The Dangers of YES-men

June 2, 2026 - Lane Arnold

There is nothing more dangerous and detrimental to a company than to have its Leadership be surrounded and informed by yes-men.

"I don't want any yes-men around me. I want everybody to tell me the truth even if it costs them their job." - Samuel Goldwyn

In order to discuss the dangers of yes-men and their presence in the workforce, we must define what a yes-man is.

The YES-man

YES-men are are either created by, or allowed to come into existence by executive Leadership. They cannot come up on their own from underneath. While I may not have much experience with the latter, I have MUCH experience with the former. That is the type of Yes-man we will be discussing today.

At their core, YES-men are people who tell leadership only what they want to hear, rather than the needed truth. And the existence of the Yes-man is the result of weak leadership not having the desire to deal with reality. They often do not want to hear the truth that their plans cannot implemented due to a multitude of reasons: costs, technology-stack limitations, detriment to the end product, compliance issues, etc. As for the YES-men, I find that these people willing accept the position due to one of two reasons: fear or the illusion of promotion. Fear is obvious, as people do not want to make the short-list when it comes to layoffs, so they attempt to appease leadership by willfully entering into a false partnership with them. This is quite understandable especially with the amount of Tech layoffs in recent years. The latter I feel sorry for, as they think they are picked for their hard work or ideas, and are rewarded for such endeavors. However, they were picked just because they haven't found their voice ion the workplace and their ideas and work are reduced to the word "yes".

The Symptoms of the YES-man

When the infection of the YES-man has spread far enough through a company, one of the first symptoms that shows up is the breaking of communication and trust. Often, if a certain Project Manager or Team Lead is deemed as unfit for service to upper-leadership, they bypass those individuals and act on their behalf. I have seen a real life example of this in the workplace, where an Project Manager was tagged as "un-cooperative", and executives would constantly bypass him to coordinate new requirements, upcoming deployments, and other things of importance. This results in the team of developers having many communication issues, as they did no know the "true" state of requirements or upcoming deliverable dates on anything. As they often had conflicting lines of communications from their direct supervisors, and upper-leadership. The Project Manager then would be constantly be blindsided from not knowing what their developers would be working on, nor the expansion of the scope of the project. Truly, and culture of mis-communication and distrust was sewn by the existence of the YES-man.

The YES-man also results in some of the stupidest and nonsensical power dynamics that I have even seen. Weak Upper-Leadership want to hear things their way rather than hear the truth, so they often strip power and responsibilities away from people they deem "unfit". A great example of this what I have seen in person in a previous job with our "Project Manager". Often, Leadership was getting tired of hearing the same answer of: "no, but". Often with follow-up conversations about the "why" of the "no", and alternative solutions or compromises. But this respectful interaction wouldn't be good enough for Leadership. They would bypass them and implement their plan anyways. This resulted in the Project Manager becoming powerless and directionless, as there is no incentive to try and get things done when it'll be overridden by those above him. The developers have quite a quandary for them as well: do they follow the direction of their direct supervisor while risking the ire of Leadership, or ignore their supervisor and wait for instructions from upper-leadership. Incompetent, stupid power-dynamics.

The Result of the YES-man

The result of YES-man is constant chaos and destruction. And companies that are dealing with the YES-man have constant internal struggles and issues. It's hard enough to keep a business afloat and profitable, and self inflicting an infection of YES-men is in-excusable.

"Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid." - Valery Legasov: HBO's Chernobyl