In our startup it seemed to be a case of the CEO wanting to be "in charge". He could have gone for showing competence, gaining the respect and trust of enginee

In our startup it seemed to be a case of the CEO wanting to be "in charge". He could have gone for showing competence, gaining the respect and trust of engineering, and being a source of understanding and compassion to a group that was working crazy hours trying to meet impossible schedules. Instead he decided to beat us up. It did not go well. I was gone within a year, as were a number of other people. The company kept making crappy decisions, got bought for a song, and eventually my sweat equity (and real invested dollars) ended up as 17 shares of Oracle (fuck me, I hate that company).