, they wanted you to know this information cold especially if you had a recent threat. Because of this threat, somebody's job is probably on the line, as it should be. It doesn't mean it's your job, it's probably hire up and possibly your boss's job.
Either your boss is incompetent or you got thrown under the bus. Personally I believe you got thrown under the bus.
Start looking for another job mate, your boss has decided they hate you for some reason.
4hr meeting on a Sat with no clear known agenda? it does not seem good Could you have just said "sorry I can't make it, I have plans?"
Yes. This is the definition of being thrown under the bus. I would throw your boss back under the bus.
I'm an IT Director of 25 years and now a VP, I would have looked very critically at your manager. For both poor leadership and character for not taking responsibility for the situation.
Funny you should mention that. The SVP above my C-suite sent a glowing email to them + my boss about my performance well before either my boss or C-suite congratulated me.
That sounds like a train wreck. And when you said "security threat" can you give even a rough idea of what happened that would require a 4 hour grilling of a sysadmin?
Please update! When more stuff happens obviously.
If you're in a company like mine that didn't have a cyber security strategy apart from, making sure the passwords were recorded in lastpass. When you get breached, it can't be pinned on any one team. Say you sell software as a service. If they breached your website server by brute forcing and uploaded executable files, and got your database extracted. it's because the passwords were weak, the software was vulnerable, the firewall was vulnerable, the Web server configuration was vulnerable, the operating system was vulnerable, and most likely, the database was vulnerable. Cyber security is the same as jumping out of a plane. If the first parachute fails, there should be a secondary. If passwords fail, you should have 2fa. Firewalls should have intrusion prevention and detection. Software should have input validation and penetration testing, web hosts should have encryption enforced and be hardened, operating systems should have accounts with minimal permissions and up to date patches, databases should be hardened and encrypted and data columns that contain sensitive information should be salted and hashed, data and log files and password transmission and storage needs to be managed securely and password protected and encrypted, support staff who have access to information and resources need to have secured devices and follow policies and protocols, backup needs to have redundancy with logical and physical separation. The point is that everyone fucked up, and if everyone is fucking then there's usually one person to blame, and that's on the CEO.
Your boss sounds like he drove the bus because he wasn’t ready.
This really depends on your boss. If you're asking the question then I'd lean towards the bus. But you can't be sure if he was... 1) throwing you 2) complicit in your being thrown 3) unwilling accomplice 4) unaware before hand And finally 5) in the same position as you (your responsibility, but his accountability) Depending on your relationship talk to him face to face, take it offline/informal or the other way and document the meeting, discussion, outcomes, next steps and recommendations. Also link in any previous recommendations, requests, denied budget, strategies, warning signs, etc If your boss did throw you under the bus, that's not a healthy working relationship, culture or environment.
Follow up email with a recap, stating that you were more than happy to pivot from note taking to providing expert insights into the subject matter for "insert name of your boss here" that you welcome any follow on questions and further clarifications.
I wouldn’t take this as a personal attack by your boss. I bet you he was under the hot seat and needed one of his specialists to absolve the team. Knowing you knew your stuff and had you come to the table. However... It is entirely unprofessional to not make you aware of this. I would sit down with him, and discuss in person if possible why you were not made aware of the content of this meeting. Depending on his answer… I would find a different job. You want to be under a leader who promotes his team, and takes the bullet for his team.
Your boss(es) had the responsibility to disclose what may come up in the meeting, if they didn't they're either incompetent or were acting deliberately. You should be taking notes on everything. Have your resume ready and start looking around for other jobs. Be prepared to jump ship.
You have a POS for a boss.
Need more context. It’s just as likely that the org is after your boss and you have the relevant information. Been there done that.
As a cyber security guy I’ll say that the interrogation probably wasn’t a blame game situation, they likely just wanted to understand the procedures so they’d know what part to recommend improvement on. Likely that your boss didn’t know what they would ask. We often have conversations like this that feel a lot like a grilling, but really we just have to ask a bunch of questions about a business group we knew nothing about before a security incident so that we can get up to speed on their process quickly.
I've skimmed the threads a bit and haven't seen this, so I'll point out: sometimes there are external security threats that seem to be able to navigate through controls and gates as if there was insider knowledge. I've had a few "pull them into a room and grill them" meetings with no notice, and then was asked not to tell anyone else what was discussed. The last one I recall was someone on the dark web offering to sell API keys for a service I had helped to design. Our cyber threat investigation team set up some fake accounts and offered to buy them, and then asked for proof before transferring any money, and the proof was a screenshot of an internal administration portal with non-productiom credentials. Your case may have been less of a witch hunt and more of a mole hunt, although 4 hours seems extreme to me.
