Earlier this week, news broke that Aaron Ehasz, co-creator of Netflix’s The Dragon Prince, has a history of being an abusive boss. Several former subordinates of Ehasz have taken to Twitter, telling their experiences.
Diandra Lasrado (@Mesaanasedai on twitter) brought up a time when he had been brought in to Riot games where she was currently working. Her superiors told her that in addition to being an editor, she was to help him transition from tv/film writing to video game writing. She discusses feeling sympathy for him at first but quickly noticing questionable behaviour such as Ehasz bringing his children into the workplace and assuming various female employees would be willing to drop what they were doing to watch them.
Although Diandra’s job is that of an Editor, Ehasz apparently treated her like a personal assistant rather than a coworker. Lasrado stating that he would try to make her schedule his in house meetings, personally remind him of appointments and arrange things to his convenience. According to Lasrado, Ehasz was often dismissive of her input, even quoted as saying, “Editing should not get in the way of writing.”
This behaviour continued, with Diandra trying her best to power through and keep a level head. However, Ehasz behaviour continued to escalate, such as Ehasz lying about moving Lasrado from a contracted position into full time only to fire her after her work had been completed then telling her he would give her a recommendation on Linkedin but never doing so.
When questioned about his choice to let her go, Ehasz seemed to avoid Lasrado before she was finally able to get him to answer her calls. When asked why he had told her she was going to be hired only for her to be let go, Ehasz responded by telling her it wasn’t his decision and that he never told her that. He also commented, “You need to be less. Who you are is too much.”, but also told her than he would help her going forward from that point.
It wasn’t until years later that Lasrado found out that Ehasz had been telling Lasrado’s friends and former coworkers his version of the events without her knowledge. Including an incident where Ehasz had been working on a project that crossed over with work that Lasrado’s husband was involved in. He contacted her husband directly specifically to tell him his version of what happened between him and Diandra. Several similar situations occurred, including one where Ehasz had a chance to speak to her directly but avoided her in favour of discussing the situation with several of her friends. His version of the story eventually shifting from the matter being a misunderstanding to saying that Lasrado being belligerent and threatening towards him.
We urge you to read her accounts linked above as well as here to get her full perspective as well as those by others affected by Ehasz’s abusive behaviour.
