
Ben Horowitz: A Good Place to Work - louhong
http://bhorowitz.com/2012/08/18/a-good-place-to-work/
======
edw519
_As a result, if Tim doesn’t meet with each one of his employees in the next
24 hours, I will have no choice but to fire him and to fire you. Are we
clear?_

You get exactly one chance to threaten me. That was it. I quit.

(Honestly, all this management style does is ensure that the only people
you'll be able to keep are the ones who will put up with your shit. Not a very
good recipe for building a great company, huh?)

~~~
jt2190
Really? As a VP, this is your reaction? The CEO, your boss, just told you that
it was his number one priority to make sure that the employees felt like it
was a great place to work, and that your direct report employee was failing
miserably to follow this policy, and you didn't seem to notice, even though it
was covered by the basic management training provided by the company?

Meta: I hate that a silly comment like this gets so much attention only
because it's the first comment.

(edit: By "first" I meant top of the page.)

~~~
potatolicious
Are you managing monkeys or are you managing highly competent human beings?
Are your employees actually any _good_?

The whole exchange stank of condescension and patronization. This is a high-
level exec at a company, his basic intelligence doesn't need to be questioned
- he did _not_ need the principle of 1:1's to be explained to him as if he
were a child.

One of his direct reports is violating a very clear, established policy.
"Steve" needs to fix it, pronto, and that's all that needed to be
communicated. The whole pointlessly patronizing "lesson" in business and the
direct threat to Steve's job was entirely unnecessary. It's unproductive and
just plain power-posturing.

It's only necessary if your workforce is consisted entirely of slack-jawed
yokels that need to be hand-held through the very job you hired them to do. If
that's the case, you should fire yourself for having created an organization
full of slack-jawed yokels.

Side note, from the article:

> _"it’s personally very important to me that Opsware be a good company. It’s
> important to me that the people who spend 12 to 16 hours/day here, which is
> most of their waking life, have a good life"_

Protip: if you want to have a good place to work, and your employees to have a
good life, _don't have 12-16 hour days_.

~~~
JanezStupar
I am willing to assume that the whole aggressive attitude stems not only from
this encounter. I am willing to assume that it wasn't first time that Steve
failed (for whatever reason) to make Ben happy.

Thus I agree that the whole rant was needless. If Steve was a repeat offender,
then he and his underboss should just be fired on the spot and the reason for
the termination should be explained to the rest of the company to reinforce
the importance of the core values.

If this was one of Steve's within margin of error blunders, he should be
explained the rules again and probably made charge of inspecting the status of
adherence to this particular rule by the people within company.

This is my take.

------
crag
_"When Steve came into my office I asked him a question: “Steve, do you know
why I came to work today?”_

 _“Why did I bother waking up? Why did I bother coming in? If it was about the
money, couldn’t I sell the company tomorrow and have more money than I ever
wanted? I don’t want to be famous, in fact just the opposite. ”_

 _Well, then why did I come to work.”_

And on and on... Please...

My impression would've been, "why is this guy treating me like a 5 year old".

My approach (IMHO) would've been something like:

Me: "Steve, one of your managers isn't following company policy concerning 1
on 1 meets".

Steve: "Oh?".

I give Steve the managers name, "You'll take care of it?"

Steve: "Of course."

Me: "Thank you."

I give Steve the benefit of the doubt that he'll deal with it. No need for me,
the CEO, to micromanage. Now if Steve doesn't deal with it, that's another
matter.

~~~
pbiggar
There's also "Steve, you need to spend some time and diagnose how this
happened. How did you not notice? Why wasn't it Tim's number one priority? How
do we fix this situation, check that it isn't happening in the rest of the
organization, and make sure it doesn't happen again?"

~~~
alberich
It is really weird. For six months the CEO didn't notice anything bad in the
work place, no bad things happening that would make him think that is
something is going very wrong.

Than, by chance, he notices that one of his employes isn't doing something he
asked, for six months. Then he thinks "wow, this guy is ruining my work" and
threatens to fire two workers if they don't fix it in 24 hours.

From any perspective, the OP came off looking really bad, and I doubt that
people will feel better in such a work place... especially when word spreads
that if you make mistakes you can be fired in 24 hours.

~~~
aercolino
> For six months the CEO didn't notice anything bad in the work place...