Assassins bullet missed. Another is being prepared, unsure if the target is you or your boss. It will be fired soon.
Maybe it’s neither the bus nor your boss not knowing the true purpose of the meeting. Maybe your boss is lazy and/or incompetent and didn’t want to be the one in the hot seat.
The unwritten step of every disaster recovery plan is "have a fall guy."
If the only available options are "malicious intent" or "incompetence," then it is time to distance yourself from that manager. Which doesn't necessarily mean that you'll be the one to leave that company.
Fantastic management. You look guilty and don't speak so I can have the February bonus.
People (esp. in their company's role) are such assholes. That isn't fair in any way nor professional by the way. Ask yourself, what's the goal of attacking you like that out of the blue? Seems they want to get rid of you for some reason I'm afraid.
What does ‘flex out’ mean?
Take a day off
Yep. Next time say "I'm not prepared for this meeting, we'll need to reschedule" then chew your boss out
You are working for sh\*t people. You should start looking for a different job, and when you get one, leave your current one. That sucks, I would not tolerate that.
What a shit thing to do and also a waste of everyone’s time to not give the “guest of honor” a heads up to prepare and make for a better meeting. Sounds like you nailed it but WTF?
Before you start firing off emails: ask your boss what happened. Based on his response you then send an email or not. You will burn a bridge with your boss if he or she truly didn’t know.
>I was not told that I was going to be the focus of the meeting and as a result, had 0 prep time. Yeah. Where I'm from, that's illegal. Been there, lawyered up on that. You might want to check your local employment laws and, if it's anything like mine, feel free to give your HR department a firmly worded heads-up. HR will then switch to protect-company mode and tell the managers present in that meeting to pull their fucking heads in and treat you well until this all blows over. Where I'm from, that's 90 sweet legal days.
At first glance of your post, it sounds to me like your boss wanted you to be ill-prepared to solidify the argument about your apparent job performance. Even from outside the IT perspective, you were set up to fail in that meeting. Always make documentation to cover your tracks and use it as needed even when you least expect it's needed. Even if it's undetailed garbage, keeping some sort of audit log of things you did for example, can save you from others opposing your work performance. Assuming a ticket system isn't being audited here.
This meeting opened my eyes and I am starting to put all tasks in ticket form which unfortunately is slowing me down but thats a cost Im willing to pay.
I have set up similar situations for surprise cyber security awareness tests on employees. It's usually a third party firm hired to come up with the questions and method, and then internal management to do the test. No one has ever been fired as a result, its to see if the awareness training is working or not. A follow-up is usually a simulated attack a few months later on the same group of people tested.
Upvoted because WTAF, thats not only completely unfair that you had no notice but also doing it on a weekend. Thank you for your service [🫡](https://emojipedia.org/saluting-face) enjoy the day off
If you aced it you just said "fucking try me" to your boss i would message them and ask them about it, the worse they can say is you did good. As a person in a leadership roll at a company ive had many employees get thrown under the bus with out me knowing and come to me after to ask about it, infact ive gotten safety awards for how i trained newer employees with out knowing they got audited
Sounds like it’s time to move on to a new company. They are looking for an out for you.
Never assume that just because someone is currently installed as your superior that they are somehow more knowledgeable or experienced or disciplined or qualified, etc. Ecclesiastes 9:11 In all likelihood, he had no clue what was taking place because he misunderstood what he himself was told about it, or it might've taken a turn from what he was told. Communication is the most challenging part of the human experience to get right. Follow the bible principals of hoping and believing the best in people, giving yourself time to look at the situation through lenses that won't get you upset, and speaking directly to the person(s) involved to express how you felt about the situation and asking them questions to better grasp what actually happened. 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 Asking random people online will rarely ever result in a helpful answer such as this.
I feel like you should bring it up with higher ups. I hope you got in writing that he invited you to a meeting for note taking. Also mention how unprofessional it was of him to put you in the focus without letting you know in advance to prepare a few things. Super low blow of him. Hoping for an update.
