Management of the organization was incomprehensibly bad, from the CEO on down to the lowest-level supervisors. The CEO at the time I was there was a buffoon whom everyone laughed at behind his back. Most departments heads were unqualified and incompetent, often wasting time by re-inventing the wheel instead of just looking at what other companies were doing and building upon their successes and best practices. Petty infighting, interdepartmental vendettas, and backstabbing of colleagues was common. For example, the CTO and heads of membership and publications hated each other and talked trash about each other behind their backs. As a result, membership and publications would attempt to work around the technology department and engage vendors independently for their projects, but lacking any sort of understanding of what they were getting into were often taken advantage of and ultimately unsuccessful. For his part the CTO enjoyed sowing conflict within his own department by having different employees work independently on the same task without letting them know he was doing this, and then expressing shock at the chaos and negativity that ensued once staff learned they were working at cross purposes. Rather that recognizing the true cause of dysfunction management continuously tinkered with the organizational structure, inventing convoluted forms of matrix reporting that made no sense whatsoever. Salaries for upper management and technical staff was decent but for most worker pay was quite low with few opportunities for advancement, success being rewarded with ridiculous plastic trinkets rather than meaningful compensation or promotion. I saw many of the more competent employees driven out by all the management BS, leaving the least qualified staff behind to keep the lights on.
