Bond villains are some of the biggest employers in fiction. They run shipping lines, chip factories, media empires and at least one circus, and every one of them needs staff: guards, pilots, scientists, assistants, a man to hold the cat. Plenty of people now rate their old bosses on anonymous employee review sites. Henchmen, for some reason, have kept quiet.
So we wrote the reviews they didn’t dare to post. Each entry judges the employer, not the employee: working conditions, perks, how the boss handles a mistake, and what happens when you want to leave. What the bosses did comes from the released films. Every star rating, headline and review is invented by us. The villains are ranked by overall rating, from the lowest at #8 to the highest at #1, and the bar for #1 is not high.
8 to 6: Do Not Apply
8. Blofeld, From Russia with Love (1963), Thunderball (1965), You Only Live Twice (1967) and Spectre (2015)
SPECTRE has a real org chart. Members go by numbers, and in the films the number is your rank, with Blofeld as Number 1. The trouble is the performance review. At the board meeting in Thunderball, Number 11 reports that a narcotics job came in under target. Blofeld decides someone has been embezzling and has Number 9 electrocuted where he sits. In From Russia with Love, after the Lektor plan falls apart, Blofeld calls in Kronsteen and Klebb to find out whose fault it was. Morzeny settles the question with a poisoned shoe blade to Kronsteen, while Klebb gets one more chance. In You Only Live Twice, Osato’s review for failing to kill Bond ends with Blofeld shooting him. By Spectre, the hiring process had caught up with the firing process. At the Rome meeting, Guerra volunteers to take over Sciarra’s assignment, the board asks for challengers, and Hinx takes the assignment, and Guerra’s chair, by killing him at the table. SPECTRE doesn’t have a disciplinary process. It has a seating plan.
Reviewer: Board member, name withheld (he would like you to know it is a number)
Headline: “Clear titles. Unclear standards.”
Pros: Your title is your rank, so you know exactly where you stand. Board meetings in nice cities. The boss brings his cat.
Cons: Reviews happen live, in front of the whole board, and the furniture has a vote. Blame is assigned by the CEO on the spot, and you won’t get to finish your slide.
Advice to management: Try a written warning. Once.
7. Karl Stromberg, The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
From the outside, Stromberg looks like a good employer. He runs a shipping firm and a chain of laboratories, and his headquarters is Atlantis, a base in the Mediterranean that can rise and sink. Then you look at how he closes out a project. Two scientists, Bechmann and Markovitz, deliver the submarine tracking system he hired them to build. Before they leave, he deals with his assistant, who had stolen the plans to sell them: the lift she steps into opens over his shark tank. The scientists fly off, their helicopter blows up on his signal, and their payment is cancelled. Then his office tells the families there was an accident at sea. Stromberg’s HR department is one man with a button for every kind of termination.
Reviewer: Former contractor, research and development
Headline: “Delivered on time. Final invoice still outstanding.”
Pros: Stunning waterfront office. Interesting marine research. The boss takes a personal interest in every project, right up to the handover.
Cons: Contractors are paid on completion, and completion is when the payment gets cancelled. The lift has more than one destination.
Advice to management: Pay your vendors. It costs less than a helicopter.
6. Max Zorin, A View to a Kill (1985)
Zorin Industries has the best recruitment brochure on this list: microchips, government contracts, racehorses, a château and an airship. The job description gets less glamorous underground. When Zorin’s plan was ready, he and his security chief Scarpine flooded the mine with the crew still inside and opened fire on the workers trying to get out. His bodyguard May Day, the most loyal person on the payroll, was down there too. Once she worked out that the plan had included her, she switched sides on the spot and helped Bond get the main bomb out of the mine. Zorin built a team that would do anything for him, then ran the one test it could not pass.
Reviewer: Former employee, mining operations
Headline: “Great perks above ground.”
Pros: Horse racing, Paris, the airship. Staff get to see the horse sale at the château.
Cons: The emergency plan is that management leaves first, by airship. The CEO talks about loyalty a lot. It runs one way.
Advice to management: If your most loyal employee is surprised by the plan, the problem isn’t her loyalty.
5 and 4: Nice Perks, Rough Exit
5. Goldfinger, Goldfinger (1964)
Goldfinger thinks big and travels well. He has a refinery in Switzerland, a stud farm in Kentucky, and a private squadron of pilots, Pussy Galore’s Flying Circus, on contract. On the day of Operation Grand Slam, his team gets into the Fort Knox vault and his man Kisch handcuffs Bond to the bomb. When the US Army starts fighting back, Goldfinger locks the vault from the outside with Kisch and Oddjob still in it, puts on a US Army colonel’s uniform and leaves. The contractors weren’t with him either. Pussy Galore had already swapped the nerve gas for something harmless and tipped off the CIA. When your lead contractor sabotages the job and your inside team ends up locked in with the bomb, the common factor is management.
