Worst things to do as a company/CEO - Please share and I will add

[Betonhaus]

I think there was a company that gassed an entire village in India by accident.

I think that was really bad, and I don't support what they did.

Boston drowned in molasses once.

 

[Chongqing]

Boston drowned in molasses once.

Really?

 

[Betonhaus]

Really?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Molasses_Flood

 

[Ukraine is Big Gay]

I am 100 percent of the opinion that anyone in a pure consultation position is a grifter and if you need consulting for anything in a business that you as a higher up or owner, your specialist hires and or your lawyer(s) or accountant(s) can't handle then it's moved onto being more of a personal issue and not a business one. Like believe in yourself a LITTLE - At least do assloads of due diligence on your own time.

That and don't be a busy idiot. Being a busy idiot can be boiled down to anything that feels like a sitcom wife asking you to do to re-arranging the deck chairs on the titanic. Shit like changing the schedule for the whole company on a hunch it will eventually help productivity because your dumb ass saw a business psychology post about PEOPLE ENJOY WORKING SECOND SHIFT MORE or something equally asinine.

If you have anyone working under you and each one didn't personally ask for the change. All you're doing is fucking up dozens to hundreds of peoples plans and routines and burning goodwill for dubious return and benefit.

Also shit like re-arranging all the window dressing of the business way too often which is actually hell on a people facing business or a service industry because turns out people like familiarity and all these gay buzzwords like "Dynamic" are indeed gay and dumb. As long as you don't look comically out of date and very uncharmingly and dirtily so it won't fucking matter.

It especially doesn't matter if you do something hyper specific and very un-sexy like design flume dump valves for mobile trash burners and there's two of said company in the entire country. I've seen so many retards blow half a company budget on trying to look like a fucking apple office when they make something like door skirts. Even the lowest end grunts if showed them the floor plan would have just ate the firing early to say you're being a fucking idiot and you're not attracting post 2007 investors with anything that isn't a gizmo or can be worded to involve the environment.

Edit: All of this from word one is opinion and anecdote of course and I forgot a very important one. If you're the flume dump valve guy you live or fucking die by the end companies and consumers who need them. If you ever fuck them over or piss them off enough they can and will just pass a brand new example of what you make to a chinese firm and you're fucking d o n e unless said chinoid part adequately fails tolerance spec and critical use fails often enough to put up with your shit again over just having one of their own grunts reach into the flume dump valve bucket to slap a new one on for 1/10th your price.

 

[Harbinger of Kali Yuga]

Businesses using shitty fucking personality metrics to promise to use in hiring and career development and then they hire outside the company anyways like every other moron.

And then using job performance metrics that don't apply to our job that the boss always rates you as 3 or whatever the "middle" value is so they bring your average down and tell you you're not that great of an employee and thus don't deserve as much compensation--we know what the fuck you assholes are doing. Averaging down.

I think there was a company that gassed an entire village in India by accident.

Just imagine what the pajeets would've done if they had German efficiency.

 

[DJ Grelle]

I think there was a company that gassed an entire village in India by accident.

I think that was really bad, and I don't support what they did.

Nah I like that.

Any political party program that does not include "thermobarics for India" does not get my vote.

 

[Troon_Patrol]

I'm surprised nobody mention diving dick first into politics or ideology your core market wants nothing to do with.

Profit losses were estimated to be over 1 Billion Dollars for the man who thought he was a woman promoted by the activist who thought she was an advertising genius. There were others, notably Gillette for there commercial for "toxic masculinity". It's not traditionally a company but, many organized religions who basically operate as a company have been completely dropping core values to obtain more customers followers, in the process alienating the current base that are supporting them.

I'm very surprised at how badly a legal department will advise a retail establishment when it comes to general employee loss prevention policy. I recall when I was working a loser job in a retail establishment our LP policy's were a joke. If we caught someone shoving shit down their pants obviously concealing our only recourse was to pretend that they were doing such to carry items to the register and we should immediately offer them a handcart carry what they needed. Juxtaposed any internal theft was treated just about the same as bringing a loaded gun to work. Instant termination being escorted from the building and then they would even try to inventory the exact amount and demand it. I heard rumors from the older employees they would fire you and then beat the shit out of you in the alleyway years back, this was never substantiated. I supposed retail establishments are scared to death of personal injury suits. In a boring loser job like retail catching someone stealing shit is the most exciting thing to happen all week. I had coworker physically assaulted and then fired the next day for acting outside LP policy.

