There's some additional nuance to Sergeant Major Sixta and his enforcement of the grooming standard. His intention was not to psychologically trick his marines into being good soldiers by way of facial hair. The idea was to set himself up as a common annoyance that the marines shared without actually harming anybody, reducing combat effectiveness, or undermining his own authority. The marines are all comrades when it comes to Sixta. They all think he's an asshole together. That sense of camraderie is priceless in groups of soldiers, and it can't be bought. If they weren't all pissed at him, they would certainly be pissed at something else, and the likely targets are the other officers or each other. Sixta is a convenient lightning rod for the base level of resentment that's always going to be there. Nobody needs to like him all that much for him to do his job.

The whole concept sounds insane, and it is insane and probably a completely bad idea, but it's important to remember that marine recon units are not like most groups of workers. They have a lot of downtime, they get yelled at more, and other people are telling them what to do basically all of the time. My boss screaming about my chin hair would cripple my output, but that's probably not going to make a marine lose his next fight. Frankly, there's not a lot we can apply to normal office environments here. There are no conceivable workplace scenarios where you need to play negative head games with a group of armed twentysomethings in the desert.

> My boss screaming about my chin hair would cripple my output

Mine too, because I'd vanish. I did the military, and nobody anywhere gets to treat me that way.

And hey, managers and leads reading this, you should always remember that every one of your people are volunteers.

> And hey, managers and leads reading this, you should always remember that every one of your people are volunteers.

That's, sadly, just the privilege of the growing industry like ours. Majority of population are not volunteers, they're little more than slaves and managers know that very well. The fact that you absolutely, positively need a job and that you won't find another one quickly is one of the strongest ways of keeping workers in line, and what lets many of the higher-ups be openly and freely abusive towards their employees.

I'm not complaining about IT here. We just need to remember that our industry is special right now, and that it won't last forever.

This is absolutely true, and very well said.