Cronyism

During the dot.com boom I worked for an eCommerce company that, like so many others, was going through it's share of difficulties. Toward the end we were playing a good game of management roulette, as the folks in the valley tried to figure out what to do with our group.

With each new "top dog" came a few tag alongs. Some of them were quite sharp, even sharper than the man they followed, but at least one of them was a complete fish out of water. We'll call him "Tim". I'm sure Tim was quite competent in the role he had when he was the client of our new VP, "Jay", but he was woefully unprepared for his new leadership role on the other side of the table as a consultant. These two Dilbert's tell the story masterfully: