Arno Penzias when he directed Crawford Hill Laboratory at Bell Labs is said to have sent a memo to the scientists working there. In the memo he said that a VP had visited Crawford Hill and noticed that there were cars arriving in the parking lot late, between 8AM at least until 9 AM, and leaving early, at least between 4 PM and 5 PM.
Arno asked all staff reading his memo for the following. If you have to come in late, please try to arrive after 9 AM. If you need to leave early, please leave before 4 PM.
I never saw the memo myself, but I did have the pleasure of working at Crawford Hill for nearly 2 years in the late 1970s. I find the existence of this memo easy to believe. So at minimum, it is a good story, might even be true. My own meager google skills do not turn up any corroboration on our universal consciousness.
Wow, what a great story! It makes some memory cells vaguely stir in the back of my mind, but I can't remember where I might have heard a variant of it. Hope it sticks this time.
Speaking of brilliant managers, one of my favorite anecdotes is of an engineering exec who, his first day at a new job, was doing the rounds meeting people and happened to notice an engineer asleep at his desk. Most managers in this situation, of course, would have one of two reactions: either get mad because the guy was sleeping at work, or try to be quiet because he was obviously working hard and needed it. This exec, instead, immediately grabbed a couple of the other engineers and went out and got a couch.
"My measurement will be the parking lot: it should be substantially full at 7:30 AM and 6:30 PM"
In other words:
I know its not a good measure (based on a previous statement), but I am still going to use that, because I suck so much that I am too mad to think of anything else. To stop getting fired, I will measure how many people die of hunger, and kill farmers to make sure people get more food.
1) The CEO of a large company often gets to choose the board of directors. He's at little risk for getting fired.
2) He doesn't suck. Despite the anomalous dip in stock price, Cerner performs well to this day, and Patterson, as was noted in another post, was named one of the best CEOs in the country by Forbes when it comes to maximizing shareholder value.
Forbes, via Dan Lyons, also took SCO's side and printed many things that turned out not to be true. I'm not inclined to treat Forbes as a reliable source.
That said, he might well be good at maximizing shareholder value (e.g. squeezing lots of hours out of salaried employees) and he certainly didn't get fired over this.
Ah, but the company rebounded and is still doing pretty well, Neal Patterson is still CEO -- and most likely, the parking lot is half full on Saturdays.
Guys like this win @ life. By doing this kind of shit.
In April of 2010, Forbes magazine named Patterson fourth on their annual list of "America's Best-Performing Bosses" based on a formula for calculating which executives delivered the best shareholder value relative to their total compensation. Factors included stock performance relative to industry peers over the past six years, annualized stock performance during the leader's total tenure and performance relative to the S&P 500 over that time, and total compensation over the past six years.
Guys like this win @ life. By doing this kind of shit.
It's likely that, no matter what else he does with his life, this memo will always be the one thing he's most well known for, and just about everyone who reads it will judge him for writing it.
Reminds me of the tech-company I worked in for a few years.
One of my friends was working as a programmer there. The guy was crazy and when the inevitable relaunch came, he worked insane hours, would code at night and on the weekends at home.
Our CEO, egomaniac that he was noticed that he would arrive late at work.
He made the technical manager chew him out despite his protests while standing watch next to him.
The developer quit shortly after and the company tanked after one more year.
http://technocrat.net/d/2006/8/28/7262/