It's interesting that Julius Schwartz also cultivated an image as an imperious crabby boss. See JLA 123-124 as an example of that, where he and writers Bates and Maggin are portrayed in the story, and Schwartz is portrayed yelling at and berating Bates and Maggin for their storytelling.
I met Schwartz at San Diego Comic Con in 1987, and he likewise was a very nice guy in person. And also like Shooter, he was also a very big guy, well over 6 feet tall. I met him and Karen Berger at the same time.

I never met Shooter, I've only seen print interviews of him. Needless to say, I have a good opinion of Shooter's tenure at Marvel. He gave a much needed editorial unification to a Marvel that (1978) was, prior to Shooter's tenure, unraveling.

I think the hostility toward Shooter came from guys like Marv Wolfman and Roy Thomas, who each had a line of books within the company that were their own separate empires, as writer/editors. And Shooter took that away from them.
Shooter's complaint was that the CONAN and TOMB OF DRACULA comics and magazines had stagnated and needed a new direction. In both cases, I agree, that every few years, you need to open a new direction, to stimulate new readership that drops off over a long run.

The one title I disagreed with, that Shooter regarded as stagnating, was MASTER OF KUNG FU (issues 102-120) under Moench and Gene Day in 1981-1982 that I think was undergoing a creative renaissance, and I think was at a new peak in quality. But I can also see that it was revisiting a lot of stories that had been done in the Moench/Gulacy run 5 to 7 years prior, such as a re-match between Shang Chi and the Tiger, or between Shang Chi and Fu Manchu.

From the time Shooter was writing ADVENTURE COMICS/Legion in the mid/late 1960's, he showed that he had an exceptional business sense, and a finger on the pulse of what his readership wanted. Sales figures demonstrate that.
And it was precisely at the time Thomas left SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN that I began reading, with issue 60, the last issue Thomas scripted, a one-issue story that I'm sure Shooter pushed for. And the issue after that Michael Fleisher became the regular writer, and were all one-issue stories from that point forward.
As compared to the Thomas run, that for years had been smotheringly long adaptation after adaptation of L. Sprague De Camp Conan novels. The new direction is what got me on board. For about 100 SSOC issues beginning at that point, it was mostly one-issue stories.
As soon as Thomas came back in 1991 (SAVAGE SWORD 191), the book went back to lengthy multi-issue stories again. And the magazine died shortly after that began.