Ok, here goes. This is one that I _still_ get really angry about.

Back in 2000, I was working for a company that was in the throes of conversion from a consultancy/service based to a product based business model. As you can well imagine, this is bound to lead to all kinds of stress.

I started with them several years previous as a developer, and had progressed through senior developer and team lead positions to eventually be promoted to the position of "Product Software Development Manager".

I took my new position seriously, however in retrospect I think I may not have been fully ready for the job back then. I was still in the "what the hell am I doing?" mindset with my position. My team was a great one, the developers were all very, very good, and communication was great. We consistently hit every (insane) deadline.

The problem was, I was still thinking of myself as a developer, not as a manager.

Anyway, that isn't the part that makes me mad. I'll get to that in a bit, but first I need to set the stage a bit more.

We had a slot open for a new developer, and I had received several resumes from HR. After interviewing gobs of folks that looked good on paper, I simply had not yet found anybody who I thought was good enough for the team. Finally one came through that piqued my attention simply because it should never have made it from HR to my desk.

The resume was for a fellow (an 18 year old kid) who had never attended college, or even public high school. He was home schooled, and lived in a rural area north of the city. He included some code samples, and they looked good.

I called him in for an interview, and this kid absolutely blew my mind. He was friggin BRILLIANT! He had a few "oddities" about him -he was extremely introverted, and was very shy. However, something about him made me think he would fit in. I had him spend a day "hanging out" with my dev team, and the feeling was unanimous -EVERYBODY wanted this kid on the team.

I made him an offer and he accepted. We now had a fully staffed team.

Fast forward 4 months. The kid is doing awesome work, everybody on the team absolutely LOVES him, and we are FINALLY ahead of schedule on the "BIG PROJECT".

Sounds good doesn't it? Well, as with all things good, this couldn't last.

Remember I said we were moving from service based to product based? Well, part of the problem with this is that our revenue stream was effectively dying off. We didn't have a sellable product yet, and morale in our outlying sales/delivery offices was at an all time low.

I was sent to our Boston office to spend a week with the development team there -sort of a fact finding trip- and to help bring them up to speed on the new code base. That week opened my eyes. When I got back, I reported to my boss (the DIRECTOR) and his boss (the CTO) about the morale problems out there.

A few days after that, my boss informed me that we needed to send a developer from my team to the Boston office to help out -two developers had quit without notice, and they were short staffed. He asked about sending "the kid". I told him absolutely not. I had several other very skilled, very seasoned, and very mature developers who I was willing to send, but not him. Remember, he was only 18 at the time. (Just try to rent a car at 18?) On top of that, I didn't want the morale garbage in that office to rub off on him.

We decided on sending another developer, and they would be leaving the following monday. This was on a Wednesday afternoon.

Thursday progressed without incident, and I took Friday off (it had been scheduled weeks prior to this).

Monday morning, I got into the office early (about 6:00 am) so that I could "catch up" before everbody else showed up.

As I was sitting there working, my IM pops up with a message from "the kid". I knew he wasn't in the office (I could see his cube from my open door).

the kid: Good morning!

me: Good morning, where are you?

the kid: Boston office.

me: .. .. .. WHAT?

the kid: I'm at the Boston office. I got here last night.

me: wait a minute, what are you doing there?

the kid: On Friday Darren (the DIRECTOR) told me I was supposed to fly out here yesterday. I'm supposed to be here until the end of the week.

The conversation went on a bit after that. It seems that my boss (the DIRECTOR) and his boss (the CTO) decided to completely ignore the agreement we had come to about this. What's more, they had one of the admin folk book his flight and hotel on Wednesday (the same day we talked), and decided that it would be easier to just send him without telling me. He couldn't rent a car, so one of the Boston developers would pick him up at his hotel on the way to work (6:00 am), and a different developer would drop him off on the way home (8:00 pm). The kid had NO credit cards, and had to rely on onsite staff for all of his transportation needs.

As soon as the CTO came in, I had a closed door meeting with him. I never once raised my voice or got emotional in any way, but I explained very clearly to him that he was absolutely wrong, and I wanted the kid on the next flight home.

I was laid off the next day.

The kid got back from Boston a week later, and promptly quit.

The entire company collapsed shortly (9 months or so) after that.

I firmly believe that the major reason for the collapse is that the kind of shit the CTO and my DIRECTOR pulled was "normal operations" on the part of the C-level staff.

Lessons Learned: I no longer trust upper level management to do what they say they will. Until I see the actions from a decision, I just grit my teeth and keep my fingers crossed.