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Comment by daghamm | Hacker News Reader

You are wrong on two accounts.

There are plenty of ways for getting rid of underperformers in a goverment organisation. I've seen entire teams being sacked, and also some of the hardest working people I know work for goverment organisations.

Also, you cannot run the goverment like an startup that is always running on the edge. A majority of startups fail and that's fine, but one goverment organisation failing could cause problems for the entire country.

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You're right it's not a startup. It's an organization in a town that voted 90%+ in favor of keeping their jobs, not being prosecuted, or some kind of "threat to democracy".

You can't run an organization if the ground troops are resistant to executing the vision of leadership

Pesky things, these laws.

Honest question, what laws in this context?

Management is as much about convincing people you’re right as it is about getting your way always. Sometimes your subordinates are right and a good manager can still work with that situation. Even in a professional army like the US military there is disagreement and negotiation. This idea that we are all troops in some kind of militia who should blindly follow one person’s will is the bottom half of fascist ideology.

The term "ground troops" was just used as a metaphor for people at the bottom who do a big chunk of the actual work. Every organization would rather have people at least be pro "big picture" vision, and, yes, there should be dissonance and compromise on the "how" we get there part

You can say that but you could also have called them “workers.” Calling them ground troops is intended to evoke the image of people being shelled in foxholes and then running away. It is a bad euphemism that is meant to suggest we are fighting a war. You have to ask yourself—-when someone evokes the imagery of war, do you not think they are spoiling for a fight?

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