>>The guy who invented netscape calls this The Crappy Guy Syndrome. He explained it this way: Managers tend to hire people less competent than they are as a means of protecting their status (job security). If they hire through an agency they can blame it on them. Many programmers are using
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>Mmmm, I'm not sure...
>There's another consideration that a manager has to deal with. Failing employees will drag down the manager with them. A manager knows that a successful team will also bring personal success.
>Take also into account that the manager has another role. Why would a manager, who mainly talks to customers and other managers, feel threatened by technical employees who mainly write specs and code?

There's the case when the project manager (IOW, the guy on top of the technical section of the food chain) doesn't trust the design part to his technical stuff, tries to do it himself, and knows that any decent programmer will note the flaws in the design. The guys who don't just tell their team what to do, but insist on knowing better how to do it. That includes the case you mentioned, when the top programmer hires the others, and fears that there's someone better than himself.

One would say that a really good programmer shouldn't have such fears at all - but hey, nobody's perfetc. And I've seen vanity at large among programmers. "Who screwed my code?"