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Comment by xyzzy_plugh | Hacker News Reader

I've had friends work for him and they described him as a hard driving, awful tyrant and generally an asshole. He's clearly intelligent but his personality seems like a bit of a tire fire. The Forstall thing makes more sense in that context, at least to me.

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I think it may also depend on your role in the company. I knew someone who worked in marketing at Nest both before and after Fadell's departure. We met a little bit after he'd left and they were struggling a bit because they had essentially felt that they just needed to tailor their work to his taste and it didn't really matter what anyone else thought. Things got harder without that strong personality at the top and more people to please (with arguably worse taste). They were perhaps just short of a true believer, but they did have a lot of respect for him. On the other hand, it didn't seem like he drove the marketing team nearly as hard as the engineers. The media reports that followed his departure described something bordering on a reign of terror that my friend didn't exactly deny but didn't seem to have been subjected to directly.

I wonder if Fadell is similar in his own way, from what it sounds like, Nest was a very top-down, stringent environment, which is why it didn't play well with the more open and casual Google after acquisition.

Ah I was referring to Fadell but I understand the ambiguity now.

Ah. Then that proves my suspicions about Nest.

I wonder how Forstall is as a leader, then.

I’ve heard the same about people who worked directly with Fadell.

However, your last comment made me LOL because Forstall had the same reputation!

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