My favourite "Start of year speech" was when an entire department of developers were told by our boss (Who was one level below the board because IT doesnt get a

My favourite "Start of year speech" was when an entire department of developers were told by our boss (Who was one level below the board because IT doesnt get a place on the board) that "We are a cost center so we need to tighten our budgets". The way the company was setup was that any money we made by delivering custom projects was booked to the marketing department who had got the customers to buy from us so it was impossible for anyone IT / development related to be anything but. This is the same company who gave the "Employee of the year" award to the guy who had to work almost 24/7 firefighting on the dumpster-fire of a web-app he had written a few years ago because, well, he is working hard isn't he!