Update: Since this story was published, former Nest employee Vibhu Norby wrote this Medium post about his positive experience at the company and his reaction to the recent negative reports. What happens when you cross a micromanaging chief with a multi-billion-dollar company? If the chief in question is Nest founder and CEO Tony Fadell , it’s a combination ripe to create a toxic work environment, according to reports in Business Insider , TechCrunch , and others.

Business Insider spoke to several former employees of Nest who revealed that the company’s internal culture forced them to work weekends for months, fostering an environment where it was “always crunch time” yet has recently been rocked by both product malfunctions, a safety recall, and the departure of key executive staff.

A thread on Hacker News following BI‘s report surfaced a new spate of complaints from current and former staff members. One said even though they didn’t work on hardware, “[Nest] is an org driven more by design and marketing than by QA and sound development and engineering. You always felt like you were failing and behind.” Another claimed to have “something like PTSD occasionally from getting yelled at and bullied by Tony Fadell almost literally every day while I was there,” and suggested that Larry Page should “take Tony out front of TGIF (the company’s general Q&A sessions) and fire him publicly” because his leadership is the root cause of the toxicity at Nest. Still another questioned if Alphabet’s upper management even cared about what was happening among Nest’s ranks, writing, “Isn’t leadership about doing the right thing. If people are getting abused, Alphabet/Google better do something about it.”

You always felt like you were failing and behind.

Fast Company’s previous reporting suggests that Fadell may have been given carte blanche to do as he pleased at the helm and Google/Alphabet’s executives actually encouraged it.

Fadell, who Fast Company once called the “$3.2 billion man” in reference to Google’s acquisition of his smart thermostat company in early 2014, is an Apple veteran who led the teams creating the first iPhones and iPods. When Google bought Nest, Fast Company’s Austin Carr reported that Fadell brought with him over 100 former Apple staffers in effort to maintain a high standard of design while taking advantage of Google’s machine learning and operational efficiency.

At the time they informed “a shocked audience” of existing employees about the acquisition, there was a Q&A with Google’s Larry Page. One asked about what Page thought of Nest’s product road map, and Page reportedly replied: “Keep doing what you’re doing, and do it as fast as you possibly can.”

Fast Company’s report details how Fadell’s reputation for being intense, very animated, and prone to raise his voice (not necessarily in anger) spilled over to push the Nest team. Carr wrote, “A meme is floating around the office comparing Fadell’s style to that of the Mountain in Game of Thrones, the towering brawler known for beating his opponents to a pulp. But surviving as a startup consumer electronic brand requires just that sort of attitude.” Another anecdote reveals: “When one employee failed to live up to his standards, Fadell ordered a manager to fire the employee, saying, “You gotta Glock Glock that dude,” as he mimed shooting off a handgun. He was joking, but unapologetic.”