Reviewer: Former employee, vault team
Headline: “Big vision. Small exit.”
Pros: Travel to Switzerland and Kentucky. The goals are crystal clear, because the goal is gold.
Cons: The vault door locks from the outside, and management has the key. The boss’s escape plan included a costume. Yours did not.
Advice to management: Count heads before you lock the vault.
4. Elliot Carver, Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
Carver runs a global media group, CMGN. His star contractor was Henry Gupta, the techno-terrorist who ran the technology and surveillance in Carver’s offices and programmed the stolen missile on the stealth ship. On the ship, Gupta had finished the job Carver needed him for. With Bond holding Gupta as a bargaining chip, Carver asks whether the missile is ready. Gupta says yes. Carver says “it seems you’ve outlived your contract” and shoots him, which ends the hostage negotiation and the employment relationship in the same move. Carver is a media man, so even his terminations come with a headline.
Reviewer: Former contractor, IT and special projects
Headline: “Check the end date on your contract. Then check who sets it.”
Pros: Global reach. Cutting-edge equipment. Satellite launch party in Hamburg.
Cons: Contract length is decided by the CEO, out loud, the moment he stops needing you. Notice period: none.
Advice to management: HR would like to be in the room next time.
3 and 2: Strong Benefits, Read the Fine Print
3. Franz Sanchez, Licence to Kill (1989)
Sanchez treats loyalty as company policy. He says loyalty matters more to him than money, and he means it. The flaw is that he is also the entire internal affairs department. Bond walks into his casino as a stranger, wins big, offers his services and ends up in the inner circle. Meanwhile Milton Krest gets framed. Krest runs Sanchez’s smuggling through his marine research company and his ship, the Wavekrest. Sanchez’s men find stolen money hidden in the ship’s decompression chamber. Bond had put it there, and Sanchez doesn’t ask how it got in. Krest goes into the chamber, and that’s the hearing. A loyalty program only works if you can tell who is loyal.
Reviewer: Former associate, shipping and logistics
Headline: “He really does value loyalty. He just can’t spot it.”
Pros: The boss genuinely rewards loyalty, sometimes very quickly. Nice casino.
Cons: No investigation, no hearing, no appeal. A new hire with a good story can get promoted past people who have been here for years.
Advice to management: When the money turns up somewhere strange, ask who put it there.
2. Scaramanga, The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)
Scaramanga keeps a tiny team on his private island off the coast of China. His all-round assistant, Nick Nack, is butler, housekeeper and chef, and he handles the contracts too. One part of the job description is unusual. Nick Nack hires assassins to come to the island and try to kill his boss, to keep him sharp, and Scaramanga approves of the arrangement. When one fails, Scaramanga wishes Nick Nack better luck next time. The upside is the best benefit on this list: if an assassin ever succeeds, Nick Nack inherits everything. It’s a succession plan that doubles as a job duty.
Reviewer: Current employee, household and contracts
Headline: “Small team. Huge upside.”
Pros: Private island. The boss is very hard to kill, so the job is secure. The inheritance terms are clear.
Cons: You recruit the people trying to shoot your boss, and he gives you notes when they miss. With a team this small, you cover a lot of roles, including chef.
Advice to management: Put the inheritance in writing. And schedule the assassins around lunch service.
Actually a Good Person to Work For
1. Octopussy, Octopussy (1983)
Octopussy runs the best criminal enterprise in the series to work for, and it isn’t close. She’s a jewel smuggler with a large staff, a bigger palace and a team that proved its loyalty when it counted. She lives in a floating palace in Udaipur with the women of her Octopus cult, and she runs a travelling circus as cover for her smuggling. Her problem was the business partners. Kamal Khan and General Orlov swapped the circus’s jewellery cargo for a nuclear bomb without telling her, and Kamal left her at the circus to die. Back in India, her circus performers raided Kamal’s palace to pay him back. Most bosses on this list lost their staff in one afternoon. Octopussy’s staff stormed a palace on her behalf.
Reviewer: Current employee, circus and logistics
Headline: “A boss who has our back. We had hers, too.”
Pros: Housing in a floating palace. Two careers in one: circus performer and smuggler. A close, all-women team.
Cons: The business partners. One of them swapped the cargo for a nuclear bomb. Lots of travel, including East Germany.
Advice to management: Vet your partners as carefully as you vet your staff.
The Exit Interview
Line the eight up and the pattern is plain. The bottom of the list treats staff as a cost to be cut, sometimes in the middle of a meeting. The top of the list keeps people because they want to stay. Nick Nack stays for the inheritance. Octopussy’s team stayed for her. Everyone in between learned that “we’re like a family here” means something different when the CEO owns a shark tank.