The insider perspective seems a bit more textured, as coworkers current and former have confided the last couple of days. Yes, this man was the face of a lot of things good, but he did steamroll (with his Segway no less) people along the way in a manner that doesn’t seem to be normal corporate acrimony. I can’t judge other people’s experiences, so I won’t.
I’ve only had a few direct experiences with the man. I was personally neutral until a specific incident: he cornered me and coerced me to sign over rights to an open source project that predated my employment to a third party. Having his job level and entire department lorded over me was an asymmetric power play.
Nevertheless, I’m not happy to see him laid off, mainly because nobody deserves the indignity of such a layoff.
- Your Average Xoogler