Black Girls Code Founder Suspended in ‘Unfathomable Mess’

thedailybeast.com

37 points·ermantrout··7 comments

The Glassdoor reviews for that organization is a bit of a train wreck.

Holy moly they are. One review was labeled "you will need to go to therapy after working here." Sheesh.

It sounds like she was an abusive manager, and the board was forced to take action. Regardless of her positive contributions to technology, toxic leaders make every good endeavor rotten.

It does not sound like that all that much. It sounds much more like a single board mamber/chair instigated a coup.

When it gets to the point where you bring in external parties to investigate workplace culture it's bad. Can confirm from personal experience.

Given the information provided in the article, this looks like a pretty typical founder scaling issue. Qualities that make a good startup founder are drastically different than the skills needed to manage a worldwide Federation of organizations.

Some founders anticipate this and hand off the Baton without much trouble. Others cannot conceive of the organization without them at the helm, and hold on stubbornly past the point when they are the most effective possible leader. In that case, a responsible board is compelled to find another chief executive, and that process can be very messy.

This so much!

Plus there seems to be some serious interpersonal issues. Most well-functional organizations have enough "adults in the room" to anticipate and address this kind of stuff. That's what made companies like HP work so well, pre-2000. There was a meta-awareness and self-awareness built into executive management for that.

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