He’s a prick. But he’s their prick.

That’s the prevailing sentiment inside the glass-and-steel fortress of Matthews’ latest venture, a place where the air smells faintly of overpriced espresso and looming burnout. To the outside world—the people who track his every erratic tweet and late-night LinkedIn manifesto—Matthews is a walking PR liability. He’s the guy who once tanked a $200 million acquisition because the buying CEO wore a tie he didn't like. He’s the guy who thinks a forty-hour work week is a "part-time hobby."

Publicly, the narrative is easy. We love to hate the high-functioning egomaniac. We dissect his $14 million "retention package" like it’s a moral failing rather than just another line item in a bloated venture capital budget. But step inside the engineering bays, and the frequency changes. The cynicism softens. The people actually building the stuff don't care about his abrasive personality or his penchant for firing off "Urgent" Slack messages at 3:00 AM on a Sunday.

They love him. They really do. And it’s not because he’s nice.

Tech is currently a graveyard of "nice" leaders who presided over massive layoffs while whispering about "family values." Matthews doesn't do that. He’s honest in a way that hurts. If your code is garbage, he tells you it’s garbage. He doesn't wrap it in a "growth opportunity" sandwich. In an industry currently drowning in corporate speak and HR-approved platitudes, that kind of bluntness feels like oxygen.

There’s a specific kind of friction that comes with working under a guy like this. Take the "Version 4.2" disaster last spring. The board wanted to ship a half-baked product to hit a quarterly target. Matthews didn't just push back; he essentially held the company’s primary server rack hostage until they agreed to a six-week delay to fix the latency issues. It cost the firm a projected $8 million in short-term gains. It also saved the engineers from a month of hellish bug-patching and public embarrassment.

That’s why they’re loyal. He’s a heat shield.

The "teammates"—the senior devs, the product managers, the ones who actually move the needle—see a version of Matthews that never makes it into the glossy profiles. They see the guy who stays in the trenches during the 48-hour "crunch" periods, not because he has to, but because he can’t stand not being the smartest person in the room. It’s an ego thing, sure, but it’s an ego that benefits the collective. When the vultures from the private equity firm start circling, looking for "redundancies" to cut, Matthews is the one who tells them to go pound sand. He protects his people, mostly because he views them as extensions of his own brilliance.

It’s a toxic dynamic if you look at it from a healthy distance. But nobody in the high-stakes software game is looking for health. They’re looking for wins. They’re looking for the high of shipping something that actually works, and they know Matthews is the only one with enough sheer, unadulterated arrogance to clear the path for them.

The critics point to his $2,000 sneakers and his refusal to look interns in the eye. They call him a relic of a "bro-culture" that we’re supposed to be moving past. They aren't wrong, exactly. He’s a nightmare to manage and a headache to market. But the people sitting at the desks next to him don't want a manager or a mascot. They want a bulldozer.

He’s expensive, he’s rude, and he’ll probably burn the whole thing down in three years just to see what the ashes look like. But right now, he’s the only one making sure the engineers get their bonuses and the product stays fast.

Is it a sustainable way to run a company? Probably not. Does it make for a miserable work-life balance for anyone with a toddler or a hobby? Absolutely. But in a sector where everyone is faking a smile while sharpening their knives, there’s a perverse comfort in a guy who just carries the knife in his hand.

The board might hate him, and the journalists definitely do, but the guys in the basement would follow him into a burning building. They’d probably even bring the matches.

The only question left is what happens when he finally decides he doesn't need a team anymore.