This asshole was one of many who committed fraud. The crap they where doing at the top such as reporting a twenty year lease as a single year revenue, swapping network capacity that had an equal value and saying that was revenue, restating sales figures to bump a quarter, that is fraud.
And guess what this resulted in. People who should never be in sales committing fraudulent sales orders such as posting a sale for existing revenue, from an existing customer and just renaming the customer. The software didn’t catch this and they got full commission. Hell, many even, and with the full knowledge of their managers, lied about the actual revenue they expected and got paid full commission.
I could go on with more details but suffice to say as someone who prides himself on honesty and started in the telecom business, at Divestiture, these shenanigans affect even honest sales people.
Companies recognize when there is a problem of actual revenue against booked revenue. The result? Losses and they are huge.
Why? Well because they ramp up support staff thinking they are doing a good job. They hire more sales people thinking they have made such remarkable hires before. They obtain loans to expand, acquire network elements (think Nortel here) etc, etc, etc.
Now when the retards figure they are not actually taking in the revenue they thought they were, what happens?
First they start “rationalizing” staff (layoffs, firings and unemployment). Next, they look at consolidating regions (Empty and office space, cancel plans for expanding - broken leases, cancelled orders for expansion)
Then they start looking at the sales people. Everyone gets the message they are being looked at and sales drop. They don’t really drop as they are now getting solid orders with solid revenue. But the thieves who submitting bogus orders start bragging about their performance and taking longer lunches (they are really interviewing) heck they will, absolutely, land a new job with higher salary and better expense accounts. Who wouldn’t want them? They are selling machines and have the awards and the spreadsheets with numbers to back them up. They even have friends who vouch for their performance (they didn’t know fraud was being committed. I never vouched for any one because I can spot a liar a mile away)
So now the cheating thieves have a new job and everyone is amazed at their prescience and foresight to bail on a firm that will be contracting if not going out of business altogether.
Meanwhile, the execs, who lead by example, are trying to right the ship and root some evil cause for what is happening. Problem is they, by example, told people what was the “right thing” to do. So they start making excuses about the economy, their model needing and update and find equivalency in other firms who were doing the same dang thing.
So nobody can directly say what is happening, they can’t very well prosecute the sales people as they have a guilty conscience and think there will be some leniency accorded them, when their time comes.
Right! I call Bullshit!
Now I see the fraud these guys are committing and lest you think I am an armchair prognosticator, so does Wall Street and several financial firms and journals. No problem, the executive says. We are using creative booking but it perfectly legitimate and you will see in time we correct. Heck we are growing, right?
Heck Bernie Ebbers, whom I didn’t like the day I met him, is doing the same thing. They guys at Enron and so on.
By the way they got all their advice from their financial advisors, some of which are no longer in business.
So in all this mess a lot of people get hurt (don’t worry about me. I live below my means and was fine. This is just life as far as I am concerned)
They people who get the hardest from these Bozo’s? People who have retired or are nearing retirement. Their 401k’s are wiped out. Their pensions are vaporized. Their income, derived from 20-30 years of slavish labor, is well... Well it’s gone.
There isn’t going to be any salvation. They live off their savings if they had any and finally. The joy of retirement is replaced with foraging for a new job.
Who is going to hire them? They are in their 50, 60 and 70’s. They take whatever job they can and that is life.
There are few other exec’s on the list form Qwest and I hope they get their just desserts.