> Let alone my question of "Why would you want to be like that to other people?"
Did you actually ask that? Did you get a response?
Yes, he kinda paused and then talked around it about how it is his job.
But what was weird was it absolutely wasn't any kind of company policy, nobody else was quite like that.
It was possible I might end up working for him at some point so I didn't push the issue. Not that it helped... he didn't like me much at all as time went on, mostly I showed some level of independence. Fortunately I was pretty well insulated from him and his efforts to complain about me were pretty childish / ineffective.
I worked for a company who acquired another company. Acquired company was bonkers dysfunctional. First day I met them one of the managers bragged about how hard he worked his people and how many would leave.
I just didn't get it. What good does that do?
He didn't get more out of his people, quite the opposite, his team didn't perform well.
He was unpleasant to just be around, almost anytime, his employees clearly hated him. I'm not super social but I at least like to work with people that ... I want to be around to some extent.
Let alone my question of "Why would you want to be like that to other people?"
It was weird because it was one of the only times I encountered this issue.