What We Tolerate

Warning: This post contains intense language.

“I don’t care if your fucking wife dies during childbirth—you will get back to someone around this table within 12 hours!!”

That was the moment it all snapped into focus.

We were supposed to be a group of capable, high-functioning leaders. But that? That wasn’t leadership. That was abuse. I was stunned to hear it in a professional setting, hyperbole or not. The statement failed to have its intended impact. Instead of pulling us together, it made me realize: this is not a place I want to be.

But others stayed.

Everyone sat quietly. Others shrugged it off. They had made their peace with it. For them, enduring emotional abuse was just part of the trade, justified by the compensation. They stayed because the money was good. And to them, that culture worked. That blew my mind. How could the same environment be intolerable for me—and perfectly acceptable for them?

That moment kicked off a lot of reflection on culture: how we define it, who it serves, and what it costs.

Every Company Is Different

One thing I’ve learned over nearly twenty years of leading technical teams: every company has its own culture. And most early-career folks don’t realize how radically different they can be.

They latch onto frameworks—Scrum, Kanban, the gospel of Brene Brown—and try to apply them wholesale. But they often miss the most important question: Will this even work here? Searching for answers, I often made that mistake.

Good luck leading with vulnerability in a cutthroat hedge fund, where people sleep under their desks and brag about "ripping" each other up. Or implementing Kanban in a company that pivots so often it never finishes anything. That doesn’t mean those orgs are doomed—it means they require different approaches that often don't follow the prescriptive norms. You can build productive teams in those settings. But it has to fit the context.

I’ve worked in environments where brutal honesty was respected, even expected. I’ve also worked in ones where conflict avoidance was the unofficial prime directive. And in both cases, people would swear the culture “worked.” (I appreciate the truthy environments over the avoidy ones.)

So when I hear someone label a workplace as “toxic,” I often translate that as: “This place isn’t for me.” And that’s totally valid. But it doesn’t mean the culture doesn’t work at all. Just that it doesn’t work for them.

Emotional Economics

This idea rattled around in my head for a while: Why do some people stay, even in brutal conditions?

Eventually, I started thinking about it like a market. There’s an invisible exchange happening in the workplace—between emotional cost and financial compensation. Some people will tolerate more stress, pressure, or outright abuse if the pay is high enough. Others won’t, at any price.

It’s not that different from supply and demand. The more emotional abuse you ask people to endure, the more you have to pay to keep them. That’s the trade: endure pain, receive reward. For some people, it pencils out. For others, there’s no number that works.

I ended up sketching it like this:

The curve is conceptual, not scientific. But it reflects something real I’ve observed across roles, companies, and industries. There’s a cost to emotional strain—and compensation is often used to paper over that cost.

But here’s the problem: when people are paid to stay, not to thrive, they disengage. They optimize for survival, not creativity. They stop leading, stop taking risks, and start calculating how long they can last.

Culture Isn’t Universal—It’s Contextual

“If you make more than $100K here, you work for me 24/7.”

That was another line I couldn’t forget. Not because it was surprising—by that point, nothing was—but because it was so clearly accepted as normal.

There are people who thrive in that kind of environment. They’ll tell you it’s what excellence demands. That they want to be pushed. That if you can’t handle it, maybe you don’t belong. For me, it was a bright red line. I love working hard. I love leading teams. But I don’t believe in being owned by the company. And I won’t lead others that way.

This wasn’t about being right or wrong. It was about fit. I realized the culture they were building—aggressive, extractive, proud of its pressure—wasn’t one I could support. And if I stuck around, I’d either become complicit or burned out. Neither was acceptable.

So I left.

No drama. No rage. Just clarity.

Cultural Fit Isn’t About Comfort—It’s About Alignment

Direct manipulation—micromanaging, command-and-control, fear-based compliance—can sometimes produce short-term results. But it comes at a cost: trust, morale, and eventually, performance.

I’ve worked under leaders who prided themselves on being “brutally honest.” What that often meant in practice was yelling in meetings, belittling people, and treating public humiliation like a motivational tool.

One manager once told me:

“I extract every ounce of performance from people who work for me.”

And maybe he did. For a while. But at what cost? Let's discuss a few direct costs I observed over and over.

