Shots Fired: When Employees Bash Their Former Companies

Date: Sept. 12, 2003

In a post he titled “Who Killed Apple Computer?” former Apple Marketing Director Michael Mace said “Apple Computer as a whole was a massive failure.” He blamed the company and uncooperative employees for its unsuccessful attempts to compete with PCs: "Nobody wanted to be a busboy. Our senior managers lacked the wisdom or the will to call off the game. And so our company fell." When discussing CEO Steve Jobs, Mace wrote: "Maybe the new Apple he's building will someday have the same authority and heft as the old one.”

Date: Feb. 14, 2007

Once America Online gave him the boot, aspiring rapper Truth 505 laid down a diss track called “F*ck AOL,” calling the organization a “double-edged sword” and higher-ups “corporate bums, low-life scum.” Truth even plays the racial card stating, “AOHell’s treating their workers like shit. Is it because I’m a beatnik or a spic?” The only highlight here is Vincent Ferrari “cancel the account” sample. Gluttons for punishment can listen to it here.

Date: July 7, 2010

Facebook Product Designer Chad Little was once an employee of the most valuable company in the world. Howevever, after joining team Zuckerberg, he divulged a number of inside secrets about the Cupertino Clan on the Quora site. Apparently, all Apple projects involving Steve Jobs assistance had ridiculous completion times: “If you have a project that Steve is not involved in, it will take months of meetings to move things forward. If Steve wants it done, it’s done faster than anyone thinks is humanly possible.” Little also confirmed nothing was free at Apple, not even coffee. Jobs alleged explanation for this was that it made employee stock go up so they could afford these amenities. Damn.

Date: May 25, 2011

Former Project Manager Hamilton Verissimo had no shame throwing Microsoft under the bus when discussing his reasons for quitting the company. “It’s a very inefficient company, with very little or nothing being done to make it better,” said Verissimo. He added, “For PMs [program managers], like me, some manager pushes idiotic time consuming exercises like scenario validation…two months to produce collateral that is bound to be useless in six months, since everything is likely to change.” Well, people, there's your explanation for the KIN’s failure.

Date: June 1, 2011

It’s no secret that the BlackBerry manufacturer is on the brink of collapse. One former high-ranking member was well aware of it and bashed the company for its poor management in his resignation letter. The anonymous agitator wrote: “RIM often make[s] product decisions based on strategic alignment, partner requests or even legal advice – the end user doesn’t care. Teams still aren’t talking together properly, no one is making or can make critical decisions, all the while everyone is working crazy hours and still far behind.” RIM responded by saying it’s “aggressively addressing both the company’s challenges and its opportunities.” Let’s hope so.

Date: June 18, 2011

To say Oliver Miller’s time at AOL was appalling would be an understatement. The ex-AOL TV writer shared his horror stories with The Faster Times, referring to himself as an “AOL content slave” working under absurd deadlines and writing half-ass pieces. At one point, he claims to have IM’d his editor, “Do you guys even CARE what I write Does it make any difference if it’s good or bad?” The response: “Not really.” Miller would also expose the company’s content guidelines by posting a document called “The AOL Way” on the Web.

Date: Sept. 8, 2011

Yahoo!'s former CEO is a trip. In her first post-firing interview with Fortune, Bartz voiced displeasure over her dismissal saying, “These people [expletive] me over.” Adding to her scornful remarks, she went on to call board members “doofuses” for not giving the Microsoft Bing partnership enough to blow. Surely Yahoo! regrets firing such a classy lady, right?

Date: Jan. 25, 2012

An alleged ex-employee under the alias “The Formerly Mismanaged” took his frustrations out on THQ CEO Brian Farrell and the game publisher by sending a scathing letter to the Board of Directors. He blamed THQ’s failures on its unoriginal strategies led by “chronic and constant mismanagement”: “THQ had been known through the years for having a formula. They find a hot license, make a cheap game, barely advertise it, and make money… Unfortunately, THQ's old guard executives seem to be stuck trying to manage the company the same way they did back then and haven't realized the industry has changed.” The incognito scriber goes on to attack Farrell for his “lack of business intelligence or fiscal accountability,” after banking "$1,289,558" in 2011.

Date: Feb. 8, 2012

Reddit user “mercenary-games,” who claims to be an ex-Zynga engineer, went HAM on the social gaming behometh saying it targeted high-spending players and cloned titles from other developers. “If you can’t buy em, clone em…The only “homegrown” codebases at Zynga is MafiaWars2 and maybe Poker, the rest of their tech was just bought from small studios,” he shared on a thread. Another crazy revelation he shared was the amount one gamer spent on Mafia Wars: $100,000. He also went as far as to post his termination letter online. Zynga's had plenty of ex-workers put them on blast the past several months, so this is a hard one to debate.

Date: March 14, 2012

Former Microsoft engineer James Whittaker was thrilled to join the competition, until he noticed Google was shifting its goals toward social media. The biggest name in search was making Google+ a priority, which, according to Whittaker, went against company’s initial purpose. “The Google I was passionate about was a technology company that empowered its employees to innovate. The Google I left was an advertising company with a single corporate-mandated focus," said Whittaker. In addition, he took a jab at Google’s policy of allowing employees to spend a fifth of their time on side projects: “Suddenly, 20% meant half-assed.” Tell'em why you mad, Whit.