Subliminal Harassment (SH) is known by several other terms such as head games, mind-fucking and jerking around works by causing the mark, the individual being targeted, to be made so uncomfortable, irritated, depressed, intimidated or frightened that they can be manipulated into doing things they normally would not do voluntarily but not be consciously aware of the fact that they are being harassed or manipulated. Properly executed SH give all the benefits of traditional overt harassment but none of the legal liabilities since it difficult or impossible to prove that is has occurred. And, you can get the U.S. government to subsidize it:see R&D Tax Credit
Generally, SH involves creating a subliminally unpleasant environment, playing upon common guilt trips, use of FUD or sometimes light forms of traditional overt harassment.
Guilt trips are subconsciously fears that can be aroused within and individual to agitate, harass or make them more vulnerable to manipulation. They can very according to race, religion or cultural background. For example, typical fears for W.A.S.P.s are age, sexuality, job competency, job or financial security, loss of standing in the community, health status, mental stability. For immigrants, the ability to communicate in English. Verbal or graphic representations of racial, social or religious stereo-types are also effective: the mugger African American man, the lazy Latino, the greedy Jew, overly aggressive feminist or the child molester gay male to name a few.
FUD(fear, uncertainty and doubt) was formally a technique used by mainframe computer companies to keep customers from drifting to competitors. However, the technique is very useful for creating a subliminally uncomfortable work environment facilitating high turn-over. Your goal is the keep the mark state of constant fear( e.g of loosing his/her job or reputation), in a state of uncertainty(e.g. about the future or skill set) and in a constant state of doubt(e.g. about ability to perform job or career future).
Mild forms of overt harassment such as the putting the mark in an physical uncomfortable work environment (death row), loud noises such as loud banging, talking or laughter, dropping termination notices on the mark's desk or conversations with upsetting information meant to be overheard by the mark in the work area can also be effective.
In later sections of this document, techniques and scenarios will be outline that you can implement in your company or organizations that will allow you to selectively employ SH against anyone you desire. There are not set rules, you just need to follow the basic outline but improvise as needed. Properly executed SH will leave the mark disoriented, angry, lonely, confused and vulnerable but unable to prove that he/she has been targeted for harassment - he or she will not even know what hit them! Good luck!
A common question is: Why would a company do this? Why would a company go to the trouble of hiring someone even giving them a higher wage or salary and then turn around and harass them into quitting? Where's the profit in that? Here are some of the reasons.
It all comes down to one word: turn-over. Every company and organization from churches to large multinational corporations have it. It is a part of the natural order in nature and in human social organizations. People go into organizations and industries and they have to leave them. Its only a matter of who goes and when. Despite what right-wing demagogues say about it, the real purpose of the corporate system is to concentrate and keep most of the wealth in the upper one to two percent of the population re-distributing the what's left of it among the other ninety-eight percent. High turn-over in the workplace keeps the rest of the ninety-eight percent of the population moving from job to job with enough purchasing power to keep the economy moving along but never allowing them to acquire significant wealth. While this policy may decrease a company's profit margin slightly, it benefits the overall business environment enormously which more than compensates for the loss.
It is a good cover for software companies and the software industry which engages in systematic discrimination against older workers. See Under Thirty Rule. For example, if companies only hired workers under 35 it would be clear that they are discriminating against older workers. But by hiring in older workers and turning them over quickly, it appears that they are not discriminating against older workers. After being turned over a few times, older workers will be discouraged from trying to get another job since they are just going to get turned over again. This system prunes older workers from the labor pool but gets employees off the liability hook. All the employees has to do it point to their own statistics, they are not discriminating against anyone we just have a hight rate of turn-over that's all.
It is part of the corporate culture in America particularly in the software industry. High turn-over and subtle harassment goes back to the start of Silicon Valley corporate culture. See "Pirates of Silicon Valley". Software companies are generally very well funded and can afford eccentricities like this that normally would not be allowed in industries that have legitimate market pressures.
The company may be running a jerk farm training the new generation of jerk management. In the year 2000, the greatest number of Americans in history turned 40. As workers get older the costs for health care increases exponentially and productivity drops. This means that all of baby boomers and generation-x people are going to have to be moved out of high paying jobs and replaced with younger workers. A new generation of young managers, recruiters and headhunters adept at kiting people from job to job and eventually "retiring" them (coercing them to voluntarily leave industry) will be increasingly important and in demand.
