Just wanted to say that this was one of the most thought-provoking and sensible exchanges on the post. >To the point of your article, I tend to believe you hav

Just wanted to say that this was one of the most thought-provoking and sensible exchanges on the post. >To the point of your article, I tend to believe you have to start as viewing yourself as net negative, and then trying to understand how to either lower your overhead, or generate enough value to overcome the overhead, or both. An unexpected side effect of starting my own business is that I can't help but view myself and my team this way. We're bootstrapped and have day jobs, but there is absolutely no avoiding the gap between how much revenue we generate and how much we'd need to work on the business full time. >[1] I tend to believe that most management is not net positive value (whether they are necessary or not for various reasons is somewhat orthogonal), and managers/leaders who generate net positive value are rarer than they should be. I read a lot of Taleb in my early 20s, and he'd call this iatrogenics in a non-medical context, and I'd agree. One of the ex-Pivotal guys I spoke to mentioned that most of the highest-performing teams emerged from "benign neglect" from management - i.e, they got busy and left the team alone. Could be a recipe for disaster, certainly, but there's also compelling anecdata out there that it could be the grounds for great things with the right people. >On day 1 i would give them a 1 question test that says "do you believe you are already adding net positive value to your team by being here" and send anyone who answers 'yes' to the reprogramming station. I really wonder how many people would say "yes" to this. It seems like an insane thing to say, but I'm honestly not 100% sure how many people would pick up on that.