I'll try to make it short… we have a dude working in my team under my supervision who is one of the few specialists in a very peculiar design software. Literally one of dozen or so in whole North America who can properly operate and use it efficiently, as I said software is very peculiar. We have other operators but they mostly suck at it and make things worse… while this dude just plows through. Not their fault, the program is just terrible to use. Somehow this guy gets it.
Thing is, he is a loner, he doesn't like office or any of the team building bullshit. Dude wears black metal shirts and got in trouble with middle management many times and then work from home came as a life saver for him. I do not care about his shirts or where he works as long as he's doing it and I talked to him about extending work from home forever. One guy less at stupid pizza parties will not matter. Dude is like OK… salary is good and all but do not make me come back, I will leave.
So week or two after this, middle manager calls me in and spouts all this shit about the guy, how he's not a team player and he never comes in… his dress code is terrible and he's introvert. I'm like yeah… but you realize he is a major asset to the company, literally brings us millions worth of work due to that software? Nah… he must come in, company culture comes first to us! He was so angry about it like dude killed someone… he was just working from home, not bothering anyone. I could not believe it and the same day got email from CEO office about the guy and I got a warning for tolerating it! I was furious.
So I called the man, told him all about it and apologized. He just said it's cool dude, I got work offers daily, you'll get my resignation tomorrow. And he did send it! Management were out of their minds, how dare he do this?
And guess what… we were in the middle of a bid worth 2 million dollars and we lost it to the company that this dude moved to. As a matter of fact, we lost few more bids and management decided to pull out of that business side completely! All because of their egos and stubbornness, not willing to listen to the facts. They could have kept the guy working from home and earn millions more… but nah, company culture comes first. Most of the times it's just their inflated ego and psychotic mindset of total control.