It sounded like the meetings and rigid work hours were troublesome, but the main thing was the boss's constant insults. That's not professional behavior, and should absolutely have been brought to HR's attention. (It makes me thankful to always have had such good bosses.)
I agree, the author could have done many things better. There has to have been a way out which would have preserved a good professional relationship with coworkers and his recruiter. It's easy to see, though, how one might be so disheartened by the organization's (perceived) failure to recognize such toxic behavior by a manager, and so just feel like walking away was the best thing to do.
I've always chosen the "tough it out" strategy when dealing with bad management and/or toxic social environment at work, but over the long run I can't say it's done me any good. Those jobs never worked out no matter how much effort I put in, and in two cases the psychological stress was significant enough to degrade my productivity for over a year after leaving.
From what I can see, if you're a new hire stuck with a bad manager, your best bet really is to bail out as fast as you can. HR is not your friend, no matter what they tell you, and you're simply not going to win a fight with your manager unless you have connections and an in-company reputation strong enough to bring down pressure from above. Perhaps the author of this article could have chosen a just slightly more graceful way of leaving, but I just can't fault his decision to pull the ripcord as soon as he realized the plane was on its way down.
I agree, the author could have done many things better. There has to have been a way out which would have preserved a good professional relationship with coworkers and his recruiter. It's easy to see, though, how one might be so disheartened by the organization's (perceived) failure to recognize such toxic behavior by a manager, and so just feel like walking away was the best thing to do.