Now I wish we had a f*'ed company like site for sharing these stories. As @ilamount suggests, it may be way more common than anyone would guess.
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Early 90s, I was the computer kid for a very fast growing retail architecture group within a publicly traded company. Dept grew from 24 to 130 people during my time (just under 2 years).
I was the scape goat for a failed budget & estimating tool.
The shark in the national construction management role hired some goofy consultancy. The shark fired me when his consultants missed their big deadline. I was told that my failure delayed store openings and contributed to the company missing their projected earnings, causing the stock price to decline.
Sure.
That same shark was later busted for kickbacks from vendors, expensing family vacations, and so forth. His crimes were never disclosed. Probably signed an NDA and got severance package. Of course, I never got an apology.
The sad part was that I had already created and deployed a nifty little budget & estimating tool during my spare time. The architects loved it. But I don't know how to manage upwards, so the hierarchy didn't understand the work had already been done. Maybe because my tool was "too simple", compared to the alternatives under consideration (eg integrating MicroStation with Primavera).
My bigger mistake was being honest with the shark. He asked what I thought of his consultants, without telling me he had already hired them. I said something like "They're frauds. Any work they do for us will end up as lawsuits and tears." So the shark probably started engineering the blame shifting at that point.
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Early 90s, I was the computer kid for a very fast growing retail architecture group within a publicly traded company. Dept grew from 24 to 130 people during my time (just under 2 years).
I was the scape goat for a failed budget & estimating tool.
The shark in the national construction management role hired some goofy consultancy. The shark fired me when his consultants missed their big deadline. I was told that my failure delayed store openings and contributed to the company missing their projected earnings, causing the stock price to decline.
Sure.
That same shark was later busted for kickbacks from vendors, expensing family vacations, and so forth. His crimes were never disclosed. Probably signed an NDA and got severance package. Of course, I never got an apology.
The sad part was that I had already created and deployed a nifty little budget & estimating tool during my spare time. The architects loved it. But I don't know how to manage upwards, so the hierarchy didn't understand the work had already been done. Maybe because my tool was "too simple", compared to the alternatives under consideration (eg integrating MicroStation with Primavera).
My bigger mistake was being honest with the shark. He asked what I thought of his consultants, without telling me he had already hired them. I said something like "They're frauds. Any work they do for us will end up as lawsuits and tears." So the shark probably started engineering the blame shifting at that point.