The Fastest Ways CEOs Have Ruined A Company

Have you ever worked for a person in a very powerful position?

Or for a person who has made tons of money?

And when you looked at them, you couldn't help but think... "How can someone this stupid be this far ahead in life?"

It's maddening.

So many people have been given titles like CEO, only to tarnish and destroy the legacies of hard work.

And many do it on a global scale.

Redditor fuzzyloulou wanted to tear apart the world's worst CEOs, so they asked:

"What's the fastest way you've seen a CEO ruin a company?"

The Criminal

"Just saw on the news a Texas logistics company CFO was sentenced to 51 months in prison for wire fraud for transferring company funds to his bank account and destroying the company causing it to shut down and lay everyone off."

"The kicker is, he was convicted of the same felony in 1994 so second time he’d done it."

- jf2k4

To Ashes

"A construction company near me was pulling $100-$200 million in revenue every year and growing constantly, then the owner died and his frat/bro fail/son was handed the reins.'

"Within a month a quarter of the employees had either been fired or quit. After four months the rental companies were showing up and repoing lifts and cranes/carrydecks in the middle of the day because they weren't being paid. Almost 3/4ths of the employees had quit by this point because paychecks kept bouncing. Before six months had passed, what was left was sold for a pittance to another company that just wanted what was left of the maintenance contracts."

"So like six months to bomb the company he'd been groomed to take over since he was a teenager to rubble and piss on the ashes."

- Seldarin

Porsches, Audis, and more...

"Took a job at a tech startup in the 90s with the promise of fast growth and opportunity."

"Things really took off in the second year and we opened up several more branches in different states while I was promoted to production manager. The company hired a young CEO who was only a couple of years older than me. Sometimes, he would stay at our location for a couple of weeks at a time, and he started driving really nice sports cars to work. When he would leave to other cities he would leave his cars in the parking lot of our branch. There were corvettes, Porsches, Audis, and more."

"After the second year of promising growth, the business suddenly stopped while the owners visited and yelled at the entire crew for not managing our money and told us that they were in debt by over a million dollars. We were all given the task of dismantling the equipment and preparing it to be sold and shipped before being let go."

"On our last day when the building was empty, we all noticed that the row of sports cars was still there and the owner had placed for sale signs on them. It turned out that they were all bought as company vehicles and the CEO had done this at each business location."

"We all still were yelled at in a furious rage by this CEO and owner for not being responsible people."

- sandtomyneck

When in Media

"Randall Stephenson: AT&T."

"He bought DirectTV and Warner Brothers (including DC Comics, CNN, HBO, and so on) for only $175B dollars between 2015 and 2018. When everyone was moving to streaming services, he thought it was a good idea to buy a cable company that was losing customers by millions and a struggling media company."

"Me and thousands of people lost their jobs because of it. Including Randall, with a $64 million retirement package."

- Key-Size-8162

Couldn't Handle Change

"He tried to run a nonprofit library wholesaler like a car dealership. Because he was a car dealership guy who knew f**k-all about libraries."

"Most of the senior staff retired, and he fired the rest. Then implemented policies that treated us all like children, such as having to put our phones in a box at the front office when we got to work in the morning. Hired a bunch of rando high-level positions who also knew f**k-all about libraries."

"Then he talked about people who ‘couldn’t handle change’ because they’d quit. Refused to allow us to order inventory so libraries couldn’t get extra copies when a book unexpectedly blew up."

"Anyway, I quit when I was handed a coworker’s entire job with no extra compensation (or, you know, choice in the matter) and the 60+-year-old company was dead within about a year, year and a half of him becoming CEO."

- Sochitelya

Theranos

"There was the whole Walgreens Theranos debacle. "

"Fun fact: the CEO who basically ruined Walgreens became the CEO of Joann Fabrics and basically drove them into bankruptcy too."

- liblairian

Game Show Gambling GIF by INTO ACTIONGiphy

Eddie

"What Ed Lampert did to Sears was straight-up criminal."

- iDrGonzo

"You should look up his kidnapping story. Fascinating."

"In January 2003, Eddie Lampert was abducted from his Greenwich, Connecticut office parking lot by four men, including ex-Marine Renaldo Rose. They held him captive in a nearby hotel room, claiming they had been hired to kill him for $1 million but would release him for a ransom. Lampert persuaded his captors to let him order a pizza and gave them his credit card to pay for it. This allowed authorities to trace and capture his kidnappers."

"These guys had a $1m business going, and they blew it on a pizza."

- Reply_Weird

ASIA

"GoBear in Asia. The company was funded with 200M euro in 5 years. Best funded company in SE Asia at the time. Got a new CEO who fired every single board member of the executive team who didn't agree with him. Kept all the Yessir C-level and directors. In two years, the company went down the drain and closed. At its peak, it had over 200 employees."

"The best part of it, he made the company buy a money-lending business in the Philippines... that he owned. So he pocketed whatever money the company had left and then shut it down."

- MostlyInfuriated

Nightmares

"Adding a large fleet of Teslas to Hertz rental except not having the actual infrastructure or education to keep vehicles charged or clean."

- Fobulousguy

"This one hits home. Work in the EV industry and fly all over. I don’t mind driving an EV but there is nothing like seeing none of these rental places can charge EVs. There is very little infrastructure in a lot of places so the last time I got one was an absolute nightmare because they gave me an uncharged Tesla that was not compatible with anything nearby but superchargers and charge points that were far away. Twice I got to chargers on hopes and dreams."

- Accomplished_Emu_658

Canceled

"David Zaslav and Discovery Channel buying WarnerMedia."

"Canceled highly anticipated movies already made, watered down HBO Max with cheap Discovery trash, and instituted RTO and fired anyone who couldn’t."

- DoublePostedBroski

Production Company Video GIF by Erin Alls with EMPGiphy

September 13, 1983

"It's called the Osborne effect. Once the owner of a hugely successful computer company, Adam Osborne announced a new computer before it could be shipped."

"According to proponents of the Osborne effect theory, Adam Osborne damaged his company's current sales when he began showing the Osborne Executive to journalists in early 1983. Dealers rapidly started canceling orders for the Osborne 1 in anticipation of the new Executive."

"Unsold inventory piled up and in spite of dramatic price cuts – the Osborne 1 was selling for $1295 in July 1983 and $995 by August – sales did not recover. Losses, already higher than expected, continued to mount, and OCC declared bankruptcy on September 13, 1983."

- CheezitsLight

Quantity over Quality

"Bob Chapek’s takeover of Disney in 2019."

"He immediately hired finance buddies into creative positions, prioritized making money via their parks, and had a quantity over quality approach with their movies. He had a hand green-lighting an insane amount of projects which lead to overworked staff, bad quality production, and as a result: disliked projects and failing entertainment properties (mainly Marvel)."

- FirstV1

Worst of All

"How about Chainsaw Al Dunlap? They called him Chainsaw because he’d take over a company and cut it up into pieces. He took over Sunbeam and bankrupted it in an elaborate accounting scandal. He’s on the list of worst CEO’s of all time. Look him up. It’s an interesting read."

- Outdoor-Snacker

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So much potential and success turned into vanishing vapor.

Here for a century, gone in a moment.

Again... "How do these people garner these positions?"

These stories are travesties.

When companies of these magnitudes fall, the working people suffer.

The people who actually built it all from the ground up and sustain it daily.

CEOs rarely pay a price.