• (cs)

    And the WTF is Nate not quitting as soon as he saw himself as the only survivor.

  • (cs)

    Just sounds like the plot of another Ayn Rand novel to me ...

  • (cs)

    The real WTF of course is not knowing where John's favourite bars are. On those grounds Nate is the weakest link. He should have scoured all the bars in the city till he found him. An outrageous lapse in personal dedication and he has shown he does not have the personal qualities necessary to perform his task.

    Oh, and the fact that a development team consisting of the weakest of all developers (otherwise he's have been snapped up by other companies like all his colleagues) and a rock star could sustain all the development work achieved by a staff of loads just goes to show what a bloated company Martia was at the helm of ... and if only Nate had shown a little personal dedication (see first paragraph) this company would still be forging ahead.

  • (cs)

    ... and while I'm about it:

    "Her plaid pant-suit was wrinkled and stained; ..."

    We ought to be told what the nature of the stains were.

  • Auditor of Reality (unregistered)

    From what I read John is awesome and only had an ego problem. And Nate didnt do a thing, and from the way the story is told, seems to be jealous of John

  • html nazi (unregistered)

    img width 360... Image source width 1516px...

  • (cs) in reply to Matt Westwood
    Matt Westwood:
    Oh, and the fact that a development team consisting of the weakest of all developers (otherwise he's have been snapped up by other companies like all his colleagues) and a rock star could sustain *all* the development work achieved by a staff of loads just goes to show what a bloated company Martia was at the helm of ... and if only Nate had shown a little personal dedication (see first paragraph) this company would still be forging ahead.
    What part of this would lead you to think that the other developers were snapped up by other companies?
    John’s first “creative” act was to fire anyone who didn’t seem to be in line with his vision, which left him with one developer: Nate, who had kept his mouth shut enough to not piss off John.
    And of course Nate's other problem was that John wouldn't even let the other (remaining+new-hired) developers actually do any development, much less tell them what they needed to know in case John was down with alcohol poisoning.
  • html nazi (unregistered)

    So anyway... I think that it's obvious that Martia is the President's daughter. I'm glad to hear she's recovered from the terrible sickness but I believe that she is trying to impress her dad in a wrong way. Self-proclaiming herself to be a President just won't do the trick.

    CAPTCHA: oppeto. Nate should see the oppetonity to jump ship long before the company went bankrupt.

  • RFoxmich (unregistered)

    Here I thought Awesome John was going to turn out to be Martia's nephew.

    Stains on her pantsuit...well I kid you not, my captcha is "eros"

  • (cs) in reply to html nazi
    html nazi:
    img width 360... Image source width 1516px...
    It looks awesome on my super-high resolution display, unlike most images on the web…
  • (cs)

    This seems like a pretty standard WTF: Clueless idiot runs/takes over business, fires people to "save costs" without understanding what they do, hires self-proclaimed "guru" to run things so they don't have to (i.e. read The Four Hour Workweek once too often), guru turns out to be just as stupid.

    The only silver lining here is the company went under in the end. Far too many shops like this stay afloat because "Martia" has millions of dollars in the bank and isn't afraid to keep operating at a loss as long as she can pretend she's some bigshot CEO.

    Nate should have up and left when he saw how Martia and John were and that the company was being sliced to ribbons. It would have helped them sink a lot faster and that's really the best approach with companies like this: You find out how insane they are, and help to put them down.

  • Dave (unregistered)

    TLDNR

  • EvilSnack (unregistered) in reply to ObiWayneKenobi
    ObiWayneKenobi:
    This seems like a pretty standard WTF: Clueless idiot runs/takes over business, fires people to "save costs" without understanding what they do, hires self-proclaimed "guru" to run things so they don't have to (i.e. read The Four Hour Workweek once too often), guru turns out to be just as stupid.
    Summarized as, "TDPHB".
    Nate should have up and left when he saw...
    Perhaps Nate was hanging on until he actually had a start date from another job. It's always good to make sure you have your 'chute packed before you jump.
  • You sense of humour is as good as your name (unregistered) in reply to Dave
    Dave:
    TLDNR
    Presumably at least *you* though that was funny?
  • (cs)

    Since the solution to saving every company seems to be cutting employees, which reduces costs, how can we do more?

    And then I had a wonderful ephiphany: Negative employees.

