u/Single-Assistant2878

I have posted before about my shitty job (it's shitty) but I need to stay for a few reasons.

(CONEXT: I am an executive personal assistant to a CEO)

Mostly, I am planning on leaving either way in January, so job hopping just does not make sense and I feel a responsibility to the team.

I work at a small fund, it has a very family office/startup vibe to it. All the names and some details are changed here for privacy. I have converted positions to terms that will be easily understood by this group.

Here is the team: Blake, Mark, Alex, Chloe, Susanne, Becca, Leah.

Blake == my boss

Mark == COO

Susanne == Head of People

Becca == VP

Cole == VP

Smith == Senior Manager

Claire == Senior Manager

Alex == Admin Assistant

When I am sitting with everyone but my boss, it is the dream team. Truly. I love everyone and have deep respect for them. There is not a person on my team I would not carry out of a burning building. My boss does not feel that way.

Example:

Today Cole needed 15 minutes to discuss a somewhat urgent topic that impacts the entire company (except for my boss). I came in at noon and told my boss "hey, Cole needs 15 with you. You have an hour. You okay if he comes in in 15?"

Boss says yes.

I walk Cole over. Boss is on a social call. I wave him down. He waves us away.

I sigh and reschedule to another time. Check with him. He says yes. Again, blows him off. Doesn't message either of us. Does not reschedule. Just blown off.

I finally get him in, but only at EOD and he has to stay late to talk to him.

Blake also regularly asks me to be at his house (normal for an EPA) around 7am and asks I do not leave until 7pm, tonight 8pm. I would be okay with this if there was work for me to do. There is often not. Not an issue, but my "call" time is actually 9am and sometimes I get these texts at 6:45 am (15 minutes before he wants me at his house -- I live about 10 minutes away).

My boss is also constantly emailing and texting in an obvious way when he is on team calls with us. He sometimes will pause for 2-3 MINUTES (yes, seriously) in the middle of him speaking to type a message or do something on his phone.

Our all hands for our company is TWO HOURS LONG. WE ARE 8 PEOPLE. WHAT. Because my boss takes so long to speak to us. As ------------ in ------ he ----- speaks --- like ----- this -----------.

My boss regularly refers to everyone who works for him as "idiots" -- he will say "have the idiots finished x?"

Everyone on the team knows this. And I sat down with Cole and asked if he had been apologized to. He sounded a bit dejected and said no. We talked it through. I repaired what I could, but I have a boss who is either completely socially unaware or cares and respects his employees time 0.

I will sometimes be in his office, working literally within inches of him (sometimes even behind him) and he will loudly pass gas and not even excuse himself. He also sometimes walks around the office without shoes.

Yes, I get that there is unlikely to be an easy fix for a lot of this. But there has to be some way for me to make my coworkers lives better. They should not have to live under leadership like this. I don't care if it makes my life worse if it makes theirs better.

Is there anything I can do here?

Should I just start standing up to him and telling him that he cannot treat folks like this?

I have posted before about my shitty job (it's shitty) but I need to stay for a few reasons.

Mostly, I am planning on leaving either way in January, so job hopping just does not make sense and I feel a responsibility to the team.

I work at a small fund, it has a very family office/startup vibe to it. All the names and some details are changed here for privacy. I have converted positions to terms that will be easily understood by this group.

Here is the team: Blake, Mark, Alex, Chloe, Susanne, Becca, Leah.

Blake == my boss

Mark == COO

Susanne == Head of People

Becca == VP

Cole == VP

Smith == Senior Manager

Claire == Senior Manager

Alex == Admin Assistant

When I am sitting with everyone but my boss, it is the dream team. Truly. I love everyone and have deep respect for them. There is not a person on my team I would not carry out of a burning building. My boss does not feel that way.

Example:

Today Cole needed 15 minutes to discuss a somewhat urgent topic that impacts the entire company (except for my boss). I came in at noon and told my boss "hey, Cole needs 15 with you. You have an hour. You okay if he comes in in 15?"

Boss says yes.

I walk Cole over. Boss is on a social call. I wave him down. He waves us away.

I sigh and reschedule to another time. Check with him. He says yes. Again, blows him off. Doesn't message either of us. Does not reschedule. Just blown off.

I finally get him in, but only at EOD and he has to stay late to talk to him.

Blake also regularly asks me to be at his house (normal for an EPA) around 7am and asks I do not leave until 7pm, tonight 8pm. I would be okay with this if there was work for me to do. There is often not. Not an issue, but my "call" time is actually 9am and sometimes I get these texts at 6:45 am (15 minutes before he wants me at his house -- I live about 10 minutes away).

My boss is also constantly emailing and texting in an obvious way when he is on team calls with us. He sometimes will pause for 2-3 MINUTES (yes, seriously) in the middle of him speaking to type a message or do something on his phone.

Our all hands for our company is TWO HOURS LONG. WE ARE 8 PEOPLE. WHAT. Because my boss takes so long to speak to us.

My boss regularly refers to everyone who works for him as "idiots" -- he will say "have the idiots finished x?"

Everyone on the team knows this. And I sat down with Cole and asked if he had been apologized to. He sounded a bit dejected and said no. We talked it through. I repaired what I could, but I have a boss who is either completely socially unaware or cares and respects his employees time 0.

Yes, I get that there is unlikely to be an easy fix for a lot of this. But there has to be some way for me to make my coworkers lives better. They should not have to live under leadership like this. I don't care if it makes my life worse if it makes theirs better.

