This brings to mind the story that begins with William Shockley's famous management and interpersonal skills. From Wikipedia:
Shockley attempted to lure some of his former colleagues from Bell Labs to his new lab, but none of them would join him. Instead, Shockley started scouring universities for the brightest graduates to build a company from scratch, one that would be run "his way".
"His way" could generally be summed up as "domineering and increasingly paranoid". In one famous incident, he claimed that a secretary's cut thumb was the result of a malicious act and he demanded lie detector tests to find the culprit. (...)
(...) In late 1957, eight of Shockley's researchers, who called themselves "the Traitorous Eight," resigned after Shockley decided not to continue research into silicon-based semiconductors. Several of the eight met with Sherman Fairchild and described the situation, and the eight started Fairchild Semiconductor (...)
Over the following decade, problems at Fairchild resulted in people leaving to create new opportunities, resulting in the founding of (among other companies) Intel, AMD, and Kleiner Perkins--and I think everyone knows how the story goes from there.
So, I suppose we owe a debt of gratitude to Shockley, not only for his excellence in engineering, but also for his abysmal incompetence in management.
Shockley attempted to lure some of his former colleagues from Bell Labs to his new lab, but none of them would join him. Instead, Shockley started scouring universities for the brightest graduates to build a company from scratch, one that would be run "his way".
"His way" could generally be summed up as "domineering and increasingly paranoid". In one famous incident, he claimed that a secretary's cut thumb was the result of a malicious act and he demanded lie detector tests to find the culprit. (...)
(...) In late 1957, eight of Shockley's researchers, who called themselves "the Traitorous Eight," resigned after Shockley decided not to continue research into silicon-based semiconductors. Several of the eight met with Sherman Fairchild and described the situation, and the eight started Fairchild Semiconductor (...)
Over the following decade, problems at Fairchild resulted in people leaving to create new opportunities, resulting in the founding of (among other companies) Intel, AMD, and Kleiner Perkins--and I think everyone knows how the story goes from there.
So, I suppose we owe a debt of gratitude to Shockley, not only for his excellence in engineering, but also for his abysmal incompetence in management.