Firing someone directly opens up the possibility of a lawsuit. However, if you subliminally coerce an individual into quitting by themselves, you side step the problem completely.
Many companies try to maintain a tough corporate image with tight social control. High turn-over, hiring people in and moving them out as quickly as possible, perpetuates that image among corporate peers. For a manager, being a "people mover" enhances their reputation among their peers.
Many industries rely on H-1B visa workers who are cheaper, worker longer hours and in poorer conditions than "native" workers in America. In order to cover up this practice, companies need to keep the number of native workers at a minimum which means that they must be constantly turned-over. Also, SH is very effective at keeping immigrant labor in a state of terror.
The company might be a government front company recruiting immigrant intelligence operatives and need a way to dump individuals if they won't cooperate or don't prove to be reliable or useful sources of intelligence information.
Perhaps the company hired an individual but then decided for some reason they don't want to keep them - perhaps they have a chronic health problem or violated the company put out policy or the company institutes the under thirty rule. Rather than risk the possibility of lawsuits, the manager may choose to employ SH to facilitate the new employee's departure from the company. Surprisingly, some people find it emotionally draining and unpleasant to discharge individuals. For them SH is a cowardly way do to what they are afraid to do overtly.
In union shops, managers are often limited to the conditions on which they may discharge individuals. SH maybe the only alternative.
The company may have setup a death row, SH techniques are always applied to move people in this area out of the company as soon as possible.
Revenge could be another motive. Often an employee may offend an executive or manager an one company. Rather than retaliate against the employee while they are employed by their current company, they will have them hired away by some other company and let the new company management do the job. Contrary to common sense, companies that outwardly appear to be competitors are really "brothers under the skin". Companies in loans, finance and software all share the common "people problems". Very often one company will be more than happy to take and employee "off another companies hands" by hiring them in and then using SH to dump them if it is mutually beneficial. It s cleaner than firing someone since there is no liability problem for the previous employees because the mark quits the second job or leaves industry "voluntarily."
Some positions are billable seats in front companies where the company gets tax breaks to fill slots in bogus R&D departments used for money laundering or smuggleing operations. Moving the dupes into and out of the high velocity seats quickly before they wise up to whats going on or stick around to long and become expensive increases the amount of profit gleaned from these enterprises.
There are political reasons for using SH. Hiring in underclass people, harassing and humiliating them into quitting gives certain personality types a feeling of satisfaction and superiority. Since it is possible to create conditions in which anyone will fail no matter how smart, motivated and well trained they may be, this give great opportunities for company managers to hire in members of their favorite hated underclass, give them a position then use SH to completely sabotage and humiliate them. There are three benefits to using SH for political reasons. The first is you have created yet another anecdotal case where your favorite hated underclass has again failed to meet up to expectations. Second, you have successfully re-enforced the failure into the mind and soul of a member of your favorite hated underclass and finally you have the satisfaction of beating up and humiliating a member of your favorite class and either driving them to violence or out the door in tears. Remember, some executives will spend thousands of dollars a week on recreational drugs and prostitutes so why not spend a fraction of that to get the opportunity to beat-up and humiliate a member of their favorite hated underclass? It makes for great conversation at the country club or corporate sauna. You've shown all those civil liberty ACLU types that members of you favorite hated underclass are unfit to work and you have an example to prove it - and your lawyers can now back you up.
A person who is target for high turn-over diverts attention from the organization as a whole and offers a "scape-goat" that can be blamed for inefficiencies or a bad business model. Having high-turnover covers that fact that there are some people who are sticking around for a long time.
Many managers like to keep on person on their department who is in the process of being turned over. It improves moral for the long term employees.
Besides, it can be fun to hire people in and see how fast you can get them to quit! Open up a betting pool in the HR or boardroom.
With regards to SH there are two types of lawyers: one that knows about SH and employs the technique themselves and the other naive and cannot imagine why any organization would do such a thing. The latter type will just attribute the mark's problems to paranoia or assume that the mark somehow deserves the abuse they are receiving, tell them to "either talk to your boss about it" or "get a new job" and send them on their way. The former lawyer, who is in the loop, will more than likely tell the mark the same thing, send them on their way and then tip off the mark's company's that harassment is working with legal telepathy.
