The whole exchange stank of condescension and patronization. This is a high-level exec at a company, his basic intelligence doesn't need to be questioned - he did not need the principle of 1:1's to be explained to him as if he were a child.
One of his direct reports is violating a very clear, established policy. "Steve" needs to fix it, pronto, and that's all that needed to be communicated. The whole pointlessly patronizing "lesson" in business and the direct threat to Steve's job was entirely unnecessary. It's unproductive and just plain power-posturing.
It's only necessary if your workforce is consisted entirely of slack-jawed yokels that need to be hand-held through the very job you hired them to do. If that's the case, you should fire yourself for having created an organization full of slack-jawed yokels.
Side note, from the article:
> "it’s personally very important to me that Opsware be a good company. It’s important to me that the people who spend 12 to 16 hours/day here, which is most of their waking life, have a good life"
Protip: if you want to have a good place to work, and your employees to have a good life, don't have 12-16 hour days.
Thus I agree that the whole rant was needless. If Steve was a repeat offender, then he and his underboss should just be fired on the spot and the reason for the termination should be explained to the rest of the company to reinforce the importance of the core values.
If this was one of Steve's within margin of error blunders, he should be explained the rules again and probably made charge of inspecting the status of adherence to this particular rule by the people within company.
This is my take.
QFT!
So what you are saying is that the CEO was failing to achieve is number 1 priority for 6 months, and the best he can do is expect that his managers resolve the problem in 24 hours or they get fired? This isn't just any old directive, this is his number 1 priority. If he's failed to do the most important thing for 6 months, then he has only himself to blame.
He said: "I thought that leading by example would be the sure way to get the company to do what I wanted."
If it was really that important, it wouldn't have taken 6 months to discover. What's more likely is that the CEO changes his mind, constantly refocusing on new important things.
The CEO of this story is filled with lies, deceit, incompetence, and ignorance. Emulate that? No, I have respect, at the very least, for myself.
Meta: I hate that a silly comment like this gets so much attention only because it's the first comment.
(edit: By "first" I meant top of the page.)