Follow-up, it bothers me that you took a job knowing that you were disguising stolen data, what was your rationale for this?
Only then did I realise it was stolen data, that was like a month or two into the job.
He also lied about his name to me, I found out a month later he'd done this so that if he fired me (or his name appeared in the press) - then no one could track him down. I think the company was even registered (initially) under his false name.
I should have smelled a rat, but at age 20 I didn't even know rats could smell.
Anyway, interesting article!
A year later I was 16 and working for his brothers company, a remailing company that actually provided a valuable service and had a solid business model. Guess what, they didn't try to get me to work for almost nothing! Like any real business, they realized the value I would bring and paid me accordingly. I designed their newsletter, wrote an application to track serial numbers on their postage metering machines when the government started requiring that (which was fun because they gave me 24 hours notice that they needed it to comply with federal law, but I think it surprised them too). When they wanted me to make a web-based application for their sales people to work up price quotes for prospective clients I met with the owner and told him this was above and beyond my part-time after-school job duties as 'anything with a computer guy' and proposed doing it as a separate contract, he went for it and I made what was (to teenaged me) a buttload of money on it.
Real businesses understand that salaries are not charity. They're not even something reluctantly handed over in order to get work out of people. They're investments. Of course it requires you to find the right people, and doesn't eliminate any of the challenge or risk out of running a business, but no employer worth a squirt of piss is going to expect their employees to take those risks for the company. Protection from that kind of thing is why people work for companies and aren't just self-employed!
So, there wasn't much opportunity to learn the lesson that scumbags are out there and how they might abuse you as an employee. Also, I wasn't very street smart and a bit of an introvert.
It took time to learn lessons like this, it took time to learn how to be an extrovert. I could explain all of these thing but sometimes it's just easier to say "I was 20 and stupid".
By the way, I'm pretty sure we will all carry on learning throughout life, up until each of us dies hopefully.
He even fucking stayed after the horrible discussion with the boss (a reasonable person would have quit then and there), and he agreed to fuck up the other (Ian) guy for a measly five thousand quids!
I think that this sums up the disconnect best, however:
£5000 would be a genuinely life-changing amount for me.