So, like many younger, naive contributors to this forum, I once thought that manglement was a meaningful value add to a company, filled with folks looking to enable their employees, maximise returns and generally contribute to the collective.
This is the simple, predictable story of my awakening.
I worked for a company that built a software product that was technically effective, had good team members, and a strong client base. The management wanted to turn it public, so they hired a CEO to take them there.
New CEO meant new processes and procedures – he introduced a 'new employees orientation' that, it turns out, I needed to attend. It was a day trip, a lot of background about him, how the company fits into the sphere of the competition, and what we were aiming to build. Fair enough.
During the part about “him”, our CEO uttered the immortal line: “I am not perfect. In fact, if you have a problem with something I am doing, tell me I am being an asshole, and we'll sort it out”.
Well now. A year or so later, he is determined to make a presentation to our team, and brings in a screen, projector and power point presentation and the board to talk to us and show us how the company has grown, how it is positioned and the tremendous potential we had coming our way.
I love a good ra-ra, but unfortunately, as the meeting started, I was on a call with one of our international customers, where it was very late, and they were reporting what turned out to be a rather nasty bug, and it needed resolving asap, preferably before their next business day. So I stayed on the call, collated the information, diagnosed it effectively, and mapped out an acceptable work around in case we couldn't fix it in one day.
During this call, the CEO wandered over to my desk, and asked me why I wasn't paying attention. I said I was dealing with a customer issue, and he drifted off. Once I put the phone down, he came back again, and berated me in front of my team for not paying attention to the critical information being conveyed by the very senior people who had taken time out of their days to do it.
An hour later, I headed over to his office, knocked politely on the door, then entered. “Mr Big, that was an asshole thing you did out there” I said. “Tell me more,” quoth he. “Well, I was dealing with
“Thank you,” he said. “I appreciate the feedback, that was very informative.”
That was on Monday. Bug was fixed that afternoon, confirmed effective by the client on Tuesday – and I was fired on Wednesday.