I can't be the only person who wants to know what company could have abused an employee like this, if only to never apply to them or help support whatever godawful business they're trying to run.
Honestly I don't think they're bad. I have a lot of respect for a lot of the dev team and the product itself, which is why I'm so vague on details. Like I said in the post, I'm fairly private and didn't bring much up with anyone until the end, so I don't think anyone understood the situation.
Actually one of the things that was encouraging during the past few months was remarks from former employees that [CEO] is a dick, but [Company] pay is what makes it worth it.
If I were a dev there I would start looking for another job -- a CEO that can string an individual along like that probably has no qualms about screwing other people. It is only a matter of time before (s)he does it again and fires someone for being "disloyal" So don't look at it as a fault with you as you just happened to be the person it happened to on that day.
Also for a laugh / attitude change take a look at this flowchart [1] which is geared to graphic designers who always get asked to do work for free. In your case substitute "intern" in there and "reduced salary" for free. You've got a lot of valuable skills and people should pay accordingly.
Don't be afraid to ask for a reasonable salary, even if it was 2x what you were making before. While this sounds easy to do, practice doing it with some friends in a mock interview. You want to be prepared when going in for an interview and not asking for the right salary is a big mistake a lot of programmers make as they want to avoid confrontation. Become comfortable with asking it and you'll get what you want.
It's totally possible there are many excellent people working at that company, but the boss is pure evil. It's pretty clear to you too that he's the one being disloyal, and a lot more than just that. He screwed you because he could, and he lied to you about it for months. Feel no loyalty to the guy.
That said, revenge can only hurt you. You need a job, and unless you have a legal case against him, there's nothing you can do about him right now. You need to think about you and your family, not about the shitty boss.
If you don't name names you might as well be condoning what happened to you, and damning other people to the same fate. The only way to stop this sort of thing happening is for CEOs to realise there is a very big downside risk of being outed as an unethical business.
That's great if your life doesn't hang in the balance. Maybe if he gets another job first, but naming names, even if it is for great justice is not going to help him one little bit right now.
I'm not comfortable in general about the idea of labeling people based on their neurological makeup, unless one is in a therapeutic/psychiatric setting.
In a relationship or work setting, people should be mainly judged by their actions. Hurtful things should not be ignored and people should be made responsible for their actions. I agree it's good to be aware of typical pathological personality types so people who end up in relationships with them have some framework to work with their problems and even identify a bad case and leave.
Sure, taking advantage of people is a thing that comes easily to psychopaths. But there are lots of other personality disorders and ways to act like one.
Was the CEO actually lying or just trying to squirm out of an emotionally uncomfortable position for as long as possible? The situation sucks for the OP and there are absolutely horrible employers, even psychopaths out there - but really, there's not enough data to make those claims even if you are an experienced therapist or a psychiatrist.
> I'm not comfortable in general about the idea of labeling people based on their neurological makeup, unless one is in a therapeutic/psychiatric setting.
The setting you're in has no bearing on whether people actually differ greatly based on their neurological makeup, though, so I don't see how that matters.
We're not on the same page here, but that's to be expected, even if you're actually not a psychopath yourself.
But what the world really needs to know is that because the difference between humans and psychopaths is so counter-intuitively vast, even seemingly small things are strong signs that someone is a psychopath.
For example, if someone keeps talking over you, he's probably a psychopath. Because he has no respect for you as a human being, he'll just casually interrupt you whenever he feels like saying something.
An actual human being wouldn't do that, because he naturally respects you as another human being.
You can't tell that someone is a psychopath without having actual psychiatric credentials and actually performing diagnostics on the patient.
"For example, if someone keeps talking over you, he's probably a psychopath."
I'm pretty sure that it does not suffice as evidence.
You're focusing on the wrong thing - on the specific action and not on the feeling it generates. A non professional individual seldom has enough experience on personality disorders to tell what exactly is wrong. This means collecting anecdotal evidence has little value unless one knows the subject really intimately. But one can trust ones feelings.
The key to identifying difficult people is first realizing that the interactions with the person leave you mostly feeling worse. Not in a single interaction, mind you, but over time. That is probably a good time to read a "how to deal with difficult people" guidebook and assess ones situation.
The diagnostics part should be left to professionals.
> The key to identifying difficult people is first realizing that the interactions with the person leave you mostly feeling worse.
But you're not a psychiatric professional so how could you possibly identify "difficult people" like that? :p
Even if it happens over and over again with some specific individual, you're still not in a position to conclude anything based on that, because you lack psychiatric credentials!
THIS right here is the part that drives me up a wall. Earlier in my (admittedly still pretty short) career, I'd probably have done dev work for free, if only to get some "official" experience and work with some devs I could learn from. But it's an entirely different situation when someone is working for far less than they're worth because they're being lied to. That's not a CEO giving someone a leg up despite lackluster credentials, that's just a CEO stealing labor under false pretenses.
