Alright...I just need to vent a little...

The CEO where I work is insane.

I work as the chief engineer at a small software company with about 15 employees. I used to own 15% of this company, and we made at least a million dollars every year selling a program I wrote back in 1998 that delivered electronic surveys over diskette, paper, LAN, and later, the web. The bonuses were awesome as a result--every employee got a piece of the end-of-year profit, and as an owner I got even bigger bucks myself.

But my partners were not computer people. Over and over they would dismiss my recommendations; back in 1999 I insisted that we upgrade the product to work over the web and upsize it to a real database server. After much fierce resistance I finally got a piece of it created, and it's now the only product at the company making any money today.

Then something really bizarre happened.

The CEO moved 1000 miles away to another state, on a whim, but insisted that he remain in control via telephone. Within a year he had totally lost the feel for the company as he was no longer involved in the day-to-day operations. It became an abstraction to him. He continued to dream up new projects, but was unable to ever follow through and finish anything--he would always come up with something new half-way through.

It this foggy haze, he pulled the plug on the one and only product that was making us money because he needed ALL of the company's programming talent to focus on his latest idea. He rationalized this by insisting that the survey industry was dead, and that companies wouldn't want online surveys anymore, that we needed to adapt to changing times. Remember, this is not a computer person, and obviously not much of an accountant either.

I disagreed so vehemently against this decision, and the boss was so stubborn, that in 2001 I gave up the fight and sold my 15% stake in the company, figuring I'd better cash out before the bankruptcy occured. But I stayed on as an employee...the pay was still pretty good, and with a recession in progress there weren't many other opportunities. So instead of an executive, I'm now just a soldier.

So anyway, we've been following his orders and created a totally unrelated goofy web-site instead that does personality assessments and such. So far, the new site has generated roughly $0.00 in revenue, as opposed to the $1,000,000 that we were used to. We haven't seen a bonus in forever, as sales of the original, abandoned product are finally starting to dry up from a lack of any upgrade, and from the appearance of competitors who serve up a fully web-based equivalent of our old product.

So now that we're about out of money, the CEO starts to panic and decides to take another look at online survey software, which, while sales are drying up, is still the only thing making any money and keeping us afloat. Something must have finally clicked...so yes, now we're going to upgrade it after 3 years of jerking off.

And the punchline...he says, "This was always the plan, to upgrade this software and put it on the web!"

:LOL:








The end is near. I cannot wait to quit my job.

Sometimes "businessmen" are not too good at business, eh?

:LOL:

aaahhh!!! that's a load of b.s., man...

Wow Teller, what you describe sounds SO familiar to me... I've seen this sort of thing happen again and again. It's so frustrating. In fact the exact same thing is happening to a friend of mine right now...

As an employee and in helping out friends over the years I've done quite a few startups over the last 6 years. I quite like the challenge and excitement of getting the company off the ground and writing the first few versions of the product. I've learned a lot about how not to things

Time and time again, someone who doesn't know what they are talking about gets put into an executive position, and he makes it his business to take exactly the wrong action, and ignores all of the expertise and advice of the experienced professionals he has surrounded himself with... leading ultimately to the demise of the company of course, or worse... becoming a "we will code anything for cash" bodyshop sort of operation.

And invariably, when the shit hits the fan, they'll suddenly and belatedly rediscover one of your original suggestions that you tried to push through unsuccessfully years earlier, and claim it as their own. Of course at that stage it is usually too late, as I'll usually already be doing interviews by that stage.

I've seen so many failed startups, I'm expert in exactly how not to run a software business. I should market myself as a consult or a dot-com soothsayer, where I predict the demise of companies for a small fee

bummer, teller. it's a fine skele-mix-up ~!

the head bone connected to the...arse bone. the arse bone connected to the... foot bone. . .