Horrible Bosses: The Worst Tech CEOs Of All Time

Image via Complex Original

Steve Ballmer

Company: Microsoft (2000 - Present)

Biggest asshole moment: Snatching an employee’s iPhone, pretend to stomp it, and making several unflattering remarks about the person during a private company meeting.

A gaggle of Microsoft employees, as well as the general public, agree on one thing: Steve Ballmer is a nut job. If he's not screeching and frolicking on stage (reference his Dance Monkeyboy video), then he's putting his employees on blast for owning Apple products. This year's approval rating surveys from Glassdoor (29 percent) and GeekWire (40 percent) showed that employees voted him the worst tech CEO. And since taking over for Bill Gates at the turn of the century, the polarizing Ballmer has earned a rep amongst workers and investors as the arrogant egomaniac responsible for massive layoffs and losing billions. The KIN failure speaks for itself. When you take into consideration his long list of insane public outbursts, poor vision, and lack of leadership, it's no wonder Microsoft continues to struggle.

Mark Hurd

Company: HP (2005 – 2010)

Biggest asshole moment: Allegedly falsified expense reports to pay a former contractor for which he had thing for work she never did.

During his tenure as chief executive officer, Hurd was allegedly despised for his cost-cutting practices. He fired 10 percent of the company (est. 15,000 people) shortly after taking the position, then sliced the IT department in half from 19,000 to 8,000, and consolidated data centers from 86 locations to six. If that didn’t make employees despise him, then enforcing a five percent pay cut and eliminating certain benefits for all employees during the recession surely did. Former employee and author Chuck House voiced his disgust with the former CEO in his HP Phenomenon blog: “This guy was a thug, nicknamed Mark Turd by ex-HPites who worked directly for him...He raped HP employees (figuratively, without violating the sexual conduct code at HP) by eliminating the sixty-five year concept of profit sharing, preferring to move to obscene bonuses for himself and his five top minions.” 

Carly Fiorina

Company: HP (1999 - 2005)

Biggest asshole moment: Forced soon-to-be

fired employees to train their outsourced replacements.

Judging

by a resume that consisted of 30,000 firings and a 50-percent HP stock decline,

Fiorina is a sure shot for any worst CEO list. In

2001, she suggested employees take voluntary pay cuts, and while 86

percent agreed, she still outsourced thousands of jobs overseas and implemented

huge layoffs. A 2008 article in Entrepreneur Magazine touched

on the employee morale during Fiorina’s reign: "A survey of 8,000 employees

revealed widespread unhappiness about poor communication and poorly implemented

decisions...Some workers booed the CEO at company meetings.” Even during

her run for Senate last year, Sen. Barbara Boxer released a viral ad claiming Fiorina fired thousands and “tripled her salary, bought a million dollar yacht

and five corporate jets” as CEO. HP cut her loose and offered a $42 million severance package

to never come back. After hearing the news, employees rejoiced and supposedly

proclaimed, “The witch is dead.” 

Meg Whitman

Company: eBay (1998 - 2007)

Biggest asshole moment: Shoving an employee in an executive conference room, which resulted in a

financial settlement of around $200,000.

Outsiders admired her for transforming eBay into a billion-dollar business, but employees reportedly perceived her as a rageaholic who could not complete a sentence without swearing and attacked employees. One alleged altercation in 1999 had her throwing a phone at

a marketing exec because the eBay site crashed, while another, in 2006, had her

spazzing on recruiters for not interviewing a candidate: "Are you fucking

kidding me with this shit? Do I have to fucking do everything myself?...I don’t need

this fucking shit.” However, nothing topped her 2007 shoving incident with employee Young Mi Kim right before a scheduled media interview. Kim threatened to sue the company and walked away with a six-figure settlement. Whitman resigned as CEO in 2007 and eBay employees have sighed in relief ever since.

John
Rigas

Company:

Adelphia Communications Corporation (1952 – 2006)

Biggest asshole moment: Robbing

former employees of their retirement funds.

The Bernie Madoff of the tech world was indicted for stealing

$100 million from his organization to fund other family-owned companies, causing

massive layoffs and forcing Aldelphia to file for bankruptcy. He, along with

sons Michael and Timothy, plus two other execs were also accused of concealing

$2.3 billion in liabilities from investors and using corporate funds for their

personal use. During the trial, former Century chairman Leonard Tow told the

court he sold his company to Rigas and lost $1.5 billion he promised to

charity before Adelphi’s stock crashed. Judge Leonard Sand added more salt to

the wound by citing a letter from a former 70-year-old employee who lost his

entire retirement fund, along with countless others. In an unjust

verdict, Rigas was sentenced to 15 years in prison at the age of 80.

John Roth, Frank Dunn, and Mike Zafirovski

Company: Nortel Networks (1997-

2001), (2001 – 2004), (2005- 2009)

Biggest asshole moments: Overestimating executive bonuses while withholding severance pay to former employees.

This trio

of terror was heavily criticized for terminating over 60,000 employees, awarding

themselves ridiculous raises, and dropping Nortel’s market value from $398

billion to less than $5 billion. With that said, it’s shocking to see Nortel’s still

in business. After massive layoffs occurred and company stocked crashed in

2000, Roth sold his options and walked away with $135 million. Dunn carried

on the CEO tradition of personal gain by overestimating executive bonuses by

$19 million and cashing in on $5 million alone, until investigators discovered

he wrongly booked $3 billion in liabilities and the board was fired. Finally, Zafirovski withheld severance pay from the unemployed and chose not

to finance the company’s pension fund, all while giving himself a pay increase

of $10 million. Monkey see, monkey do.

Robert “Bob” Allen

Company: AT&T (1986 -

1997)

Biggest asshole moment: Saying he felt "no pain" accepting more money and firing thousands of employees.

Allen coerced a

merger between AT&T and computer company, NCR Corp., which became one of the worst business deals of all-time: costing the company $12

billion and resulting in 50,000+ layoffs in the long run. As AT&T struggled financially during the '90s, reports surfaced that the former CEO received stock options that increased his pay from $6.7 million to $16 million soon after he enforced terminations. Allen showed no remorse and shared his greedy views with company execs during an annual AT&T meeting in 1996: "I feel no

pain in accepting the compensation that may eventuate if—and only if—the

shareholders, the customers and the employees of AT&T also benefit.” 

John Sculley

Company: Apple (1983 -1993)

Biggest asshole moment: He fired Steve Jobs…STEVE JOBS!

Silicon Valley icon Steve

Jobs helped recruit the former PepsiCo president and how did he return the

favor? By convincing Apple's board of execs to fire Jobs and make himself CEO. The board agreed and dismissed the Apple co-founder. But Sculley’s

lack of computer knowledge and unethical approaches got the best of him, as his pet projects (the Newton being the biggest) bombed big time, causing Apple to

lose nearly two-thirds of its stock value and post profit lows of $4.6 million

by 1993. The company had to downsize its worldwide labor force by 16

percent and consolidate sales and marketing teams. And, after engaging in

constant arguments with the board, the decision was made to fire Sculley and

replace him with his own protégé: Michael Spindler. Sculley revealed in an interview with Cult of Mac that he should have never fired Jobs or been hired by Apple: “Maybe he Jobs should have been the CEO,” says Sculley, “and I

should have been the president…Looking

back, it was a big mistake that I was ever hired as CEO [of Apple]." No

kidding.