Here's my start of a list.... please add your own nominations for Best public meltdown - tech industry category


My picks:

1.  Bill Joy, Former Chief Scientist Sun Microsystems - for his stunning anti-technology article, "Why the future doesn't need us" in which he chats about the merit of the Unibomber's writings.

2.  Russ Nelson, former CEO of the Open Source Initiative - for his insane blog entries such as "Blacks Are Lazy" which managed to get him fired from his job in under one quarter.

3.  Mike Hawash, former Intel programmer and author of well known MMX book - for his dramatic move from Intel to Al Queda (this career cut short thanks to an FBI takedown in the Intel parking lot).

4. Patrick Byrne, Overstock CEO - for his numerous public blowups including a financial analyst call where he blamed poor performance on a "sith lord" and people trafficking in missiles.

John's picks:

Joe Firmage, head of US Web - for seeing aliens and becoming a flying saucer "enthusiast"

John Warnock,  Adobe co-founder - for literally bursting into tears while speaking at a tradeshow after hearing Bill Gates announce TrueType fonts.

Dennis Barnhart, Eagle Computer's founder - for killing himself and his newly public company in one short day thanks to a failed mission to purchase a yacht hours after Eagle went public.


New entries from board members:

Patrick "Hotseattle" Naughton - helped develop Java, former vice president, Infoseek - for trying to chat up 13 year old girls in sleazy chatrooms whilst working for Disney.  Public FBI arrest.  Fired from his job instantly.

This is actually a great idea for a topic, but a little "Inside Baseball" since many of these people are unknown to anyone outside the immediate tech community. Hopefully we can draw in a few insiders on this one.

Offhand my first nomination is Joe Firmage – the head of US Web who saw aliens and became a flying saucer nut. Some of his story is here http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=1066

Then there is John Warnock who was in tears the day that Bill Gates announced TrueType. I need to get the date of that one.

I’m sure there are a lot of untold stories though.

My all time sick favorite (and one hard to top is outlined in this post online describing the whole scenario:

Eagle Computer's founder, Dennis Barnhart, had quickly established Eagle as one of the stronger PC-clone makers in 1983, and the company was slowly picking up market share as businesses and consumers took Compaq's lead and started embracing non-IBM machines.

Eagle went public in June '83, and it was a big deal in both Silicon Valley and Wall Street, which gave Eagle millions of dollars in much-needed working capital and instantly made Barnhart a wealthy man. Barnhart was so ecstatic over the offering that he decided to treat himself to a new yacht. So, just hours after his company went public, the Eagle chief executive set out for lunch with a yacht salesman. But after lunch, Barnhart, who was at the wheel of his $70,000 Ferrari, failed to negotiate a turn not far from Eagle's headquarters in Los Gatos, Calif. He was pronounced dead soon after. The company never recovered from the loss and, despite great effort, became yet another casualty of the clone wars.

At the time I was at Infoworld and our understanding was that this was a brand-new Ferrari Barnhart just bought and apparently couldn’t drive.

NOt sure this qualifies as a "meltdown" but it was sure a screwup.
 

I don't know.... those are good, but to me, it's looking like a Hawash-Nelson race for first prize.....

Got any more?

Patrick Naughton

http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/crime/criminals/patrick-naughton/

Very nice addition.  I had forgotten about him.  I'm going to add him and anyone else mentioned to the top of the thread so we have a nice "reference list"

It was at the Seybold Desktop Publishing Conference in San Francisco on September 20, 1989

Isn't Google a wonderful thing?

I'll second your pick of Byrne. A number of friends and former co-workers of mine have worked at Overstock.com, and I've yet to hear a good word about the place.

For a guy that seemed to have everything going right (a profitable company with a unique way to do business and a decent IPO) he really seemed to lose it. I remember some quotes in local media (Utah) about how the guy saw himself as the next Bezos. I guess that kind of pressure did him in.

James Hill

I don't remember the details (hey, it was a while back) but I remember something about executives from den.com (remember den.com? they were going to change entertainment, I had friends who went to work there, then came back when it imploded) being chased by the FBI because they had some sort of love shack for underage boys. Don't know if they were ever caught.

I remember going through the building to see the auction. they had some great stuff. The best thing was one of those life-size collectible Yoda dolls. What tech company needs that? Isn't there somebody in your IT department who looks a lot like Yoda and can actually spew out all his aphorisms on demand? (ah the good old days, when life-size collectible Yoda dolls still cost $3000)

I'm guessing there are some good sources of this within the database of FuckedCompany.com.

"Blacks are lazy" is a generality like Whites Anglo-Saxon People are hard-working. No one gets offended when the latter comment is made but get real touchy when the former is. Whites today are generally guilty about the way Blacks have been treated. I was at a playground with my kid in a very affluent neighborhood where the only two kids who stood out were mine (almost all the other kids were blonde) and a black  kid. The black father was greeted with hellos, touches and extra-effort welcomes and dialogue when he was around. To me, the dread-locked guy was doing a bad job as a parent because he kept yelling 'NO!' to his kid while he walked around proudly, but yet white guilt took over.

I would say that Blacks don't see and/or perceive any options open to them and thus, seem idle-- or lazy. Laziness is definately an Hispanic trait. I am Hispanic (sort of) and I AM LAZY. There is nothing wrong with it. Take laziness and refine it, and you get efficiency. I am very efficient. I can figure out ways to make my work faster, thus saving my company money. So traits are not bad or good. We should make use of them. Firing a guy for writing what he sincerely believes is true is bad sense because at least in this case, the "Blacks are lazy" comment can open dialogue. By censoring his comment, people STILL believe "Blacks are lazy" in their own minds (where people cannot find out) and make it worse by leaving them "lazy". I say, let's give Blacks role models and opportunities.

Any entrepreneurs out there? We, as a society, have to start using ingenuity instead of punishment as a solution. Face it, some guys like young girls. If this were Heaven, their indulgences would be permitted by God so why not emulate that here. (Heaven is a place where eternal hapiness rules therefore whatever makes you happy MUST be allowed). A solution is to build a website where VIRTUAL young girls can be seduced by older gentlemen. It would be total fantasy. And no real young girls would be in jeopardy.

It does make sense because so many religious leaders are child molesters. Funny, using god as an excuse to "virtually" molest children. I think I have heard it all.

I love the topic. While I can't top what has been listed here, a couple of events immediately came to mind that I witnessed during technology conferences that are appropriate.

1.   The CSO of a financial management company said, "We have a totally unsecured wireless network. It can not be controlled by the IT team. The policy is no wireless, but if enforced we would have to fire more than half or our associates.”

Well, I thought, I don’t want my money handled there, and if I were the CEO that guy is gone.

2.   During a recent EFT conference on mobile technologies in Florida I listened to the CTO of a trucking company explain her companies commitment to deploying mobile technologies and the significant efficiencies gained and savings possible by deploying them. 30 minutes later her Director of Development stated “We see no ROI or Business case for deploying mobile technologies.” 

I am not sure how the conversation went afterward, but I would have loved to be a fly on that wall.

Catawba County Schools CTO, whose web server offered up SS numbers, test scores, etc., on 619 students, and then blamed Google.

<http://www.journalnow.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WSJ/MGArticle/WSJ_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1149188731521>

I am suprised we have not talked about Steve "I am going to fucking kill Google" Balmer
Aka Steve "Developers Developers Developers Developers " Balmer

For more info see:
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Developers_programming_language
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Steve_Balmer
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Image:Developers%21.jpg
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/User:Steve_Ballmer