    That would solve everthing. With less than zero employees, we would have a negative payroll. That's just pure profit. No customers, servers, code, or anything else would be needed.

    (With a mood like this, I can tell this will be a great day!)

  • (cs) in reply to html nazi
    html nazi:
    img width 360... Image source width 1516px...
    It looks so good when you zoom in using a mobile browser though!
  • Oslo (unregistered) in reply to Coyne
    Coyne:
    With less than zero employees, we would have a negative payroll. That's just pure profit. No customers, servers, code, or anything else would be needed.

    Like getting tax-income without providing any services? I hear this is a viable tactic.

  • Andrew (unregistered)

    Why don't cannibals eat divorced women?

    They're bitter.

  • (cs)

    In my previous job I saw the writing on the wall. The CEO hadn't done any production work in years but landed a huge client and for some reason didn't trust his loyal staff to do the work that they had been doing in those years, so he thought he would do almost everything.

    From catering, writing scripts, casting, makeup, costumes, camera work, lighting, sound, post-production, etc. (This was multimedia stuff). His arrogance drove almost all of them away. I was fairly immune because he at least knew he didn't know coding. Took me about a month between all that blowing up until I found a new position.

  • (cs)

    Is this the new trend at TDWTF? Divorce stories?

  • (cs)

    I call shenanigans... The ending is all wrong. Stories that trial off into ramblings about stuff at the end are supposed to end with the words "The end". This story didn't, so it can't be true.

  • nom (unregistered) in reply to edgsousa
    edgsousa:
    And the WTF is Nate not quitting as soon as he saw himself as the only survivor.

    At the very least he should have been getting his resume out the day he got back from that vacation. Hanging on for months to an obviously doomed company is never a good idea. Once the ship is obviously sinking, the reference doesn't look great to future employers.

  • (cs) in reply to RFoxmich
    RFoxmich:
    Here I thought Awesome John was going to turn out to be Martia's nephew.

    Am I the only one who expected John to be her boyfriend?

  • D8 (unregistered)

    I think I understand the reason for the divorce.

  • camelotbob (unregistered)

    Been there... got the t-shirt! I've lived though something similar 3 times, it sucked. Then they got mad when I didn't give them 2 weeks notice but funny they never gave me notice when they couldn't meet payroll for weeks at at time. Funny how management and ownership forget that respect flows both ways.

  • (cs) in reply to D8

    Her husband's affair with Michelle? Or cutting costs by downsizing the family?

    Addendum (2013-10-10 10:08):

    I think I understand the reason for the divorce.
  • Chad Garrett (unregistered) in reply to html nazi
    html nazi:
    img width 360... Image source width 1516px...

    Beyond retina. In 24-bit PNG too! It's just 2.2MB of forward-compatibility...for all time.

  • anonymous (unregistered) in reply to edgsousa
    edgsousa:
    And the WTF is Nate not quitting as soon as he saw himself as the only survivor.
    *shrug* he got out before they stopped paying him; what's to fault?
  • anonymous (unregistered) in reply to dkf
    dkf:
    html nazi:
    img width 360... Image source width 1516px...
    It looks awesome on my super-high resolution display, unlike most images on the web…
    Then again... it's still a picture of three portajohns, how awesome can it be?
  • ¯\(°_o)/¯ I DUNNO LOL (unregistered) in reply to edgsousa
    edgsousa:
    And the WTF is Nate not quitting as soon as he saw himself as the only survivor.
    It was in the third paragraph when I knew the company was on target to miss payroll. But the ship can't be sinking, we still have rats!
  • ¯\(°_o)/¯ I DUNNO LOL (unregistered) in reply to ObiWayneKenobi
    ObiWayneKenobi:
    The only silver lining here is the company went under in the end. Far too many shops like this stay afloat because "Martia" has millions of dollars in the bank and isn't afraid to keep operating at a loss as long as she can pretend she's some bigshot CEO.
    But you can bet she can afford to keep the blinker fluid changed regularly in her BMW!
  • F (unregistered) in reply to nom
    nom:
    edgsousa:
    And the WTF is Nate not quitting as soon as he saw himself as the only survivor.

    At the very least he should have been getting his resume out the day he got back from that vacation. Hanging on for months to an obviously doomed company is never a good idea. Once the ship is obviously sinking, the reference doesn't look great to future employers.

