Are monstrous bosses bad for the bottom line? Last week a top executive of Baidu, one of China’s leading technology companies, was discovered to have been posting advice to her underlings on social media, lambasting their unwillingness to toil ceaselessly. She criticised one for not wanting to work at weekends and dismissed a complaint that her late-night work messages kept up one of her employee’s crying children. “I’m not your mum,” she said.
In the modern corporate world, you know you’re in trouble when you have to “reflect”. When, according to her statement, you have to “reflect deeply and humbly”, you might as well be handed a revolver and a bottle of whisky. Sure enough, within hours she had left Baidu.
The episode seemed