Most lawyers in private practice have to put up the constant irritant of people coming to them with their "petty problems". They are looking for the big money cases. Many would love to be one of the high priced corporate attorneys that defend companies in discrimination or harassment lawsuits;therefore, lawyers have little or no sympathy for people who are targeted for SH.
One line of defense relies on the myth that it is expensive and difficult to recruit and hire new employees. For most individuals, especially the ones who are seated on juries, a few thousand dollars is a lot of money, often the more than they will ever see at one time. These types of individuals have no comprehension of the wealth of even a modestly sized company. So, if they hear that it may cost a few thousand dollars to hire an employee, they can never believe that any company would spend what they perceive as a "large" sum of money just to bring someone into a company with the intent of harassing them out of the company.
Since SH is often a group in a small office or department, it is often difficult to place blame on any particular individual where the herd mentality may be at work. With no solid proof of collusion, when the mark describes what is going on it will sound like paranoia not a deliberate attempt to drive them out of the company.
Often when a new employee comes into a company there will be a period of "hazing" where other employees will test the new employee with all sorts of unpleasantness. This is a perfect cover for SH.
Finally, litigation is very expensive. Lawyers will not take a case that they cannot win or settle. Most cases of SH would require a lot of work without a sure outcome unless someone on the inside goes "on the record." Besides, many lawyers use these techniques in their own practices, and don't want to publicly admit that the techniques exists.
In any event, the people you will be targeting are worthless nobodies that greedy lawyers ignore by default and are not making enough money that loss of their job would make it worth suing anyway.
Myth 1: An at-will exempt employee-unlike a wage earner-is one who's salary does not vary with the amount of work they are required to perform.
Reality: Under state law, a salaried at-will exempt employee is required at all times to match each hour worked to a billable account. If the employee cannot find enough billable hours to meet their weekly quota, the employer is not legally required to pay the employee their salary agreed to in the letter of agreement.
Myth 2: The at-will agreement is a legal contract between the employer and employee which either side can unilaterally terminate. If the employer wishes to terminate the agreement the employer must communicate to the employee that their services are no longer required.
Reality: If the employer stops giving the employee work or paying the employee their salary, the employee is legally required under state law to unilaterally terminate the employment agreement from their side by quitting.
Myth 3: The at-will agreement is a legal contract between the employer and employee and like all legal contracts both parties are required to act in good faith.
Reality: The employer can treat the employee anyway they want to. There are no state, Federal laws or case legal precedents that require any party in the contract to act in good faith.
Myth 4: The employer is responsible for determining the employee's ability to perform work and skill sets and to provide employee with work that they are capable of performing and comfortable with.
Reality: The employer can deliberately deceive the employee into believing that they will provide the employee with work that they are qualified and capable of performing and then simply not do it with no legal liability at all. The employer can assign an employee any task to perform regardless of their ability to get it done and fire them if they can't do it. Even if the employee perceives it to be menial, humiliating and demeaning or so ambiguously defined that they cannot even develop a plan for completing the task. The employer has no legal responsibility to make sure that the employee is qualified for the job that they will be assigned. An employer can hire a plumber to build a fence, a carpenter to fix a car, tailor to treat the sick, a doctor to fit suits or a waitress to practice law or a software engineer to reverse engineer a non-existent product.
Myth 5: The employer is responsible with providing the employee work during the period of your employment.
Reality: The at-will agreement does not specify that the employer agreed to give the employee work to perform. They only agreed to give them a job NOT jobs to perform. The employer can expect that the employee to creatively "invent" their own work to keep busy or quit if there is nothing to do.
Myth 6: Your employment period is indefinite and the employer must directly communicate to you that they are terminating their employment agreement with the employee.
Reality: The employer is not legally required to communicate to the employee that they are unilaterally terminating the at-will agreement. The employee can be virtually fired. Being shunned by everyone in the company or department or not being given work to be performed are sufficient under law to terminate the at-will agreement with the employee. The employer can just stop paying the employee their salary without explanation.
Myth 7: Being jerked around at work is a form of workplace harassment and is illegal and other employees who co-operatively engage in it are involved in a conspiracy.
