A notable excerpt that I often see in quotation:<p>(11) General Interference with Organizations and Production<p>(a) Organizations and Conferences<p>(1) Insist on doing everything through "channels." Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.<p>(2) Make "speeches." Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your "points" by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate "patriotic" comments.<p>(3) When possible, refer all matters to committees, for "further study and consideration." Attempt to make the committees as large as possible — never less than five.<p>(4) Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.<p>(5) Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.<p>(6) Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.<p>(7) Advocate "caution." Be "reasonable" and urge your fellow-conferees to be "reasonable" and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.<p>(8) Be worried about the propriety of any decision — raise the question of whether such action as is contemplated lies within the jurisdiction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon.
Chatting with my gf, we came up with a new section (mostly her):<p>=== General Inquiries ===<p>- Answer a question other than the one being asked. Feign misunderstanding.<p>- Give incomplete answers. Do anything you can to almost but not completely answer the inquiry
.<p>- Delay answering as long as possible.<p>- Answer with a question.<p>- Request more information than required to answer an inquiry.<p>- Attempt redirection to other people or resources.<p>- Involve as many people as possible<p>- Rebuke the inquirer when they follow up on a previous unanswered inquiry within an arbitrary time window (days, not hours).<p>- When asked multiple questions, answer only only of them, ignoring all others. Wait to be prompted to answer each question individually.<p>- When asked multiple questions, answer the least important or time sensitive question first.<p>- Ignore all information provided besides the single question being answered.<p>- Prefer slower or more onerous communication methods
1. snail mail
2. email
3. text messaging
4. audio call
5. video call
6. in-person meeting<p>- Mix multiple communication methods<p>- If contacted using a lower ranking method, upgrade.
This one appears more complete: <a href="http://www.outpost-of-freedom.com/library/SimpleSabotageFieldManualOSS1944.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.outpost-of-freedom.com/library/SimpleSabotageFiel...</a><p>This reads like "The Anarchist's Guide to Bringing Down FAANG." (MAANG?)
Maybe the post is a "Parable of Lightening / Kolmolgorov Complicty" trap, but I would like to say what I think this is being used as source material for, and I won't directly because there isn't an easy way to make a comment on it without being antagonistic, but it's important to recognize that there exists a manual of these organized tactics, produced by an organization that employed Herbert Marcuse, whose work is taught in every humanities undergrad in the western world, where their graduates largely go on to work in organizations appendant to the public sector.
D) Spend as much time as possible alleging and arguing about Code of Conduct violations committed by the most productive members of the organization. Hire permanent staff to disrupt meetings and other work with these allegations. Accuse those who refuse to enthusiastically support these accusations.
This reminds me of the South Park where the kids had to become skilled at baseball in order to lose the game and go home sooner. The instructions are basically to be an incompetent manger at middle levels, inefficient bureaucrat high levels and a Karen at every committee. But instead of just being that archetype, you're doing it carefully and methodically as a sabotuer.
So I've seen this a couple of times and to me it make sense, but it also seems such a perfect indictment of organizational culture that I could see it being fabricated for laughs. Can anyone vouch for the authenticity of this?
Previous discussions:<p>5 years ago (64 comments): <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12253276" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12253276</a><p>6 years ago (68 comments): <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10493881" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10493881</a><p>2 years ago (89 comments): <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22322041" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22322041</a><p>9 years ago (68 comments): <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4831363" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4831363</a><p>4 years ago (32 comments): <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15109771" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15109771</a><p>12 years ago (29 comments): <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=833443" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=833443</a>
* Advocate strongly for microservices<p>* And redux / sagas<p>* Rewrite in rust<p>* 100% test coverage or reject PR<p>* The most elaborate git workflow you can find<p>* Bonuses based on completed
story points<p>* OKRs
CIA was established in 1947.
<a href="https://www.cia.gov/about/" rel="nofollow">https://www.cia.gov/about/</a>
I have a hard time believing that this isn't at least in part a joke. It's just too on-the-nose.<p>Either that or I have some very sharp questions for some former coworkers.
(6) A clean factory is not susceptible to fire, but a dirty one is. Workers Should be careless with
refuse and janitors should be inefficient in cleaning. If enough dirt and trash can be accumulated
an otherwise fireproof building will become inflammable.<p>you could apply this principle to information security/network security practices as well... just neglect to patch things, use out of date methods, leave cruft and half-finished projects laying around, etc.
I thought for a bit that the tactics were increasingly applied by many workers. sadly enough they aren't applying planned coordinated actions, they just are so fed up with this so well rigged system they've decided that, perhaps unconsciously, sabotaging all they can is the best pleasure they can hope for.
This is why I'm completely disenchanted with tech companies. I've seen billion dollar companies fumble basic shit too many times due to infighting and too many cooks etc. Managers who prefer to destroy any good thing that's going on if it can't be observed by them and watermarked as their intiative. This in turn has made me less hopeful about government and human civilization in general. The progress we've made has been the work of a few, not the many
>(8) If possible, join or help organize a group for presenting employee problems to the
management. See that the procedures adopted are as inconvenient as possible for the
management, involving the presence of a large number of employees at each presentation,
entailing more than one meeting for each grievance, bringing up problems which are largely
imaginary, and so on.<p>This is from the extended version.
Feels really strangely relevant these days...
Technically the Simple Sabotage Field Manual is from OSS--the CIA's predecessor.<p>The Manual is one of my favorite pieces of historical literature, but I think that people become <i>too</i> cynical about large organizations after they read the manual. It is important to understand how coordination can slow down or fail, but becoming cynical only makes the problem worse.
That was from 80 years ago, but it is the state of many engineers employed at Silicon Valley companies. I wonder what techniques CIA uses today that will be the norm in 2100.
These are excellent indicators of team negator type of employees. I'll be using this to find them and fire those depending how bad the committed these activities...
reading through this, and my tinfoil hat tells me this would make a more effective psyop than a manual. you create something like this, "lose" a copy where enemy decision makers can get a hold of it and bam, now the other guys are eating enormous resources on a slew of red-herring mole hunts.
My favorite variation of this is the "Freedom Fighters Manual" that was supposedly used by the CIA to subvert the communist regime in Nicaragua back in the 80's, as it has some funny illustrations presented like a comic book.<p><a href="https://archive.org/details/freedomfightersm00unit/page/n3/mode/2up" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/freedomfightersm00unit/page/n3/m...</a>
how would an invading force defend itself against this form of domestic sabotage? is the only defense to make incompetence tantamount to treason and prosecute it as a crime?
Now watch the proceedings of "The
US Socialist Convention"
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX9FgvXZXZ8" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX9FgvXZXZ8</a><p>I'm not it's its CIA sabotage. Mot to mention the longer full stream was immediately taken down by the organizers out for fear fear of mean words on the internet being said about them.<p>But the ideology inherently pushes towards so many of these listed (self-)sabotage tactics it almost doesn't even need it.
I would like to add the following to this manual.<p><a href="https://solaire.substack.com/p/software-engineers-simple-sabotage" rel="nofollow">https://solaire.substack.com/p/software-engineers-simple-sab...</a>