We Know What We’re Doing. We Wear Suits.

How ‘the suits’ destroyed a billion-dollar company

In the early 1990s I landed a job with “Strat-a-Gee,” a hugely successful VAR (value-added reseller) on the East Coast. Our growth was enormous. By Y2K we had gone from 100 employees to more than 1,600 — and nearly a billion dollars in sales. We carried tens of thousands of SKUs, and employed 1000+ sales professionals in my office alone. Along the way, we became experts in the service arena too, which gave us an edge on the competition.

Just then, the owners handed Strat-a-Gee over to “Sam,” a new Chief Operating Officer. Without any attempt to communicate his vision for the company (whatever it might have been) to the rest of us, Sam brought in a group of five executives we immediately dubbed “the suits.”

When Satan tempted Jesus in the desert, he also wore a suit. This one.

There is a special place in Hell for you Suits.