NCR and IBM
Patterson was famous for firing Thomas Watson Sr, who went on to become General Manager, then President, of CTR, later renamed IBM. So many prominent businessmen were trained and fired by Patterson that some business historians regarded experience at NCR as the rough equivalent of an MBA degree. Patterson was also famous for firing many people on rather trivial grounds, for example, if they could not tell him why the flags happened to be flying that day or for not riding a horse properly.
Read more about this topic: John Henry Patterson (NCR Owner)