I was one employee of Orange at that time and was specifically asked to leave the company (I didn't), Lombard was a very fat guy who couldn't stand for a long t

I was one employee of Orange at that time and was specifically asked to leave the company (I didn't), Lombard was a very fat guy who couldn't stand for a long time, he was used to make crude jokes about young (female) engineers, he was paid ~12M/year but often complained it was not enough. Clearly I was not impressed by his intelligence with respect to previous managers like Michel Bon or Jean-Jacques Damlamian. But I think things must be seen in context: - It is not very different to what happens in other big companies, see recent statements by Google's and Meta's CEOs. - The demography is important, we employees were mostly recruited in the 1980' in the Direction Générale des Télécoms, at that time one third of DGT's employees changed of job because of introduction of computers and automation (42C, etc). There were no social problem at all (none of the famous French strikes) even if new jobs were much more demanding (sale people) In 2005, we employees, were ~50 years old. We were married, divorced, our parents were getting old, grand parents were dying and our children were in their late teens, most of them without jobs. This was not an easy time and the prospect to loose our job was a serious stress.