[tlug] James John McGuire

[Curt Sampson <cjs@example.com>]

It's often the case that people don't want to say bad things about
other people, which is normally an eminently reasonable attitude.
Unfortunately, it on occasion can lead to significant damage to others,
as this sad case shows. I'm sending this message in the hope that others
will take warning, and appropriate precautions when dealing with this
individual. Of cousre, I urge you not to take what I say as gospel, but
do whatever research you feel is appropriate, and ensure you're managing
your risks adequately, if this applies to you.

Recently we at Starling Software brought in a fellow named James John
McGuire to do some work for us. He signed a contract in which he agreed
to a three month probationary period during which the contract could be
ended without notice.

During the first month he was regularly showing up to work hours late,
or not at all, and he was unable to perform in a timly manner the tasks
which we'd agreed he'd do. (I won't discuss the details of this here,
but anybody who has a legitimate interest in hiring him may contact me
privately if they have questions about his performance.) We gave him
several clear warnings about this, but things did not improve, and finally
after a month we asked him to leave.

We did, of course, pay him the agreed amount for the first month, though
this cost us several hundred thousand yen and a further several hundred
thousand in lost business. Bringing him in was a bad decision on our
part as much as his and, while disappointing, it does not seem entirely
unfair to me that Starling swallow the loss that our risk entailed.

Unfortunately, and despite that he says he understood that the contract
he signed allowed us to ask him to leave without notice, he's decided
that he's going to bring action against us through the labour board for
several hundred thousand more yen. We are disputing this of course, but
even if he's not successful, we're still out time and money that we're
spending on dealing with this rather than doing work for our clients.
(This has also been extremely stressful for us.) We've had several
discussions with him asking him to drop this and let us all move on with
minimal hard feelings, but he is quite intent on pursuing his course of
action.

He may be soliciting amongst some of you out there for work; given the
expensive and stressful situation into which he's put us, I would urge
you to manage your risks appropriately when dealing with him.

I'm very sorry to be posting things like this, but my understanding
now is that he's had various issues in the past, as well, and I feel
it's about time this information was made publically available to help
protect others who might potentially hire him.

cjs
-- 
Curt Sampson       <cjs@example.com>        +81 90 7737 2974   
Mobile sites and software consulting: http://www.starling-software.com