One of my colleagues is mining bit-coins with company resources. What do I do?

Question

I recently began to work at a company that specializes in helping researchers parallelize scientific problems and programs and utilize the processing capabilities of GPUs to speed up problems which fit the architecture well. Lately I found out that one of my colleagues has been utilizing the spare machines and GPU cards to mine bit-coins during off-hours such as evenings, nights and weekends. He has set his programs to automatically go into a sleeping state if they detect that other processes are trying to access the resources.

The total worth of currency he has made so far are trivial amounts at best. He claims that the machines are not doing anything during these off-hours and that he isn't doing any harm to anyone. He fails to realize that this is costing the company electricity and the constant full capacity usage of the machines are generating a lot of heat. Additionally this unauthorized usage of the company assets is not allowed in our contracts, at least not in mine. I fear that if this behaviour escalates there will eventually be an investigation into the usage of the machines and more control, making all employees' lives harder. The reason I have not yet gone to management is that I am still fairly new here and I do not know who my allies are. How should I act in this situation?

Answer 1

Speaking as a Systems Administrator, I've run into just this kind of thing (it wasn't Bitcoin, but something like Seti@Home). This is a bit different since I'm the officially responsible party for such systems and can take action on my own authority, but the principles guiding how I respond also apply to you.

There are two competing interests at work here:

• Corporate culture It could be that such usage is culturally acceptable so long as it doesn't get in the way. This is not an easy thing to figure out all by your self.
• Contract language It is highly likely that your employment contracts do include wording to the effect of banning the use of company resources for making money privately (negligible != zero). Secondly, 'unauthorized usage' could also apply, but that's kind of hairy.

It's a bad idea, that's for sure. But how to handle it involves the above.

In all likelihood, a strict reading of the contract bans such usage. However, some companies like to apply "common sense" to the application of contract language, so may actually permit certain banned usages so long as it doesn't impact anything. Don't do anything precipitous until after you've learned a few things.

In this case, since you're new to the company you're not really in a position to understand how corporate culture modifies contract language application. Secondly, you don't know who allies are, so embrace that role and go to the manager of those systems (someone, er, like me). Declare ignorance of how things work (which is true), explain what you found, and ask how this works. You're seeking education, not tattling on a co-worker.

At that point, you've done what you could. You've reported a questionable behavior, and probably now have a much better grasp for the edge-cases around your employment contract. If it turns out that such usage actually is banned, you'll have earned an ally in that manager. If it turns out that it's allowed, you'll likely get some of the background for this specific case, which will help your understanding of how the company works.

Answer 2

Since you are new and do not know a lot of things, you have to deal with the situation carefully.

My suggestion would be to bring up the issue with your immediate reporting manager to gather enough data. Do not mention your colleague at all. In fact, pretend that you do not even know of his doings. For example, you could talk to your manager (let's call him John) something like: "Hey John, I have been working here for a while now, and I was curious about a few things. You see, we have all these spare machines, and they are not doing the project computations during off-hours. I wonder if we could use those extra resources to complete our project sooner (etc.)"

Most likely, someone already thought of that before, and decided it cannot be done. Maybe you know it yourself that the spare resources cannot be used, but as a first step, you convince your manager that you want to add value to the project as opposed to looking for a way to put them to personal use.

If your manager explains why it cannot be done, then you could continue with, "In that case, I wonder if it would be okay for someone to use the them for their personal use." You should not jump to this step by skipping the first step mentioned above. Do not mention the specific purpose that your colleague is using it for. That would make your manager curious, and you are not ready to reveal enough yet.

Let's say he says this is allowed. Then you ask a specific question, "Well, I wonder if that is really okay. I mean, what if someone uses them in the off-hours to make money? Would that violate the contract or cause some other trouble?"

Now clearly, if he says, using company's spare resources to make money is not allowed, you just tell him what you observed without sounding like you are selling out your colleague. For example, "John, actually the reason I asked you this is I have seen Bill do this a few times. Maybe he is not aware of how the contract is interpreted." You want to sound like you are trying to help your colleague out of a potential legal problem in future (which you are doing, by the way).

On the other hand, if he says this is allowed, you could just mention what your colleague was doing, again without sounding like a complaint. "John, Bill showed me this interesting thing the other day ..."

When I started writing, I did not think this would be so long. Sorry about that but the key points to handling this from my perspective are:

1. Since you do not know how things work, gather required data step by step. The above hypothetical conversation might span several meetings.
2. At all points, and even if you have to escalate, give your colleague the benefit of doubt. You are not trying to cause him trouble, you want to prevent him from getting into trouble.

Answer 3

They are using their employees resources to make money for themselves. Check your employment contract to see if it allows that (I doubt very much it does). More likely there is a clause on using company resources for your own personal use as being a firing offence.

Also you risk being liable for it as well if you knew about it and did nothing. Imagine he does get out and says that you knew about it and sanctioned it to your boss.