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Comment by lkrubner | Hacker News Reader

I've known some leaders who feel that yelling at employees can get better performance out of them. Most of the time, I think this is the wrong way to proceed, but I admit, I've seen cases where the strategic use of anger did seem to get some kind of result. I wrote of one situation here, between a CTO and the best devops guy I ever knew:

https://demodexio.substack.com/p/the-hearts-of-men-american-...

But keep in mind, in that situation, I am fairly sure the CTO was only pretending to be angry, which is to say, his anger was under control, and was deployed for a specific purpose.

As a general rule, self-control is essential to pragmatic leadership. By contrast, Vishal Garg's behavior does not seem strategic, and he does not seem to be under self-control. I wrote some thoughts about how destructive this kind of leadership can be here:

http://www.smashcompany.com/business/self-control-is-essenti...

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In my experience it is to the contrary. It's the leaders that can be angry without lashing out that get the best reactions from employees. There have been a few moments in my career where one of the teams has just genuinely made a big, avoidable, mistake one too many times and that has the respective leader's blood rise. They _demand_ to know just how we messed up, yet whilst visibly angry, they didn't raise their voice, they didn't need to berate. They just assertively demanded answers and I've never seen a roomful of people quite so eager to present answers and assurances in any other form of conflict.

This has been on my mind lately. I've had some pretty extreme conversations with colleagues. Some of them in retrospect come across as tense, and others just seem like inappropriate bullying. I've wrestled with whether leaving the situations where I felt abused I was just being sensitive

In time I've concluded it's about trust or something. It's one thing if I feel like the person is on the same side and we both want to do better. When I feel like the other person isn't acting in good faith though, or is just doing things that are unnecessarily abusive, it's different.

Wasn’t Steve Jobs famous for screaming at people over the phone and in person? Pretending this is all some power move seems less credible than these people just being unchecked for too long due to their position.

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs yelled at employees a lot. Whether they did so as an intentional technique or a byproduct of having a short temper, I don't know. Any insight into that?

I addressed this issue directly on page 151 of How To Destroy A Tech Startup. I've just posted some photos of 151/152, if you'd like to read that:

https://demodexio.substack.com/p/psychopaths-versus-good-bos...

Thanks! Your formulation makes a lot of sense.

Bill Gates is just an incel with an unusually large brain so no big surprise. And Steve Jobs was an entitled lying cheating stealing fuckboy so no big surprise there either

It may well be true that boss anger, strategic or not, can produce results. That doesn't make it right or acceptable

Wow, that CTO sounds psychopathic. Nothing in that conversation required him to shout or (pretend to) get angry. I have no respect for people that use violence, even verbal, to get their way.

The use of the anger was very manipulative. I find it interesting that it was then the beginning of a long partnership. They worked together at several startups for the next few years. I'm not clear that anger was the only way to establish whether the devops guy was getting the work done correctly, but I've certainly met a few managers who seem to think the strategic use of anger is useful. At the same time, what I've seen more commonly is the unstrategic use of anger, where people rage, rage, rage, for no purpose and no gain. It's amazing to me how often I've seen unhinged behavior in people who are in top leadership positions. I wrote of one extreme case in How To Destroy A Tech Startup:

https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Three-Steps-eboo...

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