If the only reason people pay attention to you is that you have the ability to fire them, you aren't much of a manager. I worked for years as a team lead. I had no authority to fire anyone, or dock their pay, the most I could do was to say nasty things about them like "They have their own independent ideas about how to get things done instead of genuflecting to me."<p>If he was a good program manager, people would have respected what he did, which was to understand the market for the product so well that he could inspire and lead the team to build the right thing at the right time.