Abusive and micromanaging CEO, and the CEO is not just abusive to staff that has done poorly, but sets up situations for well-meaning high-performers to be likely to trip over a landmine of sorts. While I was there, the CEO would set a directive, my team would implement it, and then the CEO would change his mind and appear to have no memory of his prior directions. He even once asked who was the "stupid idiot" that decided something that he himself had decided a few months prior, and I even confirmed that it was his own original decision from our logs just to be sure. In another incident he issued punitive measures to some employees involved in using a feature he had insisted upon having built, for the act of building and using that feature. He consistently pushed unstable and un-reviewed code after-hours, which of course resulted in after-hours work, reducing engineer morale even further. Most of my time there I mostly observed the abuse he dished upon other employees (which is already demoralizing enough) while successfully diffusing the occasional ire he sent my way. I thought I could handle it, but it wore me down much more than I realized. I also recall two separate incidents where he decided some employee crossed an imaginary and ill-defined line, so he removed that employee's access to do much of the job he hired that employee to do, effectively hamstringing him. In both incidents, the affected employee was gone in fewer than two months.
