>>You may have noted I used the expression "last six months". The company sank. The guru has abandoned ship long before that. Though, I think he was not a guru, he was an artist.
>
>Like "con artist"?

Is there any other art?

>I have seen this happen to other companies I have worked for. A good VFP product went to VB and failed. Microsoft was happy - the company was happy. The developers opinion when the gods have made a decision has no value.

And this one was worse - at several stages of the disaster, the upper management people have had different strategies in mind. I once said "why don't we put them together and force them to reconcile their opinions?". The answer was "we did that already, and they kept their opinions as they were".

>By the way my term for “artist” is “salesman” A salesman is a man or woman who can sell his or her mothers soul countless times and feel good about it. They have one thing in mind: The SALE! :)
>
>Salesmen have no problem sleeping (developers wake up at 0200 with the “solution” to a programming problem) or looking at themselves in the mirror. Salesmen make good attorneys and politicians! :)

I thought the politicians have only one merchandise - themselves. Before coming here, I've heard a definition of an honest politician: "once he gets sold, he stays sold".