> I'm fairly confident the entire thing was written as fiction in the first place
Nope. http://rollioforce.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/krubner
"Lawrence Krubner -- Lead Programmer at Rollio Force"
Nope. http://rollioforce.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/krubner
"Lawrence Krubner -- Lead Programmer at Rollio Force"
I also suspect that if he'd had any idea this was going to go even slightly viral he'd have anonymized it further and posted it through medium or the like.
I'll note that on his website (smashcompany.com) in the About section, the link to "my profile on LinkedIn" is either a tragic mistake or some combination of blunt and subtle humor/commentary (it goes to the page to edit your own public profile, nothing related to Lawrence K's profile at all. Very reminiscent of the footer links on the RollioForce site.
And finally, if I ever received an email or chat/Slack message from a CEO (or Chairman) of a company I worked for like the one he received on October 8, my two responses would be A) Is this person drunk, drugged, otherwise impaired (and do I need to get medical attention for them) and B) Holy Crap if this person is in a position of authority over me I need to get the hell out now. It's like some kind of semi-literate verbal diarrhea and certainly nothing that should come from a decision-maker in a company.
But if I had more time I would share a bit of my stories. Trust though that these types of personalities are unfortunately very real.
I try to remember that for every bit of effort and skill I put into my job doing technical tasks, someone else is probably putting just as much into using their personality to get what they want. It's just inevitable...