Reality: Subtle harassment described in this document is not illegal. Even if the employer knows about it or is encouraging an environment where other employees consciously or unconsciously try to make another employee uncomfortable or provoking them to into hostile behavior are not involved in a conspiracy.
Myth 8: The employer is required to provide the employee with all the information, tools and additional training that an employee my need to perform an assigned task.
Reality: The at-will agreement does not state that the employer will provide information, trade secrets, tools and additional training that an employee my need to perform an assigned task. In fact, the employer may deliberately neglect to do any security and background checks at the time the employee was hired and use this as an excuse to withhold agree to work entirely
Myth 9: The employer can only discharge the employee for "just cause".
Reality: The employer can uni-laterally terminate the employment agreement for any reason or no reason with no legal liability.
Myth 10: An employer that is a government front company is covered by the Know Your Customer Rule and if employee's know about money laundering, smuggling or drug dealing they must report it to the proper athorities.
Reality: The KYC rule only applies to banks and finalcial institutions not private companies. Employees of other types of companies have NO responisiblity to report crimes commited by other employees, management, or their customers. Furthermore, employees or customers of government front companies engaged in activies such as money laundering,drug dealing or smuggling are not commiting crimes and local city, county and state law enforcement agencies are not allowed to investigate or prosecute them.
Myth 11: Packing a company with younger workers, not hiring older workers and turning over older workers is age discrimination.
Reality: The courts have found determined that things such as flag burning in public, excluding gays from the Boyscouts and hiring and preferentially promoting younger workers to send a message that older workers are not welcome is constitutionally protected form of free speech and is not discrimination.
Note: The only way an employee would be able to work around these loop holes would be to have clauses in the Letter of Agreement prohibiting the employeer from engaging in these activities. As long as you stick with the "vanilla" at-will format you will be safe and the employee will be at your mercy.
Age:
There are two tracks to follow: discomfort with being to young and the more common exclusion for being too old. In some societies, old persons are respected and give a greater social status that younger people. However, in most American companies, an older person who is still working and is not financially independent or a member of high management is looked down upon as having failed in some manner of another and should just "dis-appear". In the software industry, success if often achieved before the age of thirty so individual still working above that age are considered failures. Packing a department with really young people is a good way to send a message that older workers are not welcome. The media is a great help here re-enforcing the myth that only younger people (under thirty) are clever and innovative. Most programs and articles will emphasize the age of the people involved if they are under twenty but never feature anyone over thirty unless they are working in government or education.
Sexuality:
For heterosexuals, being perceived of as gay can be extremely frightening and arouse greater anger that can be used to manipulate them. For gays and lesbians, the fear of the disclose of their sexual orientation can also cause great distress and fear that can be used to manipulate them. Being perceived of as sexually impotent can be used to undercut someone's credibility and effectiveness. Perception of being overly sexually active can used to portray someone as being a "pervert". These are most effective in religious communities.
Job competency: The fear of being unable to perform ones work due changes in the environment or changes in task assignment.
Financial Security: Fear of "falling off the planet", that is loosing their job and not being able to get another job; or having to get one that pays less and is less prestigious
Health Status: In the United States which doesn't have a national health care system, people with long term health care problems are considered a financial burden on business.
Mental Stability: Being perceived of a crazy, eccentric or having brain oriented medical problems directly challenge the perception that the individual is capable of performing their work or continuing in their current position.
Race: Within the W.A.S.P. majority in the United States, there are still strong racial stereo-types in popular culture. Members of these racial groups are still confronted with these unpleasant images and perception that people might see them in themselves can cause great anxiety, fear and resentment.
Loss Of Standing in the Community: People a gregarious, social animals. The fear of being shunned by family and community is a very powerful fear.
Rejection in the Workplace: Fear of being shunned by co-workers or given useless out-the-door tasks as a "hint" that the individual is not wanted anymore can cause great anxiety, fear and resentment.
