Dealing with an abusive CEO.

I joined the company as a dev and quickly got promotes to a PO/Teamlead position. To be honest, it was everything I could have wished for, and I felt very lucky - fantastic colleagues, exciting product, cool tech, modern ways if working, and the team I would lead had some fantastic individuals and a positive attitude.

I was assigned to a newly formed team in charge of a new revenue opportunity. The project was the CEO’s little baby, so I was a bit nervous of how his involvement would be, but so far there were no red flags. I had heard some comments from colleagues about him - he seemed to come up in conversations a lot - but nothing major, I thought.

This was my first management role and I felt completely overwhelmed. I got a large amount of responsibility on top of still doing my previous dev work. Managing felt a lot like what I imagine being a preschool teacher is like. Coming in with grand ideas of wanting to help the team be the best it can, having high ambitions... and then drowning in the sheer practicalities. Misunderstandings, people with different wills, tantrums, power struggles... I wanted to be an empathic and supportive team lead, but my manager colleagues who were much more direct and strict seemed to be moving along and through conflicts faster (not true, I learned later). I was proud of always putting the welfare of my team first. Later a member would tell me he decided to decline a move to another team for that reason, so at least I did something right.

But instead of focusing on learning to become a good manager, problems with the CEO started right off the bat. I went on a short vacation, during which he had summoned my team, upset and wondered what the hell is going on, ordered them to do the exact opposite of what I had tasked them to, then grabbed me on my first day back to berate me and tell me I should listen to him because he knows better than me.

His behaviour came in waves. If things appeared to be going well, he was your best friend and generally hands-off. The moment he smelled what he perceived to be trouble, problems began. Eventually I ended up permanently on his bad side due to a long series of drama.

This is the point I learned the company had hired a leadership coach who spent 99% of his time helping managers deal with the CEO and his antics. Up until this point I had thought I was getting on his bad side due to my behaviour or results. Now I was slowly starting to realize that everyone who reported to him had a similar experience.

I started to have a feeling of constant dread. He was unpredictable and could react suddenly to anything in any manner, often with ferocity. There were groups of people spending significant time trying to control his outbursts. He would usually be apologetic after, and claim to have learned a lesson, but the next day it would be back to the same old.

Things started to take a toll on my personal life. I was drained, agitated and exhausted from work, and brought those emotions home. I had to see a therapist. We also had our first child around this time. Then I started getting weekend calls. The worst was a sunday morning call from him starting with ”I just had a great idea”. The great idea was to throw my last two weeks of planning in the trash, smash my team together with another team, have both team leads lead the team together (which naturally lead to an instant power struggle) and add some unrealistic expectations to the mix. Funnily, I was still telling myself that perhaps this was normal.

Then we had a salary discussion. When I joined I had been promised a percentage raise after the first year, otherwise I would have taken another offer at the time. He told me that despite getting good feedback, I am actually performing bad (I asked him to back it up with statistics which I knew existed - he answered that I should just trust him because he knows better) and could not give me the raise. I didn’t really care about the money, but at this point I felt that, if I can’t even trust him on his word, it’s impossible for me to work for him. He lied as usual when challenged and claimed he had never promised the raise, except this time I had written proof on the promise and asked him to honor it.

He reacted about as well as could be expected. Anger and tantrums. Incoumd tell he wanted to fire me on the spot. Since that’s not possible here, he demoted me and sent a multi-paragraph rant email to multiple parties explaining how we had both agreed that if i’m not the best employee in the company in two months that I would cease to be employeed. After I replied that we had not agreed to that, I was offerer a moderately-generous exit package. I took it without hesitation.

An hour after taking the offer, a colleage stopped me in the corridor and asked ”What happened, did you get some good news? You seem a lot calmer than usual.” I realized it was true - all my anxiety was gone. I felt relief.

Don’t let yourself get treated badly chasing a career. I’m back in a dev position elsewhere and couldn’t be happier.