One incident in particular comes right to mind, in which my then-CEO, a nice fellow named John T., sent me off to make a budget spreadsheet for the engineering department. He particularly wanted it to show the effects of a planned layoff. When I brought the spreadsheet down, he said (these are his exact words):
“Fix that so that the total savings is $1.4 million.”My calculations had showed a roughly $600 thousand savings. Further discussion revealed that he really, truly didn't care whether the spreadsheet represented reality at all. All he cared about was the bottom line. So I just changed (as he stood there) the total savings cell from a formula to a fixed value of $1.4 million. He said:
“Great! But add just a little bit so it doesn’t look like we just made it up.”At that point I reverted the spreadsheet to the way I had built it, emailed it to him, and told him I didn't want to know what he did with it...
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