<story><title>Simple Sabotage Field Manual – How to Destroy Your Organizations</title><url>https://butwhatfor.beehiiv.com/p/simple-sabotage-field-manual-destroy-organizations</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gilbetron</author><text>I like the idea of this, but many of the list items come off as things the author doesn&amp;#x27;t like.&lt;p&gt;Lets restate some:
&amp;quot;Insist on doing everything through “channels.” Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.&amp;quot; -&amp;gt; &amp;quot;Insist on doing everything through &amp;#x27;short-cuts&amp;#x27;. Never permit official channels to be taken in order to expedite decisions&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.&amp;quot; -&amp;gt; &amp;quot;Insist that things you don&amp;#x27;t like are irrelevant as frequently as possible.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.&amp;quot; -&amp;gt; &amp;quot;Argue that people are being caught up trying to be precise, leading to documents that are lacking precision&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Insist on perfect work in relatively unimportant products&amp;quot; -&amp;gt; &amp;quot;Insist that products are unimportant and so sloppy work is ok&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done.&amp;quot; -&amp;gt; &amp;quot;Claim that doing work is the only important thing and that communication is wasteful&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Do your work poorly and blame it on bad tools, machinery, or equipment. Complain that these things are preventing you from doing your job right.&amp;quot; -&amp;gt; &amp;quot;When you have the right tools and equipment, use them well, but then claim you are just really talented and that a master can work with poor tools.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Never pass on your skill and experience to a new or less skilful worker.&amp;quot; -&amp;gt; &amp;quot;Watch new workers like a hawk and never let them think for themselves.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The idea is interesting, the implementation in the article is tepid.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>yebyen</author><text>I bet a lot of people already know Technology Connections, but I like to bring up the first video of his that I ever watched at a time like this - that&amp;#x27;s right, the one about heat pumps!&lt;p&gt;He goes on this rant towards the end about Midwestern Values and I had been living in Indiana for about 5 years at this point, and nobody ever explained it to me so concisely and bitingly accurate what that perspective was. The short version in a picture of the story is the old man going up two flights on a rickety old ladder to check the roof, because he&amp;#x27;s been using that ladder for 30 years and it&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;perfectly fine.&amp;quot; You should get a new ladder, or you&amp;#x27;ll probably kill yourself!&lt;p&gt;The ladder is not perfectly fine, and each year he goes on using it the risk gets bigger. But we don&amp;#x27;t strive for perfection because we&amp;#x27;re used to &amp;quot;making do&amp;quot; with &amp;quot;good enough&amp;quot; tools. I could never make these my core values. As a professional, I need the freedom to bring my own tools, and as a full-time employee I&amp;#x27;m going to need the right tools provided on the job site (because it&amp;#x27;s not in my contract to provide my own tools!)&lt;p&gt;As an app dev for non-profit corp whose primary business is not app development, I couldn&amp;#x27;t hack it here. I still live here, but I work for a foreign company now, on the open source project that I wish we could have adopted to make my life as an app dev a bit easier, or at least a bit more livable.&lt;p&gt;Your perspective on this classic document (that gets reposted at least once every year) reminds me of this struggle of my own.</text></comment>
<story><title>Simple Sabotage Field Manual – How to Destroy Your Organizations</title><url>https://butwhatfor.beehiiv.com/p/simple-sabotage-field-manual-destroy-organizations</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gilbetron</author><text>I like the idea of this, but many of the list items come off as things the author doesn&amp;#x27;t like.&lt;p&gt;Lets restate some:
&amp;quot;Insist on doing everything through “channels.” Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.&amp;quot; -&amp;gt; &amp;quot;Insist on doing everything through &amp;#x27;short-cuts&amp;#x27;. Never permit official channels to be taken in order to expedite decisions&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.&amp;quot; -&amp;gt; &amp;quot;Insist that things you don&amp;#x27;t like are irrelevant as frequently as possible.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.&amp;quot; -&amp;gt; &amp;quot;Argue that people are being caught up trying to be precise, leading to documents that are lacking precision&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Insist on perfect work in relatively unimportant products&amp;quot; -&amp;gt; &amp;quot;Insist that products are unimportant and so sloppy work is ok&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done.&amp;quot; -&amp;gt; &amp;quot;Claim that doing work is the only important thing and that communication is wasteful&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Do your work poorly and blame it on bad tools, machinery, or equipment. Complain that these things are preventing you from doing your job right.&amp;quot; -&amp;gt; &amp;quot;When you have the right tools and equipment, use them well, but then claim you are just really talented and that a master can work with poor tools.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Never pass on your skill and experience to a new or less skilful worker.&amp;quot; -&amp;gt; &amp;quot;Watch new workers like a hawk and never let them think for themselves.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The idea is interesting, the implementation in the article is tepid.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lcnPylGDnU4H9OF</author><text>I haven’t seen this before and I can’t verify with the link to the actual field manual because it’s a 404. Does anyone have a PDF of the actual manual handy? (Edit: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikisource.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Simple_Sabotage_Field_Manual&amp;#x2F;Specific_Suggestions_for_Simple_Sabotage&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikisource.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Simple_Sabotage_Field_Manual&amp;#x2F;...&lt;/a&gt; Scroll to section (11a).)&lt;p&gt;The article seems to suggest that these things were lifted from the actual manual. Perhaps they cherry-picked these over things that are more relevant to commercial office work, but I would suspect instead that the statements which were excluded are less relevant.&lt;p&gt;If that’s the case, these are hardly things simply which the author dislikes. In the author’s own words: “If you are like me, many of these things sound surprisingly familiar.”&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the other methods as suggested by this comment’s parent are less effective (as an intentional means of sabotage) and so were excluded. It still seems worth it to be aware of these things and especially to look for them being perpetrated in bad faith.</text></comment>