Whew, I've seen this one first- and second-hand a few times.

I worked for a global multi-national for around 17 years, through a few acquisitions, and through a 6-9 month lay-off cadence that often came with overall restructuring and rotating/changing managers. I remember one individual, in particular, we'll call him "Bob". This guy's ignorance was rivaled only by his arrogance. Bob ended up taking over the team that myself and a coworker (who I shared an office with) and almost immediately started causing grief. A series of boneheaded, and very expensive decisions were made which effectively eliminated the department at the next lay-off cycle. Somehow the Bob not only survives another set of layoffs, he gets promoted and is now in my direct reporting chain. Almost immediately, any interdepartmental communication was forbidden (and I'm talking "Database Admins" not being allowed to e-mail "Unix sysadmins"), and similarly, much of his department started crumbling. I got out quick and my coworker, Greg (not really), entered a new level of hell.

Though my department changed, my location didn't, and I still worked with Greg 75% of the time. Greg felt his wrath, daily and I got a bit of it "by splash". Then Greg saw an opportunity -- he was asked to discuss a project with the CIO, our department Director and VP. Greg didn't hesitate to bring up Bob[0]. It went over like a lead baloon; holy cow, the whole mood in the room changed. Something we hadn't known -- Bob hung out with a lot of folks in the office outside of work. He worked at the main office, which was much larger and in a different time zone than us and our Director. The VP in the room was also from the main office. Shortly after the meeting, he was informed by his boss that she had spent the last hour "begging for them to not fire [coworker]". Yep. They were all friends.

Well, my story has a bit of an uglier ending, but not one that isn't deserved. The struggling company was purchased by a competitor and the CIO was replaced. Several layers were added above Bob. The new headquarters was in a city far enough away that they had their own networks, isolated from the old guard. Incredibly, Bob started making in-roads well before the acquisition was complete and had already begun trying to sully the reputations of people he considered "enemies". One of those people was Greg.

Now, Greg had a few people who didn't like him. He was very cut-and-dry, blunt, but he was an "attack the idea, not the person" kind of guy and if you understood that, you got along well with him. He was/is crazy smart, articulate and has a personality of the kind that you want to get behind because you know he's going to be doing something great. And he'd slept at the new office the entirety of the previous week making sure that the infrastructure side of things went off without a hitch.

We're in a 9-person meeting "war-room" for the acquisition, and the CIO walks in -- I throw him a (sadly, over-prepared question) about REST and our (non-existent) service infrastructure and he mentioned something about Clojure. My coworker is introduced[1] him and he said "So, what's the deal with Bob? ...". He attacked the person. And went on for 15 minutes, deadpan, facts-only, listing every failure and its inevitable origin: a decision Bob forced down the department's throat. I watched the new CIO get more and more disgusted -- he was a rare beast -- a C-level at a multi-national who understood systems and didn't have a skillset that was a decade out-of-date[2]. The CIO politely excused himself from the room, which was completely silent at this point save for my coworker and remained that way for a solid minute after the guy left the room[3]. Greg had gotten a little loud.

Then we remembered that we were there to watch him address the IT department on the big screen in the room[4]. Someone in tech announced that things would be getting started about 5 minutes late. They started 15-minutes late. Shortly after introducing himself, the CIO apologized and said he had to take care of a "personnel issue" that required a little more time than he had expected. The door opened and our (new) department VP walked in, "[CIO] just got off the phone with HR and Bob. He was informed his services are no longer needed." Greg was on his feet and the room erupted. For literally months after that happened, people from the "old company" would call Greg (remote office) to thank him. What was amazing to me was that literally everyone except for 3 people in IT management and leadership knew this guy was at fault and yet he continued to increase in his ability to cause problems. It turned out that the prior week had been spent by the new CIO trying to wrap his head around the boneheaded architectural decisions he was inheriting. All of these decisions had one name behind them and that guy had been with the company for 10 years!

[0] I don't recommend it. This guy, though, had stones and if given the opportunity to address the issue with someone higher on the chain, it trumped any fears of him losing the job. "If they're not going to trust me to tell the truth when it's hard to hear, they're not someone I can morally work for." He had brought it up to every single person from above him up to the CIO, why not the CIO?

[1] That's an understatement. He was one of the major reasons infrastructure integration happened at all. The CIO looked at him like he was some mad genius.

[2] I recognized the same on the development side when his Clojure response, despite not being a choice I would have made (unfamiliarity), was backed up with an argument that wasn't marketing or otherwise buzz-wordy.

[3] Someone started with a "So......" at some point, I'm sure.

[4] The company had a studio -- really cool -- and complete stage/audience room. We could have gone, and some did, but we were "war rooming" for the past week and a few of us weren't sure if it was just the left-overs from lunch that had stunk up the place.