Bosses from Hell....

[kenw]

We’ve all had ‘em….this one was from 30 years ago and his stupidity is one for the ages....

Back in the 70s (yes, I had a boss in the 70s), the company I worked for decided to “upgrade” their management. The original guys who started it had retired to the golf course and wanted to leave their baby in capable hands. One of the “finds” was this guy who had gone thru the management development fast-track at (a very large and well known company). They hire him away, give him a ridiculous salary and attempt find a spot for him. First victim is manufacturing where he becomes Director of Mfg Engineering.

He decides to upgrade the factory (and in fact we had already started the program) and that his buds at (a subsidiary of the very large and well known company) should get a consulting contract to manage it, where upon it promptly grinds to a complete halt. He micromanages the entire effort, so much so that we finally decided to keep one set of plans to actually work from and a separate set that we showed him and the consultants. After 2 years the factory redesign never did get completely finished….but we had paid well over a million to these consultants in the meantime….

After Peter Principle-inig his way up, he eventually became VP of Engineering. As we sat in a general engineering meeting one day, discussing budget stuff, he makes disparaging remarks about engineering accounting (yeah, they work for him) and their lack of ‘vision’ and ‘creativity’. “What we need are some creative accountants!” he bellowed. The old crusty Engineering Director (who also worked for him) quietly leaned over an said, just loud enough for all of us to hear, “Bill, all the creative accountants are in jail….” We all nearly split our gut trying to hold it inside…..

After Peter Principling his way with us for a while longer, he left the company to become CEO of some startup in California. It was the 80s and by then, computer startups were in every former grocery store and garage. Being as the computer business was at the time quite ingrown (ok, incestuous…), several guys at out place knew folks at that company. About 3 months later, a friend received a call late one night from his friend at the new company. They discussed, totally off the record, this guy: exactly what he had (and hadn’t) done while at our company. Over the next few weeks, several folks from that company were calling several folks at our company. The scuttlebutt was flying fast and furious.

Turns out almost all of his experience while at our company was made up. None of the programs he took credit for were completed sucessfully, some never even existed. It brought into question his actual experience at (that very large and well known company). Never heard how that part of the investigation went, but shortly thereafter we heard thru the grapevine that he had been fired and was being sued by that company for fraud and all sorts of stuff. And just for good measure, his wife left him and being in California, had found a goldmine called alimony.

[C!LLY]

nice story.