John Lucas

This guy is running the department into the ground. He's driving the "AI" initiative, but has no clue how it actually works. The result is a department full of people churning out AI slop with no understanding of what they are doing. I'm sure he's getting a raise for all the "progress". This place has done down the tubes, I'm looking for an exit

Johns a demanding boss, but runs a fairly effective program as far as I can tell. Sometimes working for him gives you a bit of whiplash. Seems like we are constantly changing tools and turnover has picked up in the last couple years in IT, but it's still manageable. He's a really good at getting good pricing for our contracts, but the flip side is that we have to learn new platforms all the time which makes it hard to be effective. He's not my favorite boss, but I've had worse, so take that for what it's worth.

I've worked with John as a consultant, and his one major skill is negotiation contact pricing, which is what I assume protects his job. He is very good at this. He is one of the most rude and disrespectful people I've ever had the displeasure of working with. He's a bulldozer and doesn't seem to care that the people around him are actually humans. Sometimes you have to work with people like this, just the way it is I guess, but I'm glad to be done with that project so I can focus on more pleasant customers.

John runs the department with a fear based approach. Whenever he wants something done it's delivered as a threat. He surrounds himself with leaders that drive this culture and deliver it to their teams. There is an unspoken expectation that if you're not going above and beyond and working into your personal time, that your career will suffer, which runs contrary to what the CEO (Sheryl Palmer) tells the company. The culture has really degraded under his leadership, which is a shame because it was once really great. I've seen really good and decent people leaders in IT pushed out when they stood up for their teams, pretty sad.

He has never had real experience outside of the company, which means he really doesn't know how to run an effective program. He surrounds himself with people that simply agree with him, which just exacerbates this issue. Some of those people are in the same boat as him, so it's very much the blind leading the blind situation. He benefits from being in a company that doesn't get much publicity, but the result is a department that is rife with issues. I would avoid if possible, or at a minimum approach with caution.