Is there anything I can do here?

Saw this floating around and figured it was worth sharing here.

There's a leadership meetup happening in London on June 1st with Michael Lopp (aka Rands in Repose) the night before LeadDev kicks off, where he's apparently keynoting.

If you're not familiar, Rands has been writing about engineering leadership and management for like two decades and VP at Pinterest and Slack. His blog is one of those resources that gets passed around constantly in eng manager circles, and he wrote Managing Humans which a lot of people in the field swear by. Really thoughtful perspective on the human side of running engineering teams.

Seems like a solid excuse to get a head start on LeadDev week and actually meet some people before the conference chaos begins. Could be especially worth it if you're already planning to be there for the conference, but I do not think they are related.

Oh, and it's free as far as I can tell.

Here is the sign-up link: https://rsvp.randsinrepose.com/june-2026-meetup

I am a young EPA and, through my network, got an EPA gig right out of college at a private household. Left after two years and now work at a startup-eque VC firm, still an EPA.

My old boss was so smart and our brains just... worked the same way. Perhaps he also trusted me more?

So he could text me "Hey book me out of SF around noon Monday to EWR and out of EWR Thursday around 8am."

And I would just text back "done." he would know, obviously, that all the flight information was in his app and far easier to see/analyze than asking me to send him the flight numbers, etc.

Current boss has the same United app and asked me to book him -- so I did and just texted back -- yeah, I have you on the (time of flight) to (location) and the (time of flight back) to (location) out of (origin airport) on XYZ day, all good?

And he called me all pissy because I "did not include enough information." I explained it was in the app and he could easily access it, and he told me that he does not know how to use United's app and doesn't want to learn, and just hung up.

I am just tired of old white men who are not smart, like do not want to put any effort into forward thinking or having original thought or thinking for themselves.

ALSO THIS TRIP IS IN OCTOBER, and of COURSE I am going to give you a detailed itinerary before then.

Context: I am an EPA being paid about ~105k in NYC, about 2 years of exp and 3 years total admin exp. (plus a BS/BA, if that matters -- 4.0/honors/all the things) -- I am 23.

I will be using fake names for both of my bosses in this situation. One I will call Adam and the second Anne.

Adam is my "real" boss, he is the CEO of the VC firm I work for. Anne is his wife. I am an EPA, so I work for both.

Anne is kind of known for being a little neurotic. Two examples:

- we are a small office and if someone is on a zoom call, almost everyone can hear (but not the other person, just the person in office speaking). Ted* is on the phone with Anne trying to get a logistics thing sorted. Ted* has written the email for Anne, but Anne cannot get copy it copy and pasted correctly.

Ted* is trying to explain how and she just starts yelling at Ted* saying "you just figure out how to do this, I am insanely busy, way too busy for this." She yelled this so loud that everyone in the office could hear her, through the headset. And the neighboring office.

(It should be noted here, Anne does not have a job, and when I playfully asked Adam what she is so busy with he said "God if I know.")

- she asked me what dining options there were at a hospital she was going to and I explained that there were not any, but gave her a list of walkable options and also said I would be happy to bring her something. She responded (in all caps) "I DID NOT ASK YOU FOR THAT EXTR INFORMATION, DID I?"

So when it came time for her to ask me to price check flights (flights are in January), I told myself 10x "just prices, keep it simple, only what she asked for."

Her exact request was "We are thinking of flying on either x,y, or z, date to location and a, b, or c date home. Please send me the price of each flight coming and going on these dates, do not book anything, I just want to keep an eye on prices."

She gave me 4 different going/coming dates. So I send her a list of days that looks like this:

(Date)

(Airport)

(Airline)

(Take off Time)

(Time in air)

(Landing Time)

(Arrival Airport)

(Price) (~est. price for roundtrip).

For all four dates.

She called me furious that I had not just picked a date and told her the roundtrip price for that date.

So I fix and send to her.

Then she calls me furious that I did not include flight numbers. On the phone she said "are you serious? Are you a moron? Have you never booked flights for someone before?"

I explained that I had, but my previous boss just had me book the flight on his behalf using my best judgement for the days he gave me, then send him the confirmation with all the information and a detailed itinerary when the time came.

She said "oh my god, seriously, I could never trust you to do that especially after seeing all this."

Then I sat at my desk for 30 minutes and cried 😄.

It is not so much the yelling, thats whatever, I get it people handle emotions differently, but the feeling that I seem to be failing constantly and do not know why.

I have high-functioning autism, so I take instructions at face value. Same boss once asked me to bring papers to his house. I did. He was upset I hadn't brought them in an envelope, which confused me, because I got the papers from A to B without issue, and it was just to his home address.

My last household was run by someone who's also autistic. He'd say "we want to leave on X and return on Y" and that was that, I would send him the conf. extremely detailed itinerary, and that was all.

I pride myself on being really good at this job, and I just feel like I've been failing constantly, even when I'm genuinely trying to do the right thing.

I am stuck between leaving (probably better for my mental health) and staying (probably better for my resume, and honestly, I think the high standards here and learning to read these situations is a growth area for me and may be positive.)

I just broke into the VC space in this role, and I have only been here ~2 months. I would love to stay in VC going forward, and being so junior for an EA title, I don't want to job hop.

I am mostly leaning toward gritting my teeth and getting through it, and would love advice on how to do it.