At that company, an offer -- which I believe was legitimate -- was tossed out on a Friday night: whoever can insert-name-of-task-here by Monday, gets a $10,000 bonus. I'm sure it would have been delivered. Yet, no one did it or even attempted it. Even in the face of a material bonus, the team couldn't be motivated to do it. I contrast that to my approach of directly engaging with my engineers to help them develop a sense of wanting to do the work. With this approach, despite not throwing these $10k offers around, I'll come in on Monday to an engineer telling me, "man, I was so excited at the how my project will effect our progress, that I worked some over the weekend, coding while I watched the game. I'm at least a few days ahead of schedule." That momentum carries. He was interested. He wanted to do the work. And, that self-determination make the quality of his deliverables higher than if it were extracted.

Another direct cost: after I left that company, I had a conversation with a great candidate who turned us down—someone who would’ve been a strong addition to our team. They told me, “I wanted to work with you, but I talked to someone in the industry who warned me about the company’s culture.”

That hurt. Because it confirmed what I already knew: that behavior doesn’t just drive good people out—it repels the ones who haven’t even arrived yet.

The “Suddenly Timed Tantrum” School of Leadership

At another company, the CEO had a favorite tactic. He called them “STTs"—Suddenly Timed Tantrums. These were emotional outbursts, usually in meetings, meant to shock people into compliance. They were loud, unpredictable, and deeply manipulative.

He thought it gave him control and compelled people to action. What it really did was kill trust and make him appear unstable.

After enough exposure to that kind of leadership, people stop solving problems and start avoiding blame. They say yes to everything. They stop thinking creatively. They stop bringing problems forward. It may manufacture compliance and silence, but I haven't seen it produce excellence.

The Talent Drain

When companies rely on high compensation to offset toxic culture, they create a very specific kind of workforce: risk-averse, burned-out, and transactional. Tenure is often short.

People aren’t there because they believe in the mission any more. They’re there because they can’t afford to walk away. That changes their behavior completely.

Eventually, the ones with options leave. The ones who stay are either too jaded to care or too scared to leave. What remains is a kind of organizational rot—people going through the motions, detached from the outcome, just trying not to get fired. Creativity and performance are extirpated from the team.

That’s the long-term cost of tolerating abusive leadership.

And it’s expensive.

The Power of Cultural Influence

The most effective leaders I’ve worked with didn’t need to yell. They didn’t need to bribe or threaten. They led through culture and capability—through consistent values, clear expectations, and earned trust. The smartest and most capable were often the most calm, secure, and confident.

At one organization, I saw firsthand what that looked like. The leader didn’t have to demand overtime or offer huge bonuses to get people to go above and beyond. They did it because they wanted to. Because they believed in the mission. Because they felt ownership over the work.

It wasn’t soft. It wasn’t coddling. It was strong, quiet, confident leadership. And it worked.

There's REAL strong contrast here: both leadership methods -- emotionally abusive and emotionally stable -- will get butts in seats; however, contrast the engagement and output of the worker in that seat.

People can and will give their best—not out of fear, but out of commitment.

The Emotional–Financial Trade-Off

Here’s how I think about it: people are motivated by a mix of emotional and financial factors. Some need money more than meaning. Some need purpose more than perks. Most want both.

In high-emotion, high-creativity roles like software engineering, emotional fulfillment often outweighs financial incentive. If people don’t feel safe, trusted, or empowered, you can double their salary and still lose them.

The smartest leaders tap into this. They build teams that want to be there. They don’t just pay well—they create environments where people care. Where the emotional return is high enough that the financial part doesn’t have to do all the heavy lifting.

My Approach

I don’t believe in one-size-fits-all culture. I can adjust to the environment. But I know where the line is for me.

Every organization is shaped by its leadership, its history, its values. Like snowflakes, no two are the same. But not all cultures are effective. That’s the key distinction. A culture might work somewhere else and still be the wrong fit for you—or for what your company is trying to become.

As a consultant and leader, I try to meet companies where they are. I don’t push cookie-cutter solutions. I help teams identify what kind of culture will actually serve their goals—then work with leadership to shape it.

It’s not easy. But it’s always worth doing.

The Art of Cultural Leadership

Culture is the invisible hand behind every decision, every project, every success—or failure. You can’t force it. You can’t fake it. But you can shape it.

In my experience, the best leaders don’t rely on volume, bravado, or intimidation. They lead from the front. They show what’s acceptable by modeling it. They invest in people. They listen more than they talk. They create environments where trust and excellence can actually grow.

It’s not about being nice. It’s about being intentional.

Because when culture works—when it really clicks—you don’t have to squeeze performance out of people.

They give it willingly.