Ask HN: What's your “crazy CEO” moment?

34 points by Ahmedb 5 years ago | 8 comments

Title says it all.

Mine was a couple of years ago, I applied to an established mobile games studio and went through the steps (recruiter, technical interview, CTO). The last step was a call with the CEO. They gave me his number and insisted I add him to my contact. He was going to call on WhatsApp at 5pm my time since he was on some island somewhere living the life.

That day at 5pm there was no call, I waited 10mins then sent him a text still nothing. I assumed he had connectivity issues (because of the island and all).

Instead my phone rang at 2am! I see his name as the Caller ID, we had a toddler in the house so I was up.

I answered and he started by apologizing for calling late and missing our previous meeting and we had a good 15mins chat.

I didn't take the job because my wife talked me out of it her main argument being: "You're not even working with the guy and he's calling you at 2am, image what it's like really working for him".

I later learned the call wasn't a mistake and that it was a recruiting technique he used to judge candidates and their commitment.

patatino 5 years ago |

A whole team in our company left weeks after the CEO talked about its future and how the main focus will be a new branch of the company.

The team leader asked the CEO what about us. You told us last year we will grow, and he said: I changed my mind about that, your team will stay like it is.

When the team left, there was an emergency meeting where he asked us if we know anything about what happened, why they all left. I said you basically told them they don't have a future here.

His response? Thank's for your input, but that's not it. Anybody else? Soon after, I resigned too.

Raed667 5 years ago |

The CEO of a previous company told a bunch of engineers during lunch that if we have a job (and a salary) it's thanks to him and his brilliant ideas.

Then he insisted we all show our gratitude by paying for his lunch.

He was dead-serious.

jf22 5 years ago |

I was in the communal lunch room with other people and the CEO was mad about the delay in a software project. He put both middle fingers in the air and said something to the effect of "the developers really fucked me on this one."

I was the Director of Engineering at the time and was four weeks into the job...

Software projects were so badly run there it was absurd. I left two weeks later.

Another story from the company is that they forced people to cancel their winter holiday vacations to finish a project. The project was completed but 18 months later that project still never launched or used by anybody. The CEO had no remorse about this. Didn't care he made people work through holidays for nothing.

codingdave 5 years ago |

My "favorite" is still the CEO who bought our company, and the first thing he said to us was, "You guys make too much money, none of you are getting raises."

muzani 5 years ago |

I freelanced on a project valued at 6 digits for a multinational company. The team worked day and night to get it done by the deadline.

After it was done, the founder purchased a café below the office (under the company budget) and delayed salaries because they had no money to pay staff. Most of the staff quit soon after.

It's sadly not an uncommon story. I've heard similar at least 3 times, but that was the worst version.

shortlived 5 years ago |

My CEO refers to Fibonacci numbers (used for story points) as Mariachi numbers.

chovybizzass 5 years ago |

Mine was in 1999 dotcom startup when our eccentric CEO (probably a billionaire or close to it) rebranded our domain and climbed up on a ladder and spray painted it on the brick wall in our SF office. Then when we launched we spent a few million on our launch party with Willie brown and the cirque de sole dancers.

Great place to work, free massages, pool table (before anyone had pool tables). We ran out of money 2 years into it building "v2"

Ahmedb 5 years ago | |

this feels like an episode from the Silicon Valley show lol