As someone working at a consumer hardware company, it's easy to see how you can get bogged down by details and micromanagement, like Tony Fadell seems to have done at Nest. Hardware seems to involve so many more things to focus on and perfect when compared to a SaaS product.
Its hard to put any credibility into scandalous stories like this because there's always 2 sides to a story.
If this was really true, I can't imagine why anyone with multiple options to work elsewhere would tolerate his BS.
Personally, I don't care even a bit about Nest. My $30 non programmable thermostat is just perfect. If his head is bloated over that invention, he needs to get it checked.
I used to work there, not very long ago. When the last HN thread happened where someone mentioned PTSD from Tony's yelling, I was thinking to myself 'wow that's stretching it'. A day later I realized I had been in the same boat all along, with mini-Tony's on my team (boy were they worshipped as stars..), and the only thing that had prevented me from accepting that PTSD remark was association as I still worked there. I quit soon after and while I have a new job with a nice team, it has taken quite a bit of therapy to get over the scars from micromanagement, f-bomb language and other artefacts.
Tony is most definitely /not/ a leader. Firsthand experience here from what amounted to an attempted takeover of another team inside of Google. He came, said our work was shit, said we were going to start from scratch, and shortly after, lost nearly the entire software division.
which it to say: don't these type of pieces usually come out as part of a structured public relations campaign that culminates in an announcement that the company is for sale?
How many people are working no the nest thermostat and how many years will they take to finish it? I haven't seen anything new come from them in a while.