During World War 2, the CIA created Simple Sabotage, a book outlining ways to ruin productivity. The advice is timeless, like insisting on “channels” for decisions and committees for further study. In a tech setting, sapping productivity without getting caught is an art. Blame past CTOs, encourage own languages, and complicate systems. Disallow code cleanups and require architectures. Dismiss useful metrics, undertake big bets, and ignore user feedback. Leaders should incentivize bloat, make expensive acquisitions, and create vague hiring criteria. Project management should involve multiple teams and expensive agencies. Overall, small cuts to productivity add up quickly, compounding in a multiplicative way.
https://erikbern.com/2023/12/13/simple-sabotage-for-software.html