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Comment by misja111 | Hacker News Reader

Although less explicitly, collective punishment is used in the office as well. For instance by letting an entire team work overtime if one of the team members screwed up his work and made the team miss a deadline.

But the fact that collective punishment is used in some places doesn't automatically make it right, IMO.

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I don't see how that is "punishment". A team is a group of people helping each other to achieve a common goal. Sometimes other team members will screw up and you will step in and do what you can to help the team overcome this. Other times that member is going to be you, and then your teammates will (hopefully) step in to cover your ass.

Is that collective punishment, or putting the end goal before other concerns? I would hope most managers do not want to punish workers, but will insist things need to get done, and done well, in time and on budget. It's the subtle balance that is the challenge if you want to be a good boss.

> Although less explicitly, collective punishment is used in the office as well. For instance by letting an entire team work overtime if one of the team members screwed up his work and made the team miss a deadline.

A "good" idea (*sarc*) to either

- decrease the team cohesion (i.e. make the team members hate each other)

- increase the team cohesion in the face of a "common enemy" (the boss) who all of the team members will from now on hate

Both of these are likely not what a boss desires.

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