My first PI in grad school was a monster . My project was related to epigenetic regulation and required consultation at his urging , I might add with 2 experts in the field at the university . I ' d consult with them , etc . and come up with a plan and run it by my PI . He ' d say it was fine and then I ' d do some experiments , present data , and he would lose his shit because That ' s not the project you ' re supposed to be working on , or the experiments you ' re supposed to be doing . Why did you talk to these people ? They don ' t do good science and they don ' t know what they ' re talking about ! So to fix this he would sit down and write out a detailed plan of what I was to do in a given week . We would meet at the start of the next week and go over the data and he would once more repeat This isn ' t what you were supposed to do ! Why did you do this ? You ' re wasting time , reagents , etc . This all despite the fact I had done exactly what he said . And we ' d repeat this cycle he ' d write out a detailed list of what to do , I ' d do exactly that , and he ' d have a fit because what I had done wasn ' t what he actually wanted done . The micromanaging got severe and so did his hostility . He got obsessed with me keeping highly specific hours and would wait to personally ensure that I was there , or send someone from the front office to check on me later found out he was bribing them with cash to keep tabs on me specifically . When one morning I came out to find my car ' s tires had been slashed as had several other cars his response was Good . Other PIs knew what was going on and one of them was sort of my stepmentor and kind of helped me keep sane and try to navigate this . One of them was on my thesis committee . Fast forward to my quals . I had to write up a thesis proposal and submit it to my committee and then present on it orally and answer questions related . I sent my thesis proposal to my PI about 23 months before the scheduled date . Never heard back from him , so I sent in my proposal to the committee with the minimum 2 weeks review time . A week before the scheduled exam my PI showed up in a rage and tore apart my proposal and said it wasn ' t even for the right project and demanded I rewrite a new , unrelated one , and give it to the committee right away . With help of the academic advisor , I took the next week off from lab to prepare and rewrite . I didn ' t rewrite , cause fuck that shit . You think my committee would have accepted that and passed me ? Nope . I presented what I had previously submitted to the committee and easily passed my qualifying exam . The committee recommended I find another mentor because they did not like anything they had heard about my PI through the grapevine and my stepmentor . The next day in lab my PI was shaking with rage . I ' ve never seen anyone that angry before . Edit to clarify He was furious that I passed and didn ' t know anything about what the committee had told me . Things did not go well . Everything got way worse for me and life was a living hell . Then my friend , we ' ll call D , was about to graduate from the lab . He wanted to join a specific lab that was well funded , well respected , and a smart career move for his postdoc and we all knew it , but Monster PI had already decided that when D graduated he was going to do his postdoc in PI ' s lab . Monster PI had a feeling something was up and would make comments in lab meetings about D ' s upcoming postdoctoral work while the rest of us just cringed and the tension was thick and palpable . Finally , D got up the courage to tell Monster PI his graduation and postdoc plans . Let ' s just say that the screaming was so loud , PIs from the third and fourth floors of the building were coming downstairs to see who was getting murdered . The ultimatum was issued D could only graduate with a PhD from Monster PI ' s lab if he had arranged a postdoc appointment that Monster PI approved of . There was a list of 10 labs given , none of which had published more than once the last 5 years . As shit got worse for me and then this happened , I talked to my academic advisor and the director of another institute within the university and then quit the lab and within 23 weeks found another one . Everything was great . At my 6 month progress report , I ' d done more work and progress in 6 months in my new lab than I had done in 2 . 5 years of the first lab . My experiences combined with those of D ' s led to my graduate program removing Monster PI from the list of affiliated PIs and they refused to send him any more students from our program and advised another program also remove him because he was abusing another student in their program . I could go into more about what an awful work environment Monster PI ' s lab and department were , but I think that sums up the relevant details . Oh , and D and the department ' s safety officer also told me at a later point in time that Monster PI was trying to force me out , it wasn ' t just some paranoid stressinduced thought I had at the time . tldr PI micromanaged and got mad when assigned work was done because that ' s not what I told you to do even though it was exactly what he had assigned . I felt like I was being sabotaged and later this was partly confirmed . PI had a rage fit when I passed my quals and later had a bigger rage fit when a graduating student wanted to postdoc in another lab . Bonus story from my friend ' s lab , which was also awful but in different ways Friend ' s lab had a PI called N and a postdoc called C . C made a huge discovery that got published in Nature and was the basis for all future work in the lab , including several huge grants , and propelled N and his lab to fame . A few years later , C was working on a grant to get funding for her own lab . N took the draft he had seen and submitted it as his own . C quit science .