That all could well be true, and altho I feel like Michaels could certainly be the stereotypical 'pitiless showbiz boss' at times, I do get the sense that based on what the heavyweight comedians have said about him (starting with the very first cast), that he's arguably a better media boss than most.

If I understand correctly, he's moreso been a guy under fairly unique pressure from the bosses above to consistently deliver ratings, and comedy isn't exactly like that, and he's pushed back when he can in a lot of cases, including going to bat for various comedians.

The firing of Norm MacDonald is debatable either way, of course.

Me, I don't have a 'finished' opinion of Michaels, but I want to say that he's a better boss and human than you'd usually expect in his position, which is yeah-- the ability to fuck with underlings lives in various ways.

That all said, the various realities of what new hires need to do in order to get a proper audition go back to... I don't know when. Probably to the dawn of civilisation. So I wouldn't say that's off the table there, with the female (or possibly male) comedians not being willing to talk about that unless Lorne Michaels was a complete monster like Weinberg.

(sorry my lack of proofreading, but I'm not feeling too well)

But they portrayed him as kind of dumb too, it just sat kind of weird. The guy who still runs it and his assistant came out as super heroes though, lol.