10 ways to kill your star programmer

1. Make them project managers.
2. Make them managers.
3. Enroll them in all kinds of full-length time-consuming leadership classes.
4. Ask them to attend numerous stupid meetings and conference calls on behalf of the team.
5. Ask them to spend a lot of time sorting out various best practices and coding guidelines that will never be read or used by anyone else.
6. Bug them with licensing concerns with every code library they want to use.
7. Ask them to submit purchase request for software they want to use once a year. If they miss the time, they have to wait another year.
8. Lock them in the project important for your promotion and reject their requests to leave the project because they think it's boring.
9. Reject their requests to travel to tech conferences they are dying to attend so that you can balance your quarterly cost.
10. Tell them you love them so that you can keep their pay low without feeling guilty.