Creating a subliminal abusive environment evolves to two separate steps:
Fortunately, for the first task, the software engineering process is at best poorly defined and in popular culture, the default definition appears to be "just sitting at a computer and typing." Even better, some gullible SEs can even be duped into believing that the reverse process, reverse engineering, is the same as the forward process. Coupled with the genius fallacy, this leaves ample room for scoping out really unpleasant out the door tasks even if they have nothing to software engineering at all. If you can get the mark to buy into the lie that they are responsible for completing any task that you assign them, they will be at your mercy. Best of all, the entire process can be broken creating a whole chain of useless and unproductive tasks. See The Broken Working Model. and Fix and Shuffle
For the second task, the goal is to create an environment where targeted individuals in the work area is constantly nervous, distressed and in fear of loosing their job or being humiliated by not being given work to perform. The basic fears and guilt trips are already present. The techniques outlined in the "Typical Technique and Scenarios" will allow management to create an environment where they are brought to the surface and realized. See fight or flight response, FUD and phoremones releases for more information.
Putting targeted individuals in poorly ventilated offices or areas or ergonomicly uncomfortable positions can also be effective in creating a subtly hostile environment. Generally, this will mean little or no air circulation, heat and lots of mold and dust laying around. This will cause mild heat-stroke and increased allergies. Make sure the monitor is either much higher or lower that eye level and at an oblique angle to the front of the desk. This will stress the neck since they have to constantly move their head up and down or keep it turned to the right or left when seated at the desk. If possible set the monitor refresh rate down to where it is just perceptible - this will cause headaches. Only provide chairs without lumbar support, this will increase stress on the back. Use cheap computers, monitors,keyboards and mice that are not designed to be ergonomicly safe. Very slow computers that crash frequently and network connections will also increase frustration. Wise employers should always keep a few of these high velocity seats open and available just in case it becomes necessary to move someone into one right away.
The trick is doing it selectively. For employees you want to keep you need always signal that you will accommodate them and deal honestly and fairly with them. For individuals you want to target for high turn-over you need to do the opposite: target them with unfavorable or unfair treatment whenever possible especially when it comes down to work assignment and work environment.
Golden Rule of High Turn-over: Keep older workers billable but
never give them an assignment that will enhance their skill set and keep kiting them from job to job;
keep the kids busy with interesting work, perks and frequent raises.
See Packing Younger Workers for more information.
Note: These are just outlines of techniques. In actual implementation the details will vary. You are going to have to modify them "on the fly" to match the situations in you own organization. You won't necessarily implement the exact scenarios described here but customized variations and hybrids with similar characteristics.
Many of the scenarios require a co-operative effort by one or more individuals in the work environment. In recruiting accomplices, it is important to use individuals who you trust who won't feel guilty about targeting others for harassment. Very often other workers will "sense" that the individual is being targeted and trigger a fight or flight chain reaction causing others to either consciously or un-consciously to behave hostilely tword the mark.
After you have hired the mark don't give him anything to do - it's that simple.Make sure everyone else has plenty to do or appears to be busy.(See Peer Pressure) This will leave the mark feeling "left-out", isolated and feeling neglected and harassed but you are not DOING anything TO him. You will of course have to scope out some sort of vague task, but in everything you do make it clear that are not going to accommodate him or her or make them feel comfortable. Software engineering by its very nature is a colaborative process. If the engineer is stuck in a cubicle somewhere with no interaction with other engineers or endusers, he/she can never succeed. Increase the mark's discomfort by using the techniques outlined in the Section VI:Additional Techniques.
When hiring the mark, lie to them and give the mark the impression that you think his/her skill set matches you company's needs and that you have a specific position for him or her and you will accommodate them fully. Then on the first day the mark starts his new job, suddenly inform them that there has been a change and that he/she will be working for a different boss than the one that you lead them to believe he would. Have the new boss, tell him that they don't have any work for him or that there has been a change in job description and duties. The build up and then sudden drop in expectations is designed to create a deep pyschological shook which hopefully will cause the mark to quit. If the mark doesn't quit, scope out a large or ambiguous out the door task . Try to trap them into the genius fallacy. When the mark is not even able to define the task much less complete it, he will be in a constant state of not knowing what to do and feelings of inferiority. Then have your accomplices reinforce this notion. Make sure that everyone else that the mark sees is busy and completing their work. Have them say things like, "Yeah, we need to hire someone with such and such skills to get you job done". This will re-enforce the feeling of inferiority in the mark and will isolate him further.