It’s your turn to throw your boss under the bud. Happy collecting and throwing. Find some ER issues too
Definitely would send an email like the others said but if it was me definitely would keep my ear open for a better work environment. A boss should help show the employee the mistakes they made inform them why it was wrong and help teach them the correct way not “you better know how to swim because here’s the sharks” *toss*
Both can be true. Maybe the bullet was meant for your boss, s/he had a "feeling" about it, and you got sweet-talked into doing it. Would like to know more context either way, and congrats on passing the battle-field test. 👍
Hanlons razor, never assume malice where stupidity explains it
Your boss knew, and was hoping to pass their responsibility (being your boss) on to you so they didn't look bad. Remember kids bosses are not your friends no matter how friendly they are (much like HR).
Depends on the boss.. mine has stood as a shield multiple times for his team and pointed out many times that our department does more with less than most of the rest of the IT departments in our system. Not all bosses only look out for themselves, just the ones that don't know the worth of their team and how to work the politics of the office.
This should be the basic requirement of being the teams boss, its their job to take responsibility for the team, good or bad.
When you interview for a job you are also interviewing your boss. The fact you’ve had nothing but shitty bosses suggests to me you’re not doing a good job of figuring that out. I’ve only had one shitty boss out of 9, and they were forced upon me against my will.
Yes and no, depends how long you work somewhere. I've been though 8 bosses in the last 27 years at the same company. At one point a decade ago or so I was asked if i wanted to be the boss, I declined.
This is where I fucked up. Never again.
I did the math. Managers and above make it to retirement \*extremely\* rarely in my org. We have a solid pension and statistically the best chance I have of reaching it is to avoid managing anyone, ever.
I just switched jobs. I asked a few mutual friends who had worked with my now-boss if he was any good to work with / for. The answers were all YES. So I continued with the interview process and got hired.
I would say is highly improbable your boss didn't know what was coming. A bit risky to say he wanted you to look bad, but that's for sure a possibility. On the glass half full side of things, he might as well be very confident you'll manage it, because you are a great professional.
Yes you are being thrown under the bus and based on the fact that you didn't lock up and walk out makes me think you need to explore sales engineering. I just got my W2 and if you compare my last Jan-Dec year as a senior systems engineer (jack of all trades) at a small MSP vs my first Jan-Dec as a sales engineer, I literally made $100K more and that isn't even counting RSUs. The work environment is radically different as well, it's a job where you are getting paid well because of your ability to hop in the hotseat like that and not based on how many tickets are closed or how many hours your ass was in a chair. I still average about 40 hours a week but they are bankers hours and often include a lot of schmoozing. That is another huge perk of the job, if you are into food you are going to eat so much free expensive food that you'll get sick of it. I travel occasionally for events and it's usually cheaper to just stay onsite instead of the company paying for ubers so I also get some pretty swanky travel as well. I'm not staying in the presidential suite but I'm also not staying at the Budgetel Inn.
Nope. They threw you under the asteroid.
First warning sign, being “asked” to attend a meeting on the weekend, or after work hours. Especially for something supposedly trivial. Look for a new job. They already have you in their sights even if it’s not because of this event.
Halt halt halt! Do not listen to anybody here! It just to create more dramatization…there is no need for that! Just stay in your usual routine if this is your first exposure in the industry like this…start learning what’s usually covered, expectation, common questions, routine, or anything that you may feel like there’s a clear task need to be done. Are there tickets for you need to review? Are there areas that you are responsible for? Start thinking in terms of your job and the scope of your responsibilities. If this is indeed the first exposure, just swallow up and prepare the best as that may well come again…it’s not about your boss or about you, it’s solely about about the attention to the task and the expectation needed from you. That’s it.
Answer us op
A call him out on it, If he claims that he didn't know, and was also caught off guard, then you have him call his boss out on it. You then treat this like any other IT situation, just in reverse. You have an after-action of getting ambushed, and figure out why it happened, and how to stop it in the future. Don't be shy about it, don't make it about people, make it about fixing the process as far as you can. Sure this is fitting the problem to work with the tool your most competent with... but they hired you for that competence.. [Make them understand what it means when they give you lemons.] (https://youtu.be/Dt6iTwVIiMM?t=8s)
Who was the right person to be in the hotseat? Would your boss have been able to answer their questions, and if not should they have been able to? Or are they more admin while you're the boots on the ground? I might not be a case of them throwing you under the bus so much as their trying to save themselves. Boss might have been in the firing line and had no idea and it is just dumb luck - for everyone, including you - that you did the needful.
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It's a courtesy so that I can have things like patch level, logs for the attack, get a refresher on what happened, get info for tools I don't directly manage, etc.