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No one likes working for a hard-ass CEO. Unfortunately, many get stuck being employed by people so self-interested and absorbed, so crazy and maniacal, and so disconnected from the day-to-day realities of the companies they run, that the workplace becomes something akin to what Dante was laying down. And all the while people stick with their jobs, either out of sheer enjoyment of their profession or out of fear of becoming part of the 9% unemployment rate. Dig into any industry and you'll find a history of horrible corporate leaders. The tech industry is no different. We're not talking about gifted and luminous CEOs whose quest for brilliance, at times, makes for prickly staff relations, like Steve Jobs. No, we're talking about people whose actions ruin empires and leave workers buried in the rubble. With the Seth Gordon-helmed Horrible Bosses hitting theaters today, we decided it was the perfect time to create a hit list of the most loathsome and shameful tech bosses of the past and present. From corporate crooks to front office bullies, here’s a look at the Worst Tech CEOs Of All-Time.
Related: Horrible Bosses Movie Review
Steve Ballmer
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
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
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
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
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.
The Nortel Triad
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 Allen
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
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.