I'm not certain if this really applies but, in the same retail establishment there was an anonymous "we care about our employees" hotline. You could remain anonymous and make a complaint about harassment/sexual harassment whatever. Apparently the calls were not taken as a means to fix a problem but warn preferred employees in management to be aware of whistleblowers and potential future problems. I would imagine if this was leaked it would have been a shit show. A pervy manager confided in me one of the female employees made an anonymous tip suggesting sexual harassment. Instead of bringing in the manager accused for some kind of company policy reminder or sexual harassment re-education, they tipped him off someone had made an anonymous tip about him and IIRC they even attempted to narrow the anonymous party down for him.

I have always thought of externally hiring over internally promoting to any low/mid managerial position generally a bad idea. You have an employee who started in an entry position, worked for the company for 5 years, made it to be potential lower management material and then you have an external fresh applicant with no experience in the company but, they have a degree. The degree has nothing to do with the position or company, some HR depts will choose the external hire because they look better on paper. The current employee has years of understanding how the comapny works from the ground up but, they consider that worth less than a degree in history for example. Terrible idea IMHO.

 

[The Hardest R]

I am 100 percent of the opinion that anyone in a pure consultation position is a grifter and if you need consulting for anything in a business that you as a higher up or owner, your specialist hires and or your lawyer(s) or accountant(s) can't handle then it's moved onto being more of a personal issue and not a business one. Like believe in yourself a LITTLE - At least do assloads of due diligence on your own time.

Most consultants are hired to concur with whatever the CEO, board of directors, etc. wants to do. A board wants to outsource engineering to India so they hire McKinsey to say it’s a good idea to convince shareholders. They are not there to promote good ideas. Every now and then you hear about some shocking thing on a report from a consulting firm but the reality is the company wants the consulting firm to say those things so they have “no choice” but to implement these ideas.

Apparently the calls were not taken as a means to fix a problem but warn preferred employees in management to be aware of whistleblowers and potential future problems.

A lot of people are confused about what Human Resources actually does. They are not there to help the rank and file. Same goes for legal departments. Once you get up to a certain management level, their job is to clean up messes. If you grossly violated employment law, they’ll coordinate with outside counsel for $1,500 an hour to make sure damage is stemmed. Most sexual harassment cases these days are mostly someone in management fucking a subordinate, the manager moving on and the subordinate wanting to get revenge. Or a guy awkwardly flirts with a woman. The definition of sexual harassment is unwanted contact - instances of awkward flirting is not enough unless she tells you to stop. Of course that comes down to a he said/she said thing and who HR chooses to believe comes down to if the guy is worth protecting or not. A staff engineer? Hell no but a chief operating officer on succession management plans to be the next CEO? All of a sudden the discussion becomes “nuanced.”

Having said that, with the rise of pajeet executives, I would not be surprised if we see an increase in instances of true sexual harassment like grabbing some intern’s ass or demanding sex from a secretary. As we keep staffing third worlders, we’re going to see more real instances of sexual harassment versus awkward flirting at the Christmas party.

I have always thought of externally hiring over internally promoting to any low/mid managerial position generally a bad idea.

Depends. A lot of time company culture is dog shit and you need someone that can unfuck a situation. Of course hiring managers are often dumb enough to hire externally for stupid or superficial reasons and make things worse.

 

[Hans Kammler]

Doing business with the Chinese in any capacity that requires them to hold up their end of the bargain; ESPECIALLY if the transaction is "for a good price". There's a greentext story about a guy who interfaced between Western companies and Chinese steel producers, the QRD is that every single business deal is unreliable unless you grossly overpay, and there are no recourses if you get scammed. You can get scammed anywhere along the line, from the factories that produce the steel to an expected standard, to the shipyards misplacing your purchase, to it not making it onto the trains on time, everything that can go wrong will go wrong. You can hire a company, they assure you your shipment is on time, then you'll find out they hired a Chinese guy at the port who doesn't know or care about what grade steel you need, and signed off on it without ever inspecting the shipment. The company providing the shitty steel can just fold and start up again, and you're left holding a $500,000 bag. I urge all of you never to learn Mandarin or do business there, it's nightmare fuel.

