Note: This is scheduled for delivery on 18OCT25 @ 1200. Ain't no way I'm gonna drop this bomb while I'm still here, lol.
Mr. [EBM],
Good morning.
I’m sending this email to you after I’ve gone because:
You genuinely scare me more than anything I’ve ever encountered ever has (and that’s including grizzlies in Alaska), and
I don’t trust you to act rationally.
On any given day over the past year that I’ve worked here, I’ve watched you quickly shift between both extremes of the spectrum when it comes to your emotional state. But since I’m no longer employed by the amazing people at [my employer], I’m not as worried about you doing something overboard.
That’s not great for someone in a leadership position, whether you’re a department head at [this bonkers circus] or a Crew Leader at McDonald’s. End of the day, nothing matters. Not really. (And a lot of [our department's] applications have COTS alternatives.)
That said, on Tuesday during your tirade about how “process is the worst I’ve seen in 20 years”, you asked what you’re doing wrong and what you could do better.
I’m no longer officially on the clock for [your establishment] but here you go, free of charge:
I didn’t lie to you about “the leads saw this” for [that stupid project]. [Rowdy] told me to send it to you for demo (don’t believe me? I included a screenshot of his email on the [stupid project] card in the weekly update board just in case of such a situation). Last I checked, he’s a lead. If I’m at fault for listening to a single lead, that’s on me. But that segues perfectly into this next bullet:
[Rowdy] and [his BFF] aren’t your friends. They’re your employees. Stop treating them like friends and force them to facilitate swift delivery of your product. [Rowdy] is back in the office more than he was—as are you and anyone else whose jobs could be done from anywhere—but he still spends half his workday outside on smoke breaks or at lunch.
Follow-on from that point: nobody here is your friend. Everyone in this department is your subordinate.
[Rowdy] and [his BFF] need to STOP DEVELOPING and start mentoring and leading their people. I can’t speak for your experience in the Navy, but I can say that for me, I was told when I got to a certain level my work would shift to the dull admin nonsense. It did. Theirs needs to, as well; especially for what I assume is a ridiculous six-figure salary. You're not getting your money's worth for this arrangement, you're getting a band-aid. ...Many band-aids.
You have a unique (to me) frustrating habit of not remembering what you said. Or at least giving the impression that you don’t. SEND YOUR REQUIREMENTS IN AN EMAIL. You’ll say something in one meeting and by the end of the week, your requirements have changed into something only vaguely resembling what you originally said.
Follow-on: “this meeting could have been an email”. You should consider having agendas for your meetings in typed out emails beforehand.
This entire department is a house of cards just waiting to come crashing down. There’s very little code documentation in the front end, and I can’t imagine the database side looks much different. You have three people here that whose departures would cause serious problems: [Rowdy], [his BFF], and [his BFF's BFF]. You mentioned you’re going to be here for at least nine more years—would you stake your life on them sticking around the entire time?
Everyone in this department has the permissions required to look at every single app and provide feedback at any time. Yet nobody does unless they’re asked. REPEATEDLY. Go through your catalog and see just how absolutely terrible things really are.
You coddle your favorites too much. To repeat: nobody here is your friend, they’re your employees. Your coddling them only makes things worse for the department in terms of output.
You’ve made it clear that you don’t care for anyone that’s not a developer or a DBA. Or at least, that’s the image you project every single time you intentionally loudly dump on people within earshot. That's both incredibly unprofessional and insanely childish. (And something being labeled childish by me is a pretty big deal.)
Free example: You praised [FNG] for his “fucking cool” implementation of a grid that refreshes every sixty seconds, and at the same time shat on the process analyst responsible for writing a different story about the grid. Sir, with all due respect: refreshing elements on a web page on a timer isn’t hard, lol.
There’s undoubtedly more, but those are the big ticket items.
If you want to worship developers and DBAs, by all means do so. Computer science is amazing and I’ll sing their praises until my dying day.
But if you don’t want anyone else here, change your contract requirements.
Fill the room with developers and DBAs.
So this department can be just like the folks on the west coast that “gave the customers what they wanted, with no documentation”.
Two final things:
I believe that being assigned here and meeting you is the cosmos "balancing things out" for me for having a 20-year career with amazing department heads.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Those who can't teach, [EBM job title]. One of the things that I absolutely believed in during my time in the Navy was that a leader should have a good understanding of what it is their people do. Maybe you've got that knowledge. If not, please look into C# software development and MSSQL. Then dive into the codebase. It's wild.