You have over-simplified the problem, apparently assuming that people will just do their jobs and not engage in a kind of guerrilla warfare intended to keep the

You have over-simplified the problem, apparently assuming that people will just do their jobs and not engage in a kind of guerrilla warfare intended to keep their jobs. Example: I once worked with a guy who knew he was an underperformer - he was also a manager, reporting directly to the CEO. He ensured his job for many years by sabotaging all of those around him, and then whispering sweet nothings into the CEO's ear about how he couldn't achieve the targets set because everybody else around him was incompetent. For example, he would sell something big as cheap as he could, so we would lose money on staffing while building the (not software) project, and in the last few days before it was to be delivered, he would come in with a major structural change that he knew about for weeks in advance, and it meant double-shifts with no extra pay for the workers. When the CEO came down on the business for not making a profit, he made sure that he was first in line, and complained about how we just weren't doing the job right, weren't working hard enough, all the usual kind of crap. He got caught because he once placed a few orders online, from a street address that didn't exist. It happened to be just a couple of doors from his house, so he would be pretty much the only person who would reasonably be expected to know about this. Nothing happened to him at all, and I was held responsible for not filling those orders, causing them to be cancelled. (I have absolutely no idea how this happened and nobody could explain it to me except for the CEO, who refused to on grounds that if I used my brains I could understand it.) The manager eventually resigned, incompetence widely known, and his replacement found his unlocked filing cabinet that contained a complete run-down on everyone, and what he could blame on them to get them fired if his position became untenable.