 

[♦️ King of Diamonds ♦️]

Shifting responsibilities/functions of internal controls away from the accounting department and putting IT in charge of it. Really idiotic decision.

Also, not keeping both physical and digital backups of financial documents, invoices, receipts, etc. Because if you only keep digital copies you're screwed if your hardware has maintenance problems or glitches- or even worse if there's a hack/ransomware incident. And if you only keep physical copies you're screwed if something bad happens to the storage site (ex. tsunami floods a office building and now all your paper copies are wet and destroyed).

Seems like common sense stuff but I've seen organizations make these decisions.

 

[10 Little Niggers]

Since @Ukraine is Big Gay mentioned external consultants, true story:

1. Upper management comes up with a retarded idea. You know, buzzwords, nothing drawn up, "we should really look into this".

2. Teams are assigned to integrate the new thing on the side. Upper management's favorite Indian ass kisser is asked to oversee the endeavor.

3. Indian ass kisser hounds the technical team weekly to "show something". This is several months of "wHaT's tHe stAtUs?", with loads of TODO tickets with empty descriptions chucked around after every daily call. If anyone asks a proper question, the Indian will begin to repeat buzzwords and finally schedule more meetings.

4. Upper management people observe that months passed. Indian says: "Seeeers, we have many blockers. How shall I proceed to do the needful?", so upper management decides to HELP.

5. Wild external consultant appears and meetings are scheduled. The entire team is forced to attend numerous philosophical meetings where best practices are discussed. And use cases, which are absolutely irrelevant for the business at hand.

6. Consultant takes fee and leaves a report on how the idea is perfect, but technical needs to step up, lacks expertise, must adapt faster.

7. Technical team is evaluated and let go. Performance review very bad, see blocked tickets and disappointed pajeet.

------------

What actually happened: upper management paid several millions for a licensed product because they were sold "AI", no questions asked. The external consultant was their end-of-the-year proof that they are definitely NOT retarded, but employees are incompetent and this is why the company lost millions. They even tried to help.

 

[The Hardest R]

Doing business with the Chinese in any capacity that requires them to hold up their end of the bargain; ESPECIALLY if the transaction is "for a good price".

This is most contractors in general. Most of my day job consists of getting on the asses of contractors to actually do what they say they’re going to do per our agreed upon contracts. Thanks to that inflation that totally doesn’t exist, every contractor with fixed rates acts like niggers or chinks. They will try to get out of everything, create bizarre interpretations of the contract or they will give you a change order for an obscenely high amount.

Of course, bringing these functions in house means they have to hire more technical staff, which means increasing the amount of white guys we have on payroll. So we will pay 2-3x that amount in consultants just so we have our numbers look good for diversity statistics. It’s amazing how quickly things have gone to shit in the last ten years.

 

[The Feline Solution]

Trusting a business partner

This is a big one. Not wanting to PL too much but this completely ruined the life of a relative, with a high enough sum at stake you absolutely can't trust anyone.

 

[The Ugly One]

I am 100 percent of the opinion that anyone in a pure consultation position is a grifter and if you need consulting for anything in a business that you as a higher up or owner, your specialist hires and or your lawyer(s) or accountant(s) can't handle then it's moved onto being more of a personal issue and not a business one.

It's a personal issue. Senior execs in a company in trouble are in trouble because they are psychologically incapable of believing that people who make less money than them are smart. "If you were smart, you would be the CEO, not a mere senior engineer." "If you were smart, you would be VP of Marketing, not a mere product manager." Etc.

The consultant has the advantage of charging a lot of money, making him seem smart, and coming from outside the company, so he has no baggage. Plus, the execs hired him, so his credibility is now tied to the execs.

This is all very retarded, I know, but it is how people work. Unfortunately, making senior executives battle to the death in a mud pit is not legal, so we have to use consultants to get them to learn how to not be retarded.

