After the 6-month reign of my tyrant manager, I finally built up the courage to take matters into my own hands and leverage myself out from under him.

I went out and got a job offer that was a huge promotion from my current position. With that in my bag, I gave the team an ultimatum.

1. I’ll report to anyone else but the tyrant (the janitor is easier to work with)
2. Title me Client Architect to clearly delineate my scope and responsibility from the tyrant

No salary bump or PTO extension required, just an org chart shift. I felt it was fair and the least that I could do, given that I could see the damage the tyrant was doing to the company.

This is why equity-incentives work (with the right employees). Instead of walking for the other job where another tyrant could be lurking, I stuck with it and dealt with the problem at hand with the larger goal (IPO or acquisition) in my mind.

Given the scarce resources of our startup, it was clear that I’d have to find a way to work with the tyrant. So I proposed that we work through specs only, and not have any managerial relationship whatsoever. The tyrant had complained that he wanted a more product-focused role, so I thought this would be a win-win. He handles product, I handle implementation.

Surprisingly, the tyrant resigned with a terse email the day after the above changes were made.