I've known a few Smith's in my time, one thing they all had in common was the protection of a manager who had no interest in the quality of Smith's work, as long as Smith would take his side in any disputes. When the consequences became too great, the manager would suddenly understand the problem and approve the minimum of changes to fix it, while taking credit for the work. Smith would not complain about this slight because he understood the nature of the transaction.
Edit: btw. congrats getting rid of your Smith, these people can be very difficult to dislodge. Presumably your guy did not have the protection of a manager.
Zilog was the maker of the Z80 microprocessor that powered a huge number of games consoles and simple computers in the 80s. Also still around - its parent company was acquired for $750 million.
I had to look up Curtis-Mathis because it wasn't a thing in the UK.
And MicroPro / WordStar International does seem to be legitimately dead: acquired by SoftKey who were acquired by Mattel who have since gotten rid of all the associated brands.
But in any practical sense, they ceased to exist. (I meant Lotus of 1-2-3 fame, not car fame.)
Their scopes are still for sale and still good.
> part of an umbrella corporation
meaning their former glory is gone. When I was starting out Tektronix was a very big deal in computers and electronics. I haven't even heard their name in 20-30 years.
I've known people in every corporation I've worked for who accomplished nothing and were not managers. I was often given the job of trying to turn whatever they did into something useful. Everybody knew who they were. I remember one person, we'll call "Smith". "Smith" would check in code, and it was always so bad that someone else would have to redo the whole thing. After a while, the term "smith-code" became a generic term for code that was worse than nothing.
How bad can you be that your name becomes a generic term for useless work?
"Smith" eventually got laid off. The team was relieved.