God, Fear, and Management
Have you ever wondered about the life of ants? As a child, I was fascinated by them, often following their tiny trails to see what they were up to. I'd sprinkle breadcrumbs around just to watch them seemingly appear out of nowhere, curious about where they went after cleaning everything up. Once, I gave a breadcrumb to a lone ant, hoping it would lead me back to its home. But it wandered so far that, after two hours of tracking it, I had to give up.
What amazes me most is how ants work together tirelessly and building complex colonies without managers threatening them with punishment or job loss. How do they do it? They seem eager to work, too. I doubt any ant wakes up one day feeling burnt out or forces itself to get to work.
Now, you might be thinking, "Learning management from ants and bees? How practical is that?" It's a valid question. But let's take a moment to consider who we often turn to as the ultimate example of management.
Many subconsciously envision God—the creator and sustainer of everything—as the perfect manager. The image of a wise, bearded figure overseeing the universe comes to mind for many, even atheists. But let's pause here: how practical is it to model our management styles on such a fantastical perception? While the idea may offer inspiration, it's not exactly actionable in the real world. So why is it that looking to ants and bees for lessons in decentralized systems feels unrealistic, while adopting this abstract idea of divine leadership doesn't?
Even if we were to accept that image as true, can we really live up to it? Can anyone be a leader who never makes mistakes or never needs help from others? Perhaps that's why many managers struggle to admit their mistakes or accept criticism—they're trying to live up to an impossible standard.
Bear with me now, we're almost over this sensitive topic 😄
I'm not a manager myself, but I noticed this kind of attitude when I spoke to my company's CEO about why I couldn't work one day due to burnout. It's a long story, but here's the gist: we had been working on a project for four months, with a tight deadline, no extra salary, and no rest periods. One day, I woke up feeling so burnt out that I couldn't even convince myself to get out of bed. So, I just stayed there and went back to sleep.
When I explained the stressful work conditions, I was surprised by the CEO's response. He said, "I don't believe in burnout. People who feel that way usually have personal issues, not work-related problems." Apparently, burnout was something to be skeptical of. But that wasn't my main concern. What really struck me was when he followed up with, "Anyone who betrays my trust even once will face my wrath." This felt like a obvious sign of that God-like management mentality.
The most problematic implication of that management style is the tendency to lead with fear and stress. Although, there's evidence supporting the idea that stress can impact productivity.
Take studying for a school exam, for example. Imagine you have two weeks to prepare. Would you spread the workload out and study an hour each day? Probably not. More often than not, we wait until the last couple of days and end up cramming for 8–10 hours a day just to get through it. The stress and fear of failing the exam push us to work harder. This dynamic is actually the foundation of unrealistic deadlines in many work environments.
Another example is the Yerkes-Dodson law, which explores the relationship between stress and productivity. It suggests that too little stress can lead to boredom and a lack of motivation, while too much stress can cause fatigue and burnout. Instead, there's an optimal level of stress somewhere in the middle that maximizes productivity without pushing people to the point of exhaustion.
This concept is illustrated in a chart that looks something like this:
There's a common issue with both of these approaches: neither considers the time factor. They don't address the sustainability of the approach over time. For instance, can every night be an exam night? Is the optimal level of stress on day one the same as on day sixty? Can our bodies handle stress day in and day out without facing negative consequences?
This highlights the problem with linear thinking, viewing productivity and stress as a straightforward relationship. The irony is that the short burst of productivity caused by stress happens precisely because our bodies are trying to escape the stressful situation as quickly as possible. It's a survival mechanism, not a sustainable strategy for long-term productivity.
There are, of course, consequences for the business. Complacency, doing the bare minimum, a lack of ownership, and an absence of bottom-up innovation are just a few examples. Yet, some managers might accept this and think, "What's wrong with people just doing their job?"
The issue is that it's not just the employees at the bottom who are stuck in survival mode—the entire company ends up operating that way.
One big problem with survival-mode operation is distrust. Upper management shows they don't trust employees to manage their own work, and in return, employees stop trusting the management and the company. It's a two-way street—when trust is missing on one side, it disappears on the other too.
This is very different from an ant colony, where every ant is trusted to do its job.
For upper management, not trusting anyone leads to paranoia — you can't watch over hundreds of employees by yourself. So, you're forced to trust at least some people, like middle managers. But this kind of trust is basic and instinctive, like how humans thousands of years ago had to trust each other just to survive. Back then, no one could stay alert for danger all the time, so they had no choice but to rely on others. It's the same idea here—management doesn't really trust, but they have to.
This trust issue leads upper management to choose middle managers based on how obedient and trustworthy they seem, rather than how competent or qualified they are. As a result, the entire project can be jeopardized by their lack of ability. Some companies even try to pass off these middle managers as team leads, not realizing that a real lead should first earn respect of the team, much like alpha animals in the wild. This is a chained reaction. similar to upper management, such middle managers also try to create safe zones and prioritize trustworthy and obedient employees over competent ones.
Survival mode kills innovation. A company stuck in this mindset would rather follow the safe, proven paths of others than take the risks necessary for original ideas. I remember working at a startup where the manager wouldn't even allow the UI designer to create their own designs. Instead, they posted screenshots of competitors' platforms on Figma and told the designer to copy and adapt them. While mimicking competitors might be sustainable for well-established, million-dollar companies, it's a death sentence for startups, which thrive on fresh, innovative approaches.
Sometimes, even the infrastructure is built on fear. At one company I worked for, I discovered that our single-threaded Node.js application was running on an 8-core processor with 16GB of RAM—14GB of which was unused. On top of that, we had three MongoDB Atlas clusters, each with two replicas that weren't even being used by the application itself; they were just sitting there because the app only connected to the primary.
Now, I'm not against cloud infrastructure, but in this case, it was overkill for what we were doing. Our backend and frontend were essentially monoliths connecting to a database that could have easily been migrated to on-premise servers, saving at least 80% of our cloud costs. This didn't even take into account the questionable decision to have a full-time DevOps engineer on such a simple setup. The money saved could've easily been put to better use—like hiring another developer to help the team.
When I tried to convince the middle manager to make this change, his concerns were all fear-based, "What if the server crashes?" (which, by the way, was why we had a full-time DevOps engineer in the first place—just in case something went wrong). "What if we need to scale?" or "What about the security?"
I understand that these concerns are valid, but my point here is that the company's inability to make an asymmetric bet—one where the potential rewards far outweigh the risks—was holding it back from a much greater opportunity.
I could list more dysfunctions, but I think I've made my point.