If the mark wises up to what is going on, give the impression that in the company, "one hand not knowing what the other is doing" as an excuse for reneging on the agreement. Verbal intimidation is very useful in this situation. During the hiring setup, the mark was lead to believe that you will provide work for him that he could complete, so give the mark the impression that he is being "out of line" but expecting you, the employer, to act fairly and accommodate him.
Setup the mark during the interview process, to believe that you will accommodate him fully and have a position for which he is fully qualified and that you will always have plenty of work for him to perform. However, once hired, give the mark the perception that all hours worked must be matched to a billable customer account or he won't get paid his salary. Since you lead him to believe that you have plenty of work for him he will not know what to do when he finds out that he is somehow responsible for filling a quota for hours a week.
Use peer pressure to increase discomfort by making sure everyone else besides the mark has work. You can tell that this method is succeeding and that the mark has bought into the lie, if he becomes defensive and stressed out on the day that time sheets are due. Use embarrassment meetings or status reports to further embarrass the mark.
This scenarios works wonderfully for individuals who have bought into the genius fallacy. People of this ilk don't want to admit that they are not smart enough to figure out how to complete the vaguely defined task that you have scoped out for them.
Finally, set the hook in. When the mark finally comes to you and complains that he doesn't have anything to do slam him with some kind of statement like: "Well, Joe, then I don't know what else we can have you do around here." At this point the feeling of betrayal will be complete and you will have the mark should be completely broken and ready to go out the door.
This works the best with a new hire. The mark's former boss, the HR person or company attorney at the mark's previous company will be the point man here. Since the mark probably has distributed his resume to other companies and these other companies have contacted the mark's pervious employer, the previous employer is in a good position to put you in contact with other companies who have the mark's resume. Starting on a Monday, gradually increase the SH, and on Thursday, have one of the other companies call the mark and ask him in for an interview. On the final Friday before the weekend, get brutal and bring up the intensity. If you have been successful, the mark will not show up on Monday and probably quit thinking he has more opportunities. At this point call up the other individuals at the other companies and tell them that they can withdraw their offers for interviews. Call up the mark's previous boss and have a good laugh together!
In this scenario, the mark or placed in a small, stuffy office that's air-conditioning unit is controlled from another office. The mark's work space is kept either too cold or more commonly more hot than the other room. Since the only way to change the temperature of the mark's environment requires changing the environment of the other room where the thermostat is located, the will create conflict. Since discomfort is somewhat subjective, this creates an environment where the mark is placed in a hostile environment. This will entrap the mark in a situation in which he will be forced to be hostile with the people in the other room. In many cases, the environment can be made so inhospitable that the mark will voluntarily quit. Remember, the employeer has no legal responsibility to make the employee comfortable and can place an employee in any environment even if it is unhealthy.
This works best in large companies and was a favorite for aerospace and defense contractor in the 1960s and 1970s. Create bogus department wars and have a upper level manager issue a written termination notice for the mark. Have it suddenly delivered to the individual for best effect. The sudden shock of having the fear of loosing the job realized, leaves the mark open to more manipulation. The individual will be forced to go to his boss for an explanation. This gives an opportunity to use further SH techniques to distress the mark when the mark is most vulnerable.
Have your accomplices walk by the employee and "throw" facial expressions or disgust, fear or hatred. This is intended to arouse reciprocal responses in the mark. This give the subliminal impression that something is wrong with the mark. Most likely, this will bring up deep seated fears and guilt trips. This is especially effective if the mark is a member of an underclass. For example, walk up to the mark and put an expression of fear or disgust on your face. Hopefully, this will cause the mark to react this fear and hostility toward you. Which is what you want. Variation on the above, if you are the mark's manager or boss, every time you see the mark, put a shocked, disgusted or fearful look on your face.
The following are little things you can do to make the work environment unpleased for selected individuals.
During the morning keep the pacing of the office slow and calm. The at an appointed time, instruct your accomplices, to begin to speed up remarkably. By rushing around with jerky motions, banging, making noise and talking loudly with nervous "edge" in the voices and acting nervous, you will create a fear response in the mark, and increase his nervousness and discomfort.
At every opportunity, especially in those rare moments when the mark has managed to accomplish something and is happy, go up to him and comfort him or her with a somber look on you face as though comforting him after a tragedy.
