1. Charismatic leader. Articles about the leader in the NY Times; Morgan Stanley produces a hagiographic video.
2. Utopian Vision: create a revolution to automate and measure enterprises across their cloud systems to help them dramatically improve their business.
3. Initial support from the masses. Prominent VC funding. Great, smart people attracted to join, much progress achieved. Workers are highly cohesive, happily putting in long hours to achieve the great vision.
4. “5 year” plans. Frequently with little basis in reality.
5. Authoritarian diktats: plans descended from on high, i.e., “just make it happen”, even though you know it won’t work, at least not in the timeline specified, or with the resources available, and finally, when it misses deadline, doesn’t scale, or doesn’t work, the root cause is swept under the rug.
6. Posters of the leader overlaid with slogans exhorting the workers to work harder. “I have a fever and the only Rx is more software”.
7. Vision confronts reality. Usermind wants to automate any business process. With ~10 engineers. Multiple startups, e.g., Uber, AirBnB, among others required many more engineers to implement a single business process.
8. Setbacks begin. After the equivalent of massive crop failure, the leader dictates that three years of software effort has to be redone in 3 months. Along with new features. With no additional resources.
9. Potemkin villages. Demoware built as quickly as possible to convince clients and the board of directors that everything is fine.
10. Leader blames counterrevolutionaries: Workers “don’t have startup DNA” (despite having worked at multiple startups) or “lack grit” (despite having worked at Usermind for many years).
11. Leader flies into rages. The beatdowns are legendary. Every other word begins with ‘F’.
12. Apparatchiks. Mediocrity is promoted as long as you show proper loyalty to the leader.
13. Intolerance of dissent. If you object, even politely, you will soon be labeled counterrevolutionary.
14. Purges: i.e., firings of dissenters.
15. Refugees. In waves. 50% of the engineering staff left within a month. 90% within a year. Longest tenure in engineering is now less than 2 years.
16. Leader denies responsibility. “This is the way I am, and I’m not going to change”.
