MIKE BISHOP
He was the first partner during the starting years of the company. Jim fired him in 1999. He was paid for at least one year for doing nothing and remained on for years as a seldom-used consultant with full benefits. His takeout after selling the company was about $4,000,000. He was jealous of Bob and others. Some thought he was lazy, some thought he was difficult, some thought he was a narrow genius. This is a very old picture. What did you think of him?
posted by florky49 | 6:06 AM
4 Comments:
I think Mike was the smartest of them all. He didn’t work very hard and for years Jim let him get by. Bob worked much harder and assumed some responsibility. He was jealous that Mike did not.
Mike took about 12 weeks of vacation each year plus any boondoggle trips he could remotely justify, especially if the trip involved stretching out a weekend or holiday and was in a nice location.
Although he was the titular head of engineering, he most often threw problems needing technical attention to Bill Newbury, then to Bob Doughty. Both eventually quit.
When the business sold, Jim sent him home for a year with pay and benefits in order to keep him from gumming up the works during the two year earn out period. As the first partner, Mike thought he was going to “run” the company when Jim retired. But nearly everyone except Mike knew that would not work. Mike was too petulant.
Was Mike really smart? In both a technical and financial sense, he hid from responsibility. In a personal and professional responsibility sense, he let others carry his load whenever he could. In his mind, I think that was his notion of delegating. No one else viewed it that way.
If you would consider his waltzing away with $4,000,000 while skating through years and years letting others carry his load as being smart, then you could consider Mike very smart indeed.
Mike was incompetent as a manager and useless as an engineer. He often caused more problems than he resolved. If he were working for me, I would have fired him. He is not welcome back.
Mike was a troublesome character. Very bright. Very lazy. Wasted potential. Too bad.
Mike was just a lazy and troublesome character. He was always at odds with one secretary or another. I always wondered why he didn't have anythng productive to do or if he did, why did he not do it.
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