What, is Bob actually going to say “Well, they fired me because they wouldn’t listen to my suggestions about how to be more efficient”? No, Bob will craft some bullshit corporatespeak to make himself come out smelling like roses. And Bob knows better than to put down anyone as a reference because we all know that references can’t really give information. They can only verify dates of employment and say whether they would or would not rehire. References are useless and Bob probably won’t even need them because Bob is already networking amongst his colleagues looking for a new gig, amirite? 
It sounds like not jumping is going to end up costing Bob everything. At some point, Bob needs to write off the family home in order to save his family and his well being. Sell the house and move into a smaller place.
And maybe Bob has a more realistic awareness of his situation then you do. A lot people get locked into jobs by circumstances. In a lot of businesses there’s no significant overlap with what other businesses are doing. If you’re the guy in charge of a hydroelectric dam, for example, you can’t just go and take charge of a nuclear power plant.
People get in a situation where their main asset is their experience in a particular business. And if there’s only one employer in that business, they’re the only ones who need your experience. If you switch jobs, your experience is meaningless - to your new employer, you’re no more valuable than any other new hire and you’ll be paid accordingly.
So your current employer, who may need your experience, doesn’t have to pay you what you’re really worth to him. He just has to pay you a little bit more than those other employers would pay you, even though you’re worth much more to him than you would be to them.
Yeah, that was kind of my thought too; would Bob rather have the family keep the home with the proceeds from his life insurance? Because that’s where this sounds like it’s headed.
I also agree with the above suggestion of letting things play out. At the least, Bob might make life for the sucker they hire after this a little more bearable (it sounds like the company strategy is to squeeze the vital employee as hard as they can to save money as long as they can get away with it; maybe it’s time they stopped getting away with it).
This may be true if you’re hiring somebody for a job at Burger King. But if you’re looking for a high-level manager you’re going to do a real background check and find out why Bob left his last job.
Sounds more like he’s been a doormat for longer than that.
He has a job that reports to the CEO directly, so that means he has skill, and salary commensurate, but he allowed himself to get in this situation? Doesn’t seem like a very competent manager.
Bob should have learned long ago what I tell all the young engineers here when the company wants them to work through lunch repeatedly, or work lots of free time. When they start thinking that “the work has to get done”, I tell them that there is ALWAYS more work. You could work 100 hours and still there’s more to do. You have to draw the line where your health is affected. And when they take my advice, the sky does not fall, they don’t get fired.
But our company seems to be run by sane people.
At the very least, Bob needs to make sure his next vacation is on a cruise, or overseas. This “cut your vacation short” bullshit is, well, bullshit.
This is a problem right here. “Bob” is good at his job, but if he hasn’t got at least one of his subordinates into the position that they can deal with the serious shit for 1-2 weeks, he needs to step up as a team leader and change that. Training, rehiring, mentoring, skills transfer. It all needs to happen, regardless of workload. If your team members think they can’t do without you, they never will.
Oh and if the company wants Bob to travel home from his holiday to fix something they pay for an open return airfare up front. No takebacks. Bob flies in, fixes the problem, gets in a taxi and goes back to the airport and vacation.
As to possible loss of leave, do what my mate did many years ago. He had an accumulation of leave (50 days or so) and most of it could not be carried over to the next year. So he booked off every monday for a year as leave. Four months in, his employers paid out the rest of his leave.
Sure is. They’ve got a general staff turnover that’s heading for 20% per annum. They destroy a couple of managers per year on average, but it’s been about a year since the last one (left by ‘mutual agreement’ after significantly failing to keep up the two simultaneous full-time roles, in two different geographical locations that the board appointed him)
Most industries are close knit. I’m betting the only question he’d get is “how did you last so long working for those morons?” Especially given the history of his predecessors.
Did Bob sign a billion-year contract or something?
Is there a direct competitor where Bob can apply? I don’t think data on the board being a bunch of complete idiots is considered proprietary, and this company is not long for the world. What do they do if a couple of people quit or get sick?
Succession planning is vital for a company - these clowns never seem to have heard of it.
And I agree that given Bob is ensured against being fired, he issues an ultimatum that will result either in him getting things in order or getting fired.
He also needs to get his finances in order. If he can barely make ends meet in such a vital role, he is either being ripped off or spending way too much.
Why is Bob such an idiot, then?
If “it’s a small industry” and everyone will know Bob was fired, then they also know that the company is a fucking hellhole.
So to repeat: Bob can’t stay. He can’t quit. He can’t change his situation.
