Why You Can't Be an Asshole in the Middle

On the first day on the job, the manager introduced me to the team, made a couple of jokes, then threatened to fire someone. At first, I thought it was just his sense of humor, that it was something I would understand once I worked long enough on the team. But no one else laughed. The air in the meeting room became stiff as he rambled about issues we had. The next Monday morning, he did it again. Now I was confused. Was I being hazed? No. Because he did it again the following Monday. He was an asshole.

But he wasn't just any asshole. He thought he was Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs was a difficult person to work with. He was brutally honest, he could bend wills, shatter egos. Yet, he was also enshrined as one of the greatest business leaders of our time. He was the visionary who resurrected Apple and gave us the iPhone. My manager wasn't alone in his delusion. Like many professionals who find themselves in a people manager's position, they look at Jobs and think that being a brilliant jerk is a viable path to success. "The results speak for themselves. Maybe I need to be tougher, more demanding, less concerned with feelings."

What they fail to see is that they are not Steve Jobs. And unless you're the CEO at the helm, acting like him is not a superpower. When you're a mid-level manager, you're not the Captain. You're a member of the crew.

Captain vs. Crewmate

The difference between being an asshole at the top versus being an asshole in the middle comes down to authority, autonomy, and consequences.

Jobs was the Captain. As the founder and CEO, he was the ultimate source of authority and vision. His difficult personality was inseparable from the company's mission. People tolerated his behavior because they bought into his vision of the future. He had the final say on hiring, firing, and strategy. His presence was the gravitational force around which the entire company orbited.

When the captain is an asshole, the crew might stay for the voyage. When a fellow crewmate is an asshole, they get thrown overboard.

A mid-level manager is a key member of the crew, but you are not the ultimate authority. Your colleagues in engineering, marketing, and sales don't report to you out of reverence for your world-changing vision; they collaborate with you to achieve shared company goals. Your power is not absolute; it's influence-based. And that changes everything.

Why Jobs Got Away With It

For Steve Jobs, it's not that being an asshole was his secret sauce. It's that his unique position allowed him to survive the downsides of his personality.

He was building his vision of the future. For every person he drove away, another was drawn to the mission. It was impossible to fire him (a second time). He could fire people, and he could make them millionaires with stock options. The potential upside made the toxicity tolerable.

The part of the story that often get omitted is that Jobs had a cleanup crew. Behind his grandiose ideas and abrasive personality, there were people who handled the operations and relationship-focused work he didn't have time for. That's what Tim Cook was for. Tim Cook smoothed over the conflicts, built the partnerships, and kept the machine running while Jobs played visionary.

As a mid-level manager, you don't have a Tim Cook, do you?

Why You Can't

As a mid-level manager, your "because I said so" doesn't have the same weight. Anyone one level above your position can contradict you. When the CEO is harsh and demanding, it gets labeled as visionary leadership. The same behavior from a mid-level manager is seen for what it is: poor communication and a lack of respect.

Your influence is much smaller than the person at the helm. You need favors from other departments, buy-in from your peers, and discretionary effort from your team. Being difficult burns bridges, creates resentment, and ensures that when you need help, no one will be in a hurry to give it. Your "brilliant" idea dies in a meeting room because you've alienated the very people needed to execute it.

Your tools are limited. You can't promise life-changing wealth, and while you can influence promotions or terminations, the process is often layered with HR policies and approvals. Using fear as your primary tool without having ultimate control just creates a culture of anxiety and quiet quitting, not breakthrough innovation. Collaboration is your strength, and you're actively undermining it.

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When we had layoffs at my company, my manager was first on the list to get the boot. I can't say that his "assholery" was what put him on the list, but it certainly didn't help. No one went to bat for him. No one argued that he was indispensable. The bridges he'd burned came back to haunt him.

Your success as a mid-level manager depends on your ability to influence, inspire, and collaborate. You can't demand greatness; you have to cultivate it. And you can't do that from behind a wall of arrogance and fear.

In the real world, building bridges will always get you further than burning them. At work, be the leader people actually want to follow.

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