During conversations with the mark, try to inflict psychosomatic pain in the mark by simulating a spasm of abdominal pain in yourself. Do a grunt-moan as if you are experiencing pain and pull in the diaphragm slightly like simulating a pain spasm when the mark says something you don't like. This should cause a sympathetic reaction of pain in the mark. This will make a pain memory association with what ever the mark was saying at the time.
Throwing Fits of Anger: When possible throw small fits of anger in the presence of the mark.Sooner or later they will do something wrong or make a mistake, so use it as a pretext to get angry at them and seem somewhat justified. Throw and slams things around for good effect. The trick it not to make the mark look like a victim but make you look like a victim if he/she retaliates. This is a classic jerk intimidation routine and can be used to create feelings of guilt, unpleasant memories and desire to avoid contact with you.
Often a single person in an office will be responsible for organizing the campaign to harrass an individual out of the organization. If the mark wises up and realizes that this person is using fear and hostility to manipulate him, you can try to use this in a back-handed sort of way to make them feel guilty about not quiting. Have the organizer look sad and on the verge of tears whenever the harasser sees the harassee.
Over-heard Remarks: Have your accomplices go into the work area and make remarks to other workers that are specifically to be overheard by the mark. These remarks should arouse emotions such as fear,jealously and insecurity by mentioning subjects of interest such as job assignments, layoffs,skill sets or withholding of billable hours.
Have your accomplices leave money, jewelry, or other valuables in conspicuous places. Try to make it obvious to the mark that they are being left there as an opportunity to for someone to steal them and that you are trying to "set up" the mark. The obviously attempt to criminalize him/her will humiliate them even more since you are broadcasting to others that you think he or she has criminal tendencies.
"Make Bricks Without Straw": Withhold trade secrets, business logic or any other vital information necessary for the mark to perform his/her job. You can use the pretext that you cannot give this information to a uncleared employee. Most employees mistakenly assume that the employer is responsible for doing background checks and etc. if the employee will need to access company or trade, proprietary information or confidential customer information to perform their job. This is a favorite technique for government front companies and works even if the only trade secret is that the company is government front company. From the incident in the Old Testament where the Pharaoh orders the Hebrews to make bricks without straw as punishment.
Sugar and caffeine will enhance SH by making the mark even more nervous and agitated. So bring in lots of coffee, tea, dougnuts and high sugar junk foods and get mark to consume as much of this food as possible.
Have the company drug dealer, give him speed,coke or other drugs as freebies. This will pay off by making the mark even more mentally vulnerable to manipulations as well as being involved in illegal activities.
Have closed door meetings from which the mark is excluded. This will play on his paranoia that he is the topic of the meeting. Then after themeeting pull the mark into your office with a stern look on your face like he is about to be fired or disciplined. If you can see fear or nervousness in his face then you have succeeded in manipulating him. Variation: invite the mark into the meeting, but then ask him to leave for the remainder.
Use laughter (like in the next room) to play on the mark's paranoia by thinking that "everyone" is laughing at them. This can be combined with the closed door meetings.
Shipwrecking: Assign the mark to a project with a group of several individuals and setup a reasonable schedule for the group to complete the project. Then after a few days, pull the other members away under some pretext leaving the mark complete responsibility. This technique can be used as a cover for moving the mark into a useless billable slot or out the door task but still give the appearence that of living up to a agreement of assigning them legitimate work. Most effective when used with Moving Deadlines.
Moving Deadlines: After the deadlines for completion of tasks have been set, suddenly move them all up. Since the mark is doing bogus work it doesn't matter anyway but this will increase the anxiety. Most effective when used with Shipwrecking.
In the case of a female, have some of you female accomplices give the mark a hint that sexual favors are required: that they will loose their job, visa or whatever if they don't "put out for it."
Have everyone leave for lunch at the same and not invite the mark.
Packing Younger Workers: Hire younger people(under 22)to make the older workers feel insecure and trigger the age guilt trip. Inplement the Under Thirty Rule by setting up a jerk farm or money laundering front company by partnering with a P.S.O. Bring in really young outside people to do the legitimate work. Set up a death row and shipwreck the older workers into billable slots or out the door tasks.
In order to increase discomfort, when possