20+ CEOs who ran companies into the ground with their terrible workplace decisions: 'He fired the guy who owned almost all the patents'

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
May 6, 2025 11:00 AM EDT

Making big moves isn't always the best move, but no one tell that to the CEOs with huge egos. When a new CEO enters a company, it can truly be a make-or-break moment. After all, the CEO has a ton of both soft and hard power, and they can dictate everything from how money is spent to how employees treat each other to how much everyone gets paid. Those are some big shoes to fill, and even when they're confident in their abilities, some folks just can't get it right. 

A lot of CEOs are put in the unfortunate position of needing to immediately make money for their shareholders… and that can mean making some uncomfortable cuts. They might have to fire people who've given 20 years of their lives to the company, or they might have to yank break room snacks from their employees' hands. Just check out the stories below, where people shared everything you shouldn't do if you want to be a great CEO. 

After that, read about the wild ways that a 19-year-old stole the show at her friend's graduation party, leaving commenters to advise, "Don't even respond, just block her." 

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  • 01

    "What's the fastest way you've seen a CEO ruin a company?"

    Anonymous4m... He fired the guy who owned almost all the patents to the products the company produced.
    via u/Anonymous4mysake
  • 02

    Happens all the time

    violetsparkleki... by conflating "innovation" with "let's make all the changes we can."
    via u/violetsparklekiss
  • 03
    ThislsMyCouc... Ruin is a strong word - but it wasn't good. Small company wanted to be bigger and have bigger customers. Owners hired a CEO with experience in that.
    via u/ThisIsMyCouchAccount
  • 04
    CEO did classic corporate CEO sh. Which didn't jive well because the company had been very employee- first. Very transparent. A good place to work. Took about 18 months and they fired the guy and the owners stepped back in.
    via u/ThisIsMyCouchAccount
  • 05
    Timinime New CEO was told to cut costs, and commenced the most aggressive cost cutting program ever seen in our companies history. So much so we started haemorrhaging revenue, which lead him to cut costs even more aggressively.
    via u/Timinime
  • 06
    In the space of 2 years we'd lost a heap of market share, we went from being a very profitable company to one with a sharp drop in ROE, and by the time he was fired (for doing his business manager in his office), the business needed substantial investment to bring all its systems back up to standard and hire good staff again.
    via u/Timinime
  • 07
    Market share never recovered, and the business is still worse off than when he started a decade ago.
    via u/Timinime
  • 08
    thundyeeha Focus solely on shareholder profits and ignore the customer base that built it up
    via u/thundyeeha
  • 09
    Cheezburger Image 10502076928
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • 10
    Seldarin A construction company near me was pulling $100-$200 million in revenue every year and growing constantly, then the owner d and his fratbro failson was handed the reins. Within a month a quarter the employees had either been fired or quit. After four months the rental
    via u/Seldarin
  • 11
    companies were showing up and repoing lifts and cranes/carrydecks in the middle of the day because. they weren't being paid. Almost 3/4ths of the employees had quit by this point because paychecks kept bouncing. Before six months had passed, what was left was sold for a pittance to another company that just wanted what was left of the maintenance contracts.
    via u/ Seldarin
  • 12
    So like six months to bomb the company he'd been groomed to take over since he was a teenager to rubble on the ashes. and
    via u/Seldarin
  • 13
    jf2k4 Just saw on the news a Texas logistics company CFO was sentenced to 51 months in prison for wire fraud for transferring company funds to his bank account and destroying the company causing it to shut down and lay everyone off.
    via u/jf2k4
  • 14
    The kicker is, he was convicted of the same felony in 1994 so second time he'd done it.
    via u/jf2k4
  • 15
    sandtomyneck Took a job at a tech startup in the 90s with the promise of fast growth and opportunity. Things really took off in the second year and we opened up several more branches in different states while I was promoted to production manager. The company hired a young CEO who was only a couple of years older
    via u/sandtomyneck
  • 16
    than me. Sometimes he would stay at our location for a couple of weeks at a time and he started driving really nice sports cars to work. When he would leave to other cities he would leave his cars in the parking lot of our branch. There were corvettes, porsches, audis, and more.
    via u/sandtomyneck
  • 17
    After the second year of promising growth, the business suddenly stopped while the owners visited and yelled at the entire crew for not managing our money and told us that they were in debt by over a million dollars. We were all given the task of dismantling the equipment and preparing it to be sold and shipped before being let go.
    via u/sandtomyneck
  • 18
    On our last day when the building was empty we all noticed that the row of sports cars was still there and the owner had placed for sale signs on them. It turned out that they were all bought as company vehicles and the CEO had done this at each business location. We all still were yelled at in a furious rage by this CEO and owner for not being responsible people.
    via u/sandtomyneck
  • 19
    Sochitelya He tried to run a nonprofit library wholesaler like a car dealership. Because he was a car dealership guy who knew f -all about libraries. Most of the senior staff retired and he fired the rest. Then implemented policies that treated us all like children, such as having to put our phones in a box at
    via u/Sochitelya
  • 20
    the front office when we got into work in the morning. Hired a bunch of rando high level positions who also knew f -all about libraries. Then he talked some sh about people who 'couldn't handle change' because they'd quit. Refused to allow us to order inventory so libraries couldn't get extra copies when a book unexpectedly blew up.
    via u/Sochitelya
  • 21
    Anyway, I quit when I was handed a coworker's entire job with no extra compensation (or, you know, choice in the matter) and the 60+ year old company was de d within about a year, year and a half of him becoming CEO.
    via u/Sochitelya
  • 22

    How to make every employee your nemesis in one easy step

    FrankAdamGabe A CIO came in and started his tenure off with telling everyone his second week there on a Friday that starting Monday, there was absolutely no wfh. Nada. Zilch. No excuses. HR got involved and made it even clearer. This was before Co id and it was wfh 3 days/week. Some people had moved 2+ hours
    via u/FrankAdamGabe
  • 23
    away, would come in to town Monday morning, stay the night, work Tuesday, and go home to work until the next Monday. Well in IT it's not very prudent to not have your guys be able to hop on to fix a problem. So the CIO would try to make the exemption in special cases and no one would budge. So the few times some people went in, a 10m fix would run them 3-
    via u/FrankAdamGabe
  • 24
    4 hours. This CIO also had a knack of yelling at people in public and just being a huge and not knowledgeable about anything. He took a 15 year secretary and made her an enterprise backend developer... that she never wanted. He took an amazing developer and assigned them to 1 of 58 sites for a pet project where we could
    via u/FrankAdamGabe
  • 25
    start pulling data without the site's permission. The site told them to off when they realized what was going on after a few months. The thinly spread developer led to a site getting hacked. and held for ransom, literally. And that's just before I left. In 2 years the place had a 50%+ turnover. The old
    via u/FrankAdamGabe
  • 26
    timers who wrote the old a code keeping the place running took early retirement. Middle careers like myself f ed off. Everyone else was just new looking for experience or holding on for early retirement. The place cratered.
    via u/FrankAdamGabe
  • 27
    From some colleagues who stayed I heard people were often crying in the hallways. They had to hire a moral boosting position that did jack sh. Federal requirements were falling through left and right and the agency was getting sanctioned repeatedly.
    via u/FrankAdamGabe
  • 28
    Eventually the board wiped out the entire top brass of about 10 people (in a 200 person agency). But the damage was done and to this day sh still hasn't recovered. I know people who took 40k pay cuts for other jobs just to get tf out of that place.
    via u/FrankAdamGabe
  • 29
    VeritasNocet Taking the profits from one business unit and continuously funnelling more money and resources into the other unit who, years later, still weren't profitable. Also RIF'ing out top performers from the profit unit. The board finally caught on and that CEO was exited but not before death spiralling the entire company.
    via u/VeritasNocet
  • 30
    Nobanob Not a CEO situation but a district manager losing about 30 years worth of sales experience over a 1 month period. Worked at a cell phone store, we were in a great mall and were the best in the district. The worst location was in a perceivably better mall.
    via u/Nobanob
  • 31
    The district manager decided that he was going to transfer the entire staff between the two malls. As if it wasn't the people that were the problem at the location. Several of us objected to this move and we were told and I quote "if I tell you to jump, you will say how high" One guy walked out on the spot leaving with 5 years. experience. Within 3 days of
    via u/Nobanob
  • 32
    the move our best guy quit the company, 8 years of experience gone. A week later I quit taking my 6 years of experience with me. About another week later the last remaining guy and the manager both quit the same day for a total of 11 years more experience. Our original store predictably tanked and became the worst store. The
    via u/Nobanob
  • 33
    "better" mall's store remained empty for a few months. About 6 months after I passed my original store and it had closed down. I don't know if they relocated but it was no longer there. It was one of those generic we sell every carrier company.
    via u/Nobanob
  • 34
    Internal_Cup70... The CEO of circuit City eliminating commissions for sales people, expanding to car sales, completely forgetting about their core customers.
    via u/Internal_Cup7097
  • 35
    SeeMarkFly My personal experience was a new manager that stopped all overtime. I was trying to keep customers happy and he was not for it. The overtime is an indication that we needed more people. He couldn't see it. I left and they folded.
    via u/SeeMarkFly
  • 36
    coupleandaca... Not a CEO, but working in a small female dominated business, the new owner decided he was canceling the flexible contracts that allowed people wiggle to for school drop off/kids sick days and the like. The company had to shut for 2 weeks after the majority of the staff swapped to a competing buisness in the next suburb. Place never
    via u/coupleandacamera
  • 37
    really picked up again after the word got around town. One of the ladies put in a good word for me a few months later and an offer sign a substantial pay increase and better conditions appeared in my inbox.
    via u/coupleandacamera
  • 38
    spicybloomdre... I've seen CEOs ruin companies by chasing quick profits and ignoring employee needs and customer feedback. Cutting R&D and making impulsive decisions only creates chaos and kills long-term success
    via u/spicybloomdre
  • 39
    Constantinople... I'll have to be vague but a startup I worked for had some initial success and profit and the CEO responded by deciding to go and "disrupt" more industries and invest all of our profits into that, while diverting resources from our thing that actually made money. We were spread thin and failed.
    via u/ConstantinopleFett
  • 40
    Different_Boot7... probably when a ceo comes in and tries to "cut costs" by laying off the people who actually know how to run the business. like, they save money short term but lose all the talent and experience, and the whole thing falls apart. also, when they make some wild pivot into a market they don't understand—instant disaster.
    via u/Different_Boot762
  • 41
    NNER 500 ON 800 px- CONTEN OCT
    via wocintechchat on Unsplash+

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • 42

    Putting profits before your staff is a great way to ensure short term gains and long term uncertainty

    Suspicious_Ho... Good old "Big Jim" Came in on the promise to shareholders he would double the profits in less than a year. And that he did. First: Forced "retirements" for anyone there over 15 years. Get rid of those high salaries. (and institutionalized knowledge, but who cares about that)
    via u/Suspicious_Hornet_77
  • 43
    Second: Cancel all capital projects. Why build out when customers are kinda forced to buy from us anyway? Third: RTO all around! Even said in a teams meeting ( from his comfy home office of course) "If you don't like. it, leave."
    via u/Suspicious_Hornet_77
  • 44
    35% of us left. Company is barely hanging on and it's well known they are positioning themselves to get sold.
    via u/Suspicious_Hornet_77
  • 45
    thundyeeha Focus solely on shareholder profits and ignore the customer base that built it up
    via u/thundyeeha

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