This guy may have had the highest IQ in the IT dept. He was very very smart, but he was so full of anger & hostility directed at anyone who didn't see things the way he did. He particularly disliked all the current management after his immediate manager departed (others told me that this manager never applied any discipline to him which was why they got on so well).

His new manager 'hated' him (and told me so) his former manager was 'released' as job no longer needed (read that as you will). (I didn't like his new manager any more than he did).

But this guy had lots of very smart ideas & needed someone willing to document them (he was a lousy at documenting) and so I decided to (as an architect) step into that role to support him. He took a liking to me & I did what I could to calm him down & tell him that bitching about the managers was not in his best interests especially as these were 'mostly' reasonable people. I tried to explain to him that managers tended to lose their technical expertise over time & thus would increasingly rely on intuition & playing devil's advocate with new ideas or suggestions and that it was not fair to expect them to have his brilliant insights or to see them straight away, expect weeks or months to pass.

After a couple of months I commented to one of the managers that as much as I liked the guy (I kind of saw him as a son), he was a lost cause. Anyway, I later got appointed as one of two mediators/conciliators in our IT department (250 people). 2 months later this guy and one other decided they wanted to leave.

A lot of the friction & bickering in IT went with him. I was sorry to see a good mind leave but realised it was going to be for the better in IT.

But to get back to the problems you guys have described, it is never easy.

My sympathy is there.

Doug M