Both he didn't put in place any controls and the required task was mostly
useless. In such a situation I'd fire the CEO, because he mandates employees
to waste company time. Each one hour 1:1 useless meeting wastes two hours!

------
TheBoff
Am I the only one who thinks wanting your employees to work at your company
"12-16 hours a day" is surely not a mark of a good company. If I worked 16
hours a day, I know I'd not be having enough sleep to do useful work. I think
I'd rather work with well balanced human beings, rather than obsessive,
robotic workaholics...

~~~
aangjie
Nope that was the first thing that struck me as odd about the post.

~~~
rimantas
Same here. Overall the piece left me with impression that Ben is a horrible
boss and manager and his company is not a good place to work.

------
sridharvembu
We have two rules in Zoho Corp:

1\. To evaluate a team member's contribution fairly, every manager has to
_really_ know the person well. In other words, no "fly-by-night" form-filling
performance reviews!

2\. No negatives surprises during a performance review.

These two together mandate that every manager spend a great deal of time with
the people who work for them _and_ bring up any negatives on a timely basis so
the team member has an opportunity to correct them rather than being inflicted
a negative surprise.

So I agree on the importance of regular 1-on-1's. Having said that, I am not
sure I really like the tone of Ben's conversation with his manager. First of
all, I find this yes/no style insulting to an intelligent person on the other
side, and second, if the managers in question were valuable to the
organization (which should be the presumption here), it is odd to think the
CEO would threaten to fire them so readily. I would not expect an intelligent
and self-respecting person to work under those terms - I know I would not.

~~~
crag
I (and my partner) have one rule: respect.

Everyone is treated with respect. I personally would've never "talk down" to
an employee like this Ben guy did. And frankly, we expect our employees to act
them same (and most do - the ones who don't don't last long here).

~~~
slurgfest
So if your managers are totally failing the employees they are managing... you
cannot seriously correct them?

But presumably you expect the employees to take serious correction. So this
really reduces to an unspoken code that _management_ shouldn't be treated this
way.

~~~
wpietri
You can correct somebody respectfully. I think Ben could have had exactly the
same outcome without coming across as a jerk.

I'm not judging Ben either way here; sometimes a situation requires being a
jerk. But the more managing I do, the more I believe that if a manager has to
be a jerk it's because they've messed something up elsewhere.

------
rhizome
I'm no management type, and maybe that's the difference here, but I would not
have lectured this guy like that. As a perpetual underling, being subjected to
a litany of leading and loaded questions to which one is expected only to
"yes/no," in an gladhanding way, I read this post and thought "look, just get
to the point." That's not managing, it's haranguing, and it's not good for
people. Well it _is_ managing, but in that 50s-60s style. Is this what Opsware
is going for?

"Diplomacy is the art of letting someone else have your way."

------
tgrass
_Clearly, my authority alone was not enough to get them to do what I wanted._

If you want to learn how to manage people, accept that authority is an
illusion. If you realize people do what you'd like not because of your
position but because of who you and are and how you act, you'll discover much
more effective means of leading.

Clearly we respond to authority for authority's sake. Benevolent dictator and
all that. But if your leadership style depends on your subordinate's
perception of your power, it says more about you than it does about your
subordinate.

~~~
smacktoward
I wouldn't say that "authority" is an illusion, but it's absolutely true that
(except for a small amount) it doesn't come from your position in the
hierarchy. It comes from how you act and what you do.

I've written a bit about this here, calling it "credibility capital":
<http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2003/03/where_leaders_f_1/>

~~~
tgrass
For the record, I wouldn't say as a single declarative that "authority is an
illusion"...I suggested that one accepts that it is. There is a preponderance
of evidence demonstrating that we are quite capable of accepting things that
aren't true. I'm merely proposing that doing so gives you another perspective
on the source of your authority.

------
EvanAnderson
Wouldn't Ben have known that the manager wasn't conducting the mandatory "1:1"
meetings with employees if Ben had regular "1:1" meetings with the next lower
tier of management? The double standard irks me. Lead by example, not by
intimidation.

