Bangalore: CEO could inspire awe; an image to look up at; along the way making work a good experience, creating ‘workers paradise’. Ho! it all seems fairy enough until one does a reality check and comes in face with a CEO who can, in a blink of eye shake you up and welcomes you to ‘workers hell’.

Here’s a list of such CEOs who did ‘top’, and famous too, but for the wrong reasons.

# 8 John Sculley

Company: Apple (1983 -1993)

Ape-poch moment: He fired STEVE JOBS from his own company!

 A boardroom battle between the two men over marketing strategy — developed into one of the defining moments in the history of the Apple.

Sculley said he was brought to Apple in 1983 to keep the Apple II, introduced in 1977, alive long enough to support development and marketing of the Mac. At the time of the boardroom fight, Sculley believed Macintosh was not yet powerful enough to fulfill the user expectations Jobs was creating.

 Convinced Apple's board of execs to fire Jobs and made himself CEO. The board agreed and dismissed the Apple co-founder. But Sculley’s lack of computer knowledge and unethical approaches got the best of him, as his pet projects (the Newton: believed to be ‘next big thing’) bombed big time, causing Apple to lose nearly two-thirds of its stock value and post profit lows of $4.6 million by 1993. The company had to downsize its worldwide labor force by 16 percent and consolidate sales and marketing teams. And, after engaging in constant arguments with the board, the decision was made to fire Sculley and replace him with his own protégé: Michael Spindler. Sculley revealed in an interview with Cult of Mac that he should have never fired Jobs or been hired by Apple: “May be Jobs should have been the CEO,” says Sculley, “and I should have been the president…Looking back, it was a big mistake that I was ever hired as CEO [of Apple]." No kidding.