Competing with underlings

"The management style was, and remained  for many years, to use the lightest touch and absolutely never to compete with underlings," recalls Phil Anderson, a physicist who joined  Bell labs soon after the transistor was developed. "This was the taboo that Shockley transgressed, and was never forgiven."

Jon Gertner, The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation (New York: Penguin, 2012), p. 102