The New VP of Engineering

Apparently, the board of directors is somewhat concerned about the fact that two of the critical roles in the company (CTO and VP of Engineering) are vacant. The Chief Technical Officer was a crazy bastard who couldn't engineer his way out of a wet paper bag with a chain saw, and the VP of Engineering was a mad man - technically brilliant but such a loose canon that even those who worked for him routinely had to seek cover.

Anyway, we have been told that we need a new VP of Engineering. However, we have also been told that this person doesn't need to be at all technical, despite the fact that the proposed structure of the engineering team is as follows.

Executive VP of Product Development (WTF?) - TBD
VP of Product Development (WTF?) - Harbinger's ineffectual boss
VP (or director) of Manufacturing - TBD
VP of Engineering - TBD
Engineers (X5)
Mechanical Designer
Field Service Engineer
Lab Tech (X2 - but one of them is Jar Jar who doesn't really count for much but attracting flies)

According to this count, we have 4 VP level people managing nine "individual contributors". That seems to be a bit top heavy to me, but despite that, the Fearful COO assures me that none of the VP level people need to be technical leaders. That role is fine in the hands of myself and the Sarcastic Brit.

Four administrators for nine people? That must qualify for a record or something.

Moving on, we were asked to interview this VP candidate. For some reason, the only members of the engineering team asked to interview the candidate were myself and the Sarcastic Brit. There were four other members of the engineering team at that time (not counting Jar Jar), of which two would report directly to this new VP.

So, the Sarcastic Brit and I sat down with her. We tried to be nice. We showed her the prototype. We asked her if she had punched anybody in the mouth recently, as this is a useful skill at the Biotech Mecca. Then, I asked her if she had any useful skills. She claimed to have none. The only thing she could think of to help reduce our work load was writing documents. Too bad about the spelling errors in her resume.

The following day, we had a round table meeting to discuss this candidate. All of the following (important?) players were in attendance:

The COO (the fearful one)
The VP of Biology (Jaba the Hut, without the scantily clad women). His team would be more useful if they were encased in carbonite.
The former VP of Biology (Indian Barbapapa) who was given an indefinite, in office vacation for being an incompetent, lying weasel. They didn't fire him though, as liars are highly valued at the Biotech Mecca. It would seem they are very useful for dealing with the SEC and investors.
The Enlightened one (who is a consultant)
The Chief Scientific Officer (who works approximately one day per week. But he's a brilliant scientist so we pay him lots of money to sully his good name.)
The VP of Product Development (my boss... speaking of purely administrative people)
The four engineers and the mechanical designer (added at my insistence)

Nearly half of the company was there and we were unanimous: She had no useful skills. Despite that, the COO believed her suitable. Although the COO was a little bit worried about the pair of tire tracks left in the parking lot by the candidate's car upon leaving. This prompted the COO to ask us what we did to make her so scared. I remember hearing that this candidate is currently unemployed. Apparently, the bread line is more appealing than working at the Biotech Mecca. I was (needless to say) quick to share that observation. They didn't fire me. Damn, I'll have to try harder next time.