I am not disgruntled. This is real.
IT is and has been totally dysfunctional for last 2-3 years. The CIO and CTO have driven out the ALL the great people, most of the good people, and promoted the marginal people into positions - not because they are that good or trained for the job, but because they can be controlled like puppets.
Here are some examples.
We had a great CISO a couple years ago that took us from literally nothing to a leading security organization that could compete against any one of our peers (Blackstone, Apollo, etc.). Everything is going great then new CTO comes in - decides he wants to do a coup and take over security (even though he has no experience being a CISO) - and boom, a Fortune 500 caliber CISO and really nice guy is gone with six months. After he leaves, a member of the CISO's staff takes over to try to keep things going, and boom, now he's gone a year or so later. Now the best IT engineer hands down is leaving. No matter what anyone says, it was all due to CTO undermining and screwing with the security team. Now the entire team the original guy built is pretty much decimated and being run by non-security professionals in IT infrastructure - all controlled by the CTO. Coup successful but now the company I loved is just a breach waiting to happen.
Same thing happens to our IT CFO. Great guy (hired by the CISO actually). He actually get's promoted up to work for the CIO/CRO. Doing great - everyone loves him - probably the nicest guy you ever would meet - then suddenly CIO and CTO needed a scapegoat for a colossal failure put in a finance system and they turn on him and drive him out.
Same thing with the app-dev management team. Three of the original team driven out by bad, uncaring management that are unable to recognize the value of the team. The went from "the next leaders" to "out the door" -- in fact, if you get promoted, that's probably a sign you are heading out the door. I can't tell you how many people have gotten promoted and driven out 6 months later.
I could go on and on with examples. People go from Gold to Dirt on the whim of the management team. CIO/CRO is now leaving (justice?) but CTO remains. If I'm an tech or security person, I'm staying far away from Ares until someone above them all figures out what's wrong and actually fixes it.