    Any reason to suppose he didn't do that? The story doesn't say one way or the other. And how many months do you think someone like John would take to cause chaos? A guru like him ... maybe six weeks, tops.

  • FreeMarketFan (unregistered) in reply to Matt Westwood
    Matt Westwood:
    Just sounds like the plot of another Ayn Rand novel to me ...

    Actually Ayn Rand would have never allowed for 'sick' design. It would have been a minimalist web development approach where no extra 'fluff' would be seen.

    CAPTCHA: opto - As in Rand believed in opto design.

  • Skeptic (unregistered)

    Re: "Over time, John’s strategy paid off, and big-name clients started paying attention to AwesomeWeb again" -- this is the TRDWTF, I find it hard to believe a company in such chaos could do anything but lose existing customers...

  • Ben (unregistered)

    I like this because of Greatjon from Game Of Thrones.

    Jon Umber is the Lord of Last Hearth and the head of House Umber, a loyal vassal family to the Starks of Winterfell.[1] He is better known as Greatjon Umber or the Greatjon to distinguish him from his son and heir, the Smalljon.

  • Leonardo Herrera (unregistered)

    I'm getting tired of these straw-man non-histories.

  • (cs)

    Seems to me, the real WTF is the US employment laws that mean you can just randomly fire half of a workforce for no good reason...

    Or indeed that Martia's husband hadn't bothered with a hierarchical business structure - 40 staff is too many to be running like a start-up, seriously...

  • I forget (unregistered) in reply to html nazi
    img width 360... Image source width 1516px..
    Could be worse. It could have also been an uncompressed .BMP file. Yes, I have seen sites do that before.
  • Scourge of Programmers! (unregistered)

    TRWTF is not Great John, but Martia, who let everyone run amok.

  • Steve (unregistered)

    The Real WTF is that Nate worked there as long as he did.

  • (cs) in reply to bkDJ
    bkDJ:
    html nazi:
    img width 360... Image source width 1516px...
    It looks so good when you zoom in using a mobile browser though!
    I wouldn't say it looks good (it's a picture of chemical bogs in little cabins, after all), but you don't need a mobile browser to zoom. Ctrl+mousewheel works well enough on FFESR 17.
  • anonymous (unregistered)

    TRWTF is that Great John apparently had a brief moment of competence to snatch new big customers in a crippled-up environment, despite being a Self-Declared Genius (TM) which, we all know, lead things to the other way entirely.

  • Calli Arcale (unregistered) in reply to edgsousa
    edgsousa:
    And the WTF is Nate not quitting as soon as he saw himself as the only survivor.

    Nonsense. When you can keep your job just by staying quiet, you're in the perfect position to get your resume out, allowing you to take your time picking your next job. You quit once you've got the new job lined up, which it looks like is exactly what Nate did.

  • (cs)

    Damn Martians.

  • draNgNon (unregistered)

    all I could think of, reading this post, was "and, so?" this story is just typical. where is the WTF?

  • C-Derb (unregistered) in reply to Skeptic
    Skeptic:
    Re: "Over time, John’s strategy paid off, and big-name clients started paying attention to AwesomeWeb again" -- this is the TRDWTF, I find it hard to believe a company in such chaos could do anything but lose existing customers...
    Obviously Great John was great at one thing: bullshitting. It ain't hard to land new clients when you have that skill. Keeping them is the hard part....
  • Anachronda (unregistered) in reply to Coyne
    Coyne:
    And then I had a wonderful ephiphany: Negative employees.

    That's called "outsourcing".

  • You sense of humour is as good as your name (unregistered) in reply to draNgNon
    draNgNon:
    all I could think of, reading this post, was "and, so?" this story is just typical. where is the WTF?

    Perhaps TRWTF is the question you appear to be asking?

  • Mornak (unregistered) in reply to Coyne

    Negative employees exists. They are called "customers"

  • (cs) in reply to Anachronda
    Anachronda:
    Coyne:
    And then I had a wonderful ephiphany: Negative employees.

    That's called "outsourcing".

    The negative of an employee is an employer, surely? instead of being someone you pay to do work for you, it's someone who pays you to do work for them.

    The politically-correct term for these is apparently "customer".

    Fuckers the lot of them.

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