 

[NoReturn]

Anything to do with INDIA. Literally anything. Just pretend that entire specific country is a black hole and doesn't exist.

Absolutely this. You will never get value from a move like this. If you pursue cutting costs like a retard you will just get less value AND long term frustration.

100% this.
Companies these days are attempting to outsource things to India that don't even make sense. Shit like maintenance requests for apartment buildings or scheduling/receptionist for car shops.
Fuck India.

 

[Ukraine is Big Gay]

100% this.
Companies these days are attempting to outsource things to India that don't even make sense. Shit like maintenance requests for apartment buildings or scheduling/receptionist for car shops.
Fuck India.

I've encountered this by proxy with a few areas of academia and local businesses where there's positions by all means which should be local physical offices are handled by random fucking people elsewhere and there's a "mandatory to follow or you're fired" script where you aren't allowed to either confirm nor deny you aren't physically actually located there even if you are hard pressed or someone is going to just pick another university unless you tell them. It's really weird too because sometimes it's not even a particularly big campus or business that's pulling the shit - It's absolutely trying to have megacorp advantages while not having the recognition and presence to get away with it.

We need a snappy buzzword term for this sorta horse shit, like the absolute blindness to losing money from people dropping from your services or going elsewhere because you've made interacting with them or using them suck absolute shit because of an obsession with corner cutting and penny pinching. Invalidating the "Saved" money entirely.
Because it only really works if you have a hard line monopoly for the area like how internet companies sometimes do. If you have ANY competition or alternatives it's just fucking yourself.

 

[The Hardest R]

We need a snappy buzzword term for this sorta horse shit, like the absolute blindness to losing money from people dropping from your services or going elsewhere because you've made interacting with them or using them suck absolute shit because of an obsession with corner cutting and penny pinching. Invalidating the "Saved" money entirely.
Because it only really works if you have a hard line monopoly for the area like how internet companies sometimes do. If you have ANY competition or alternatives it's just fucking yourself.

A term already exists, it’s called penny wise and pound foolish. Lots of companies will do shit like monitor how much paper you print and try to reduce the amount of binder clips you buy but ignore the costs of employee turnover or low morale. Outsource work to India and when that crashes and burns, pay millions of dollars for consultants to set up a process to onshore those roles and responsibilities and to set up a new department. Nobody will ever accept responsibility or apply any lessons learned because everything that comes from the c suites is perfect and if it doesn’t work, it’s because the team that does the work just didn’t do it right.

 

[LowlyPheasent]

Disaster Recovery - What do you do when shits fucked? Lack of at least basic fallbacks are what lead Colonial Pipeline hack leaving customers unserviced and pissed off and can set you back. This doesn't have to be a "Muh Hackers" concern this could literally just be business critical machinery failing too among other disasters. Evaluate points of failure and anything or anyone critical to basic business functionality.

 

[anon483637]

Have zero knowledge or involvement of the fundamental functions of our company (eg: if you're a machining company and don't know how a bandsaw works)

I encountered one downstream of this:

• execs would reach out to random people several tiers below because they had a '''''good idea''''', aka some article/conversation convinced them we need [awesome new feature]
• middle management wouldn't go against their bosses boss
• execs never gave a full design brief, probably didn't understand the concept in the first place, were unavailable for feedback, might not even remember requesting it next month
• feature was often wildly out of scope for one person
• was a delicate matter of judging when the feature had lost interest and you could stop pretending to work on it

 

[Uncle Tom's Condo]

Most consultants are hired to concur with whatever the CEO, board of directors, etc. wants to do. A board wants to outsource engineering to India so they hire McKinsey to say it’s a good idea to convince shareholders. They are not there to promote good ideas. Every now and then you hear about some shocking thing on a report from a consulting firm but the reality is the company wants the consulting firm to say those things so they have “no choice” but to implement these ideas.

Hiring consultants is a can't lose proposition for the board unless it results in a company killing error. If the consultancy somehow manages to do their fucking job correctly and either nixes a very stupid idea or works to implement a good idea, then the board looks good. If the consultancy simply cashes the check and tells the board what they want to hear, well, the board can simply claim they trusted the experts and it's not their fault so there's limited blowback on the board for their fuck up.