~~~
spydertennis
Not necessarily. Sounds like Ben was doing 1:1s with Steve and Steve wasn't
aware of the problem. If Ben never thought to ask Steve it wouldn't have come
up. As CEO (with 100s of things to think about) its entirely understandable
that Ben forgot to ask Steve whether his managers were having 1:1s for 6
months.

~~~
ryanmolden
I believe by 'next lower tier' he was talking about Steve's reports.
Realistically the CEO can't meet with everyone in the entire company
constantly, but it is a very good idea to have occasional 'skip-level'
meetings with your direct report's direct reports (and in a reasonably
hierarchical company the number of direct reports to a VP is likely small
enough that Ben could do this once and awhile). If not you risk forming a view
of the world that is fed entirely by your direct reports, who are more than
likely telling you what they think you want to hear, which may or may not
correspond with reality as seen at the lower levels of the orginization. It
seems nowhere in Ben's 1:1's with Steve did he ever inquire about Steve's
1:1's with his reports, or if he did Steve never bothered to do the same with
his reports, otherwise this oversight would have likely surfaced far before 6
months of no 1:1's had passed.

------
bhorowitz
It seems that most people on the thread skipped most of the post and focused
entirely on the firing part, so I'll clarify what I wrote.

First, the post isn't about 1:1s. 1:1s were just our way of doing things at
Opsware. Other companies have other ways of doing things. It was about whether
or not people who worked at the company received any guidance, context, or
feedback.

Second, the point of the conversation was to focus the executive on what the
environment was like for employees (as opposed to managers and executives). In
general, I believe that is important to optimize for the feelings of the
people doing the work rather than the people doing the management. If you
optimize for managers, then you get what you get.

Finally, 1:1s were a huge point of emphasis in the company from the initial
training through everything that we discussed as a team. Not ever meeting with
your people in this context basically meant that you cared nothing about your
employees. If you read the entire post, you should get that.

Having said that, for whatever reason I didn't make things clear to every
manager in the company (my fault). The point of the conversation was clarity.
The firing comment was to emphasize the importance of the employees vs. the
executives.

It's fine with me if you hate it, but you should probably try to understand it
first. Finally, fwiw, I still talk to Steve every week and he's done extremely
well in his career. This did turn out to be clarifying for him and we'd worked
together for 7 years at the time of the conversation, so there was quite a bit
of context.

Finally, there were 600 people in the company at the time and only one manager
that wasn't having regular 1:1s. It's interesting to me that most people on
this thread think that it's not a serious matter to let people come to work
with zero guidance or feedback. In fact, it's just fine. What's really bad is
making clear what's acceptable and unacceptable management. Hmmm.

~~~
flipside
I totally got what you were saying, communicating the why, the purpose of the
company is essential in order to be great.

Unfortunately, your post triggered a HN immune response because the tactics
you cited don't work with everyone. Just one of the current limitations of
public writing, you can't choose your audience or personalize the context.

~~~
slurgfest
When stories like this involve lower-level employees such as programmers, I
think HN's response has invariably been to favor the superior, with whom an
entrepreneur who 'doesn't code any more' can identify more readily.

But in this story, a manager of managers was getting disciplined and the
response is very angry.

From which I would infer that a lot of HN is at a similar level to the guy who
was disciplined.

BTW, from the story, the guy who was disciplined handled it extremely
professionally and I would not be surprised to hear he was good to work with
from both sides.

------
Cowen
While I agree with Ben's thoughts on good companies in general, I don't think
he's really grasped how to make companies good himself (or if he has, it
certainly doesn't come through in this story).

1:1 meetings are good, but they're just the tip of the iceberg. A far more
beneficial way to make a good company is to make sure that when people fail,
they are made to understand that failure and its significance in a manner that
is both helpful and non-threatening. Long speeches filled with loaded
questions and firing threats are the exact opposite of that.

Even the mention of firing someone should be treated like brandishing a gun.
Don't bring it out unless you're about to use it.

------
randomfool
I think people put way too much emphasis on 1:1's- Way too much time and focus
is spent on 'what did you do last week' and what to do the next week. This
sort of observation & discussion should happen daily and feedback should be
immediate.

As a manager 90% of my 1:1's would be 10 minutes of idle chat- because we were
constantly aware of what was expected and how we were delivering. Of course I
always forced the meetings, just in case employee had something to get off
their chest.

~~~
potatolicious
> _"Of course I always forced the meetings, just in case employee had
> something to get off their chest."_

This is the only benefit of 1:1's. Status updates and general progress
tracking should be baked into your every day processes.

And here's the important part: _1:1's must absolutely be off the record_. It
is a safe place for an employee to voice his/her grievances and concerns
without repercussion. Your workplace should _already_ be open and respectful
enough that people can voice almost all problems publicly with the rest of the
team - which means by default any problem that will be touched on in a 1:1 is
sensitive and needs to be treated as such.

I've seen _so_ many places where this has failed dramatically. If you keep
1:1's on-record and the contents open, you will get blindsided by the things
your employees are uncomfortable bringing up in the open.

------
geogra4
>“In a poor organization, on the other hand, people spend much of their time
fighting organizational boundaries, infighting and broken processes. They are
not even clear on what their jobs are, so there is no way to know if they are
getting the job done or not. In the miracle case that they work ridiculous
hours and get the job done, they have no idea what it means for the company or
their careers. To make it all much worse and rub salt in the wound, when they
finally work up the courage to tell management how fucked up their situation
is, management denies there is a problem, then defends the status quo, then
ignores the problem.”

This is a fantastic description of an awful workplace.

~~~
codeonfire
This is a description of every workplace. If the organization isn't as
described here, the job probably doesn't pay very much.

~~~
geogra4
I don't understand why high pay has to come with a toxic workplace.

~~~
codeonfire
Supply and demand. If a workplace has high pay and is good (the minority of
workplaces), people will flood there from high pay and toxic workplace. As a
result the majority of available high pay workplaces will be toxic.

------
T_S_
_Someday through historical echo transcription (YC14 perhaps), the real
transcript will emerge..._

Me: Hi Steve, remember how I asked all the managers to me with their direct
reports 1-on-1 at least once every six months.

Steve: No, when was that?

Me: Never mind. I heard that Tim didn't do that.

Steve: Do what?

Me: Meet with his direct reports. 1-on-1.

Steve: Oh yeah. Reminds me, great Celtics game last night, huh?

Me: I tivo'd it and caught the last 5 minutes live. Saves a shitload of time
wasted on commercials. Cable is gonna die a painful death. What were we
talking about? Oh yeah. Please tell Tim to follow up or I will be pissed.

Steve: Sure you don't want to tell him yourself? He never listens to me.

Me: OK, maybe tomorrow. Remind me in 24 hours.

------
millerski150
I'm nowhere near Ben's experience and don't fully understand the challenges of
layers of management yet, but positive energy (clear objectives and
highlighting success to the group) has always worked better for me than
negative energy (threatening to fire). Maybe it's specific to the workplace,
but I think it'd prefer the former as a leader or employee.

Agree the "why" is key to buy-in and success. But leaders need to coach not
command. 1:1s and firing can be necessary, but only after the CEO has done a
great job of setting clear objectives that everyone buys into. It's also ideal
when people hold themselves accountable versus a leader having to (e.g. report
at group meetings).

As a data point, Jeff Bezos, who Ben references, apparently doesn't like 1:1s.
He prefers group meetings so everyone gets on the same page and to avoid "the
telephone game." [source - Bing Gordon's 2011 talk at the Endeavor Summit:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdTaywChuYM>]

------
bradwhittington
His interaction with Steve lost my attention that he had anything valid to
say. Probably the reason his employees aren't doing what he feels they need
to. He also spent zero time finding out how that manager was working with his
team. It's pretty dis-empowering to have someone tell you how you need to work
with, and run your team, and expect a great work environment.

------
Todd
The goal behind the 1:1s is apparently building "a good place to work." In the
conclusion Ben mentions Bill Campbell and GO. Yet, there is no discussion of
how Bill made GO such a great place. 1:1s aren't mentioned. Is the 1:1 process
what made GO such a great place to work?

Having an arbitrary rule like that doesn't engender a great work environment.
Different people have different ways of working. Different managers have
different managerial styles. It may be that Tim preferred to have honest
conversations over a coffee or a beer, and that he met informally with his
reports all the time in the hallways and by the whiteboard.

------
guynamedloren
Yes, Horowitz sounds like a total asshole. But I have a feeling it didn't go
down quite like this, but rather the conversation and overall tone have been
fictionalized to better illustrate the underlying message of this post: proper
management and organization are crucial for a good work environment. I
couldn't agree more. Management is one of those things that seems easily in
theory, but is _really_ tough to nail in practice.

~~~
smacktoward
Or Horowitz sees himself as a Swashbuckling Captain of Industry, so it's been
fictionalized to better illustrate his internal conception of what a
Swashbuckling Captain of Industry should sound like.

------
trekkin
Blacklist another VC here. And he is supposed to be one of the better ones...

~~~
joshu
Luckily, VCs don't really get to tell you how to run a company.

~~~
potatolicious
I'm quite certain someone who holds a very large equity share in your company
and who has enormous influence over your future prospects at funding, can
_really_ tell you how to run a company.

~~~
rdl
A VC is really unlikely to get involved with the details of how your corporate
culture works, provided the business works. The board-level decision they
could ultimately force is replacement of founders/CEO, corporate events
(financing, M&A, etc.), and really high level strategy.

------
Eliezer
I've stayed away from management my entire life because I assess my own
management-talent as so low, and even I can know this isn't how you do it.
Managing by fear does not make for a pleasant job experience!

~~~
emmett
I'm very curious: what metric do you use to assess your management-talent as
low?

As a programmer, I used to believe I wouldn't be a good manager, but I'm
currently making a run at it and it turns out I'm better than I thought I'd
be.

------
joshu
Personally, I would have asked WHY he didn't know this, because the events
that led up to the current situation are almost certainly bigger than the fact
itself.

And then: fire or not fire the guy - at a small startup you have no time to
rehabilitate people. It's just too expensive.

(Personally, I am not a big fan of threats. This isn't something that has come
up at work much, though.)

------
gte910h
That was a horrible style of management. I would never listen to this guy,
either.

I would never buy from Opsware until Horowitz is gone.

~~~
bconway
I don't think you have much to worry about. He happily sold it in 2007.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opsware>

------
sp4rki
I think people are not getting the point of the parable inherent in this
article if the only things that come out of reading the blog post are "Ohh 12
to 16 hours of work" or "I would quit because I got threatened".

The focus should not be in the way the situation was handled, but in the
priorities displayed by the author. Could he have handled the situation better
than to voice a harsh requirement which if not met would result in
termination? The answer is obviously a huge "YES". Now take into account that
the administrative team have been told that one if their main objectives is
not to be "classical" bossy managers, but to be the main conduit of incentives
and communication between the company and it's employees to ensure the
productiveness and happiness of the cogs that move the company forward.

This is not about reprimanding a manager because he did not turn a report on
time - which by the way should be handled by asking the reason and though
process of the manager's decision to use time for something else he deems more
important. This is about a manager not being able to fulfill one of the KEY
objectives stablished by the company's head honcho. If you're always trying to
nicely get people to do what you say and it doesn't work, sometimes you have
to resort to drastic measures.

In this story, both Tim and Steve failed to accomplish a goal that had long
been stablished to have a high priority. It's akin to a sales person not
selling, or to a programmer not doing his programming quota. There is
something wrong with the machine, and one cog not working correctly can bring
said machine down to the ground. I think that he should have asked why things
aren't getting done first before resorting to drastic monologues, but at the
end of the day drastic monologues are sometimes the only way to push,
incentive, or realign a rogue "cog". At the very list I'd prefer to hear
"You're not doing your job correctly because of A, B, and C. Either you fix it
or your out!" than "You're just not working out for the company, and no I wont
tell you why... Oh and I'm replacing you so pack your things..."

------
djt
Interesting to note the comments here, compared to comments about Steve Jobs,
who by most accounts had a similar communication style.

~~~
zem
what surprises me are not the comments here but the comments about steve jobs.
sure, the guy did a lot, but from all accounts he is someone i would never
work for, and i'm pretty sure most of the hn crowd would hate working for in
actual practice.

------
readymade
what an asshole

------
zbruhnke
Overall a great article and a great point. I've always argued that most of us
learn more from our failures than out successes. I've had both, but I've
always felt like I walked away learning much more after a failure.

Being good to your employees involves so many things but listening to them
should at the very top of the list. You could easily make the argument the
most important aspect of any business is its workforce.

While customers are often regarded as such it's rare that you actually achieve
customer acquisition success unless you have a happy workforce willing to help
and wanting your company to succeed.

I consider this the "happy wife, happy life" of business

------
Geekette
_Steve, do you know why I came to work today? ..._

Gawd. Fuck the walk in the park and get to the point. And no, straightforward
management should not preclude respect.

------
biafra
Maybe I am ignorant to the meaning of 1-1 meetings. Doesn't that mean that
only two people meet in a room with no one else to listen in? Usually as a
performance review? This does not cover regular team meetings with more that
one member?

------
pasbesoin
I used to distinctly not look forward to most formal 1:1's with my management.
Upon reflection, this may in good part have been because in that setting, I
could not simply ignore and tune out the bullshit that was being shoveled at
me.

Real meetings -- fine. Mandated 1:1's. Propaganda. All the sadder when both
parties know this but -- for legal reasons if no other -- have to talk around
it.

I'm sure it's different in other workplaces. Some workplaces.

P.S. In my last corporate gig, 1:1's were very much about establishing a
formal record for HR purposes. After you'd been through a few, and watched any
substantive comments and feedback you made go nowhere, you figured it out.

P.P.S. Reading through it now, the OP post seems very self-contradictory. E.g.

 _Me: “Well, let me explain. I came to work, because it’s personally very
important to me that Opsware be a good company. It’s important to me that the
people who spend 12 to 16 hours/day here, which is most of their waking life,
have a good life. It’s why I come to work.”_

...

 _“In a poor organization, on the other hand, people spend much of their time
fighting organizational boundaries, infighting and broken processes. They are
not even clear on what their jobs are, so there is no way to know if they are
getting the job done or not. In the miracle case that they work ridiculous
hours and get the job done, they have no idea what it means for the company or
their careers. To make it all much worse and rub salt in the wound, when they
finally work up the courage to tell management how fucked up their situation
is, management denies there is a problem, then defends the status quo, then
ignores the problem.”_

Explain to me the value of cramming one more meeting into the day of an
employee who's already working "12 - 16 hours"?

And, after six months, if "Tim's" department hasn't 'blown up', maybe your
first question (to self, to Tim) should be "Why?". Maybe Tim knows something
you don't.

When was your last 1:1 with Tim?

What did you discuss in your last 1:1 with Tim's manager.

Per the OP post, Ben has been very successful. ("If it was about the money,
couldn’t I sell the company tomorrow and have more money than I ever wanted?")

Well, there are a lot of successful assholes out there.

 _Well, let me explain. I came to work, because it’s personally very important
to me that Opsware be a good company._

Why? And how do you define that, when you are working people 12 - 16 hours per
day?

I don't know Ben, and circumstances could differ from the following, but one
way to read this post is as being stuffed full of ego.

------
carsongross
Good. You keep using that word. I do not think that it means what you think it
means.

~~~
bhorowitz
Sadly, this whole discussion missed the point of the post, which is probably a
pretty good argument for writing it in a different way. Having said that, many
people got the point and didn't get balled up in this detail. The point of the
post was that either being a good company is a priority or it is not. If it's
not a priority, there's very little chance that it will happen. Further, if
people don't understand both why it's a priority and how high the priority is,
it won't happen. The controversial line about firing Steve and Tim was
intended to be a colorful way to bring sharp clarity to what had evidently
been a fuzzy priority. I tend to value clarity over sensitivity, but that's
obviously not universal.

In terms of whether or not it was right to "clarify" things to Steve that way,
I really did not provide enough context in the post to answer that question.
However, implicit in the communication was me prioritizing the employees of
the company over the managers and executives. Specifically, if you don't hold
managers strongly accountable for management, then the employees will suffer
which in my opinion is worse than executives getting their feelings hurt.

For whatever it's worth, I never wrote and I never asked anybody to work 12 or
16 hours a day. I never asked anybody to work any specific number of hours.
However, many people did and it was important to me that we respect the
effort.

The firing line was intended to come across as the very last straw. After
training, after many conversations, after performance reviews, if I still
couldn't get them to take management seriously then this was to be the last
conversation before making a change. If I didn't hold managers accountable to
that, then I should be fired as well-- no question about that.

------
andyl
Firing as a motivational tool to foster open communication. That is priceless.
Key learning for me is to avoid working with people who think this is a good
idea.

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goggles99
Hmm, I doubt you had to threaten to fire them... Asking would have probably
gotten the job done. If it kept happening, then I suppose you could promise
disciplinary action and firing as a last resort.

Now your managers are looking for another job (they will quit) because they
don't want a jerk for a boss (who wins here).

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taskstrike
Another key is people should be held accountable. A lot of people structure
their teams with loose accountability, it becomes detrimental to everyone.