So…suicide, it is then. He’s the irreplaceable man, and as everyone knows, the cemeteries are filled with irreplaceable men.
Seriously, you leave for a few days, everything goes to hell, and they cancel your vacation? WTF?
You’re not irreplaceable. You’re actually an idiot, because although the company literally depends on you working like a dog 60 hours a week they don’t realize they literally depend on your work. Even though the one time you stopped working for a few days everything went to hell.
You don’t have to quit. The answer is to just stop working so hard, and when things go to hell just smile and tell them give you the funding or authority you need to make things work, or to fuck off, you don’t care which. What are they gonna do, fire you?
And if they fire you, so what? The fact that the company will fail without you shouldnt’ matter to you, who cares if the company fails?
Stop being such a baby. You did this to yourself. So you’re the only one who can fix it, which means getting another goddam job, even if it’s working waiting tables in a restaurant. And it goes double for digging yourself into such a financial hole that you have no savings for financial emergencies.
Actually, I think there is more control than that. ‘Bob’ can opt to go to management, make a reasonable case for the needed personnel and resources, and make it clear that he is only willing to work the nominal hours for which he is being compensated instead of martyring himself on the crucifix of an employer for whom good work or success are clearly not figures of merit. If ‘Bob’ is as critical to success of the company as it seems, they’ll either be forced to (perhaps grudgingly) acceed to his demands, or fire him outright, allowing him to collect severence/unemployment as well as giving him full reign to look for another position, and it isn’t as if it sounds as if he could expect good reference to come from this company and its officers anyway.
Don’t stick it out in a shitty job being unappreciated and overworked just because you think you’re being a hero. Trust me, no one really gives a shit. Take care of yourself and your family, and look for the best way to reduce your time spent in this dysfunctional hole as much as ethically possible while giving the opportunity to look for new employment.
Stranger
If Bob is a senior manager, then his skills are mainly in managing and thus transferable to most industries, no?
It might help if we had a hint of the industry.
What kind of financial risk are we talking about? How do things look when it comes to savings and Bob’s wife’s income?
There must be a way to tell prospective employers: “It was a shitty place to work so I got out.” in a manner that is acceptable to reasonable employers.
I wouldn’t go that drastic. Figure how much your team can reasonably do in the next couple of months and make a prioritized list. Call a meeting. Say we have the capacity to do [some things]. We don’t have the capacity to do [other things], which could lead to [negative consequences] costing [some amount of money]. If I get [some resources] which will cost [some amount of money] then we can meet all our needs. Then fire off an e-mail saying the above and you have some cover.
After that, stick to your guns and say no. If it wasn’t in your original list of things you can do, then you don’t have the capacity for it and it won’t be done. You still might get fired, but at least you have a well documented case on why you don’t suck at your job.
Yeah, maybe you wanna dress up the “give me more resources or blow me, I don’t care which” a little bit fancier.
But the main thing is, you’ve got to stop caring whether the company fails or not. Your bosses don’t care, so why should you? I know your bosses don’t care, because if they did they’d be trying to fix the problem rather than just making you do it and screaming at you when things don’t work.
If I had an employee who did all the real work for the company, and who was so critical that the company couldn’t function for 4 days without them, I’d be worried about what would happen if I lost that one employee. But they’re not worried. So you shouldn’t be worried either.
You can’t fix the company by getting your bosses to give you the resources needed. And you can’t fix the company by working 60 hour weeks. In fact, fixing the company is not your job. If it were your job you’d have some sort of fancy title and be making 10 times more than you are and you’d have the authority to hire and fire as needed and you’d be able to take a vacation whenever you liked.
In actual fact, you’ve been accepted responsibility for fixing the company, but you don’t have the authority to fix the company. So you cannot succeed in fixing the company no matter how hard you try, because fixing the company requires something other than hard work from you.
And so you need, like Rorschach, to proclaim, “None of you understand. I’m not locked up in here with YOU. You’re locked up in here with ME.”
It’s risky. Really, you just have to frame it in terms of what you want more of, so in this case, maybe Bob would say he’s looking for an environment where the demand for change is matched by an appetite to embrace it.
The primary risk of it all going to shut if Bob turns his back, is that of not having a job to go back to. In essence, easing off or not being there for a couple of weeks is running the risk of the same outcome as quitting outright.
Not that this justifies it, of course, but in that case, quitting outright is a more graceful exit than becoming unemployed because the company failed on your watch.
Can you at least hang on until Christmas? Maybe the CEO will have a change of heart after a visit from his old partner & some of his friends.
That’s where Bob came from, isn’t it?