Knaves and Such

I read “How Google Works” by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg a few years back, and one concept has stuck with me like gum on a conference room chair: “Knaves.” These are smart people who are utterly self-serving, putting their own interests above everything else—including basic human decency, the company mission, and probably their own mothers if it meant getting a corner office. I’ve met far too many in my career, and honestly, they could form their own networking group called “Narcissists Anonymous” (though they’d never admit they had a problem).

I’ve also been lucky to work with exceptional leaders—the kind who lift their teams up, bring everyone along for the ride, and fight for collective success over personal glory. You know, the rare unicorns who actually read leadership books instead of just displaying them on their desks like trophies. There are countless articles celebrating great leadership, but almost nothing about the flip side: truly awful “leaders.” The ones who climb the ladder through nepotism, backstabbing, lies, and sheer nastiness—basically treating corporate America like a real-life game of Monopoly, except everyone else is forced to play with Community Chest cards that just say “Go directly to HR. Do not collect $200.”

These workplace villains have perfected the art of taking credit faster than a politician at a ribbon cutting, while deflecting blame with the skill of a professional dodgeball player. They’re the people who somehow turn every team meeting into their personal TED talk about their own brilliance, leaving the rest of us wondering if we accidentally stumbled into an episode of “The Office”—except Michael Scott was at least occasionally loveable.

Let me introduce you to my personal hall of fame of workplace horrors. First there was the boss who liked to hear himself speak more than a podcast host with no editor. He would interrupt every conversation with a really bad dad joke (think “Why don’t scientists trust atoms? Because they make up everything!"—but somehow less funny), always wanted to be the center of attention like a golden retriever at a dog park, and brown-nosed like there was no tomorrow. Plot twist: He was eventually fired due to inappropriate behavior with some of his female staff. Turns out being the office clown doesn’t give you a free pass to be a creep. Who knew?

Then there was the guy who berated his staff in meetings like Gordon Ramsay without the culinary skills or British charm, stalked them on social media (because nothing says “professional leadership” like lurking on your employee’s vacation photos), and then actually followed them to their house. Yes, this is true. No, I’m not making this up for comedic effect. He was eventually fired too—though it took a number of years, which makes you wonder what exactly HR was doing during that time. Playing solitaire? Learning interpretive dance?

And then there are the leaders who remain, like cockroaches after a nuclear apocalypse. Knaves to the core, adding absolutely no value to the firm other than serving as professional yes-men with the strategic thinking of a Magic 8-Ball and about half the reliability.

I’m sure you all have your own knave stories—tales of workplace warriors who could weaponize a PowerPoint presentation and turn a team lunch into a political battlefield. We should start a website dedicated to these corporate catastrophes. What could we call it? KnaveBook? LinkedOut? Indeed-Not? RateMyCEOPsycho? Maybe “Glassdoor, But Make It Honest”?

Hmm, maybe that will be my next project. After all, if we’re going to suffer through these workplace nightmares, we might as well get some therapeutic laughs out of it. Plus, I bet the comment section would be absolutely legendary—like Yelp reviews, but for terrible bosses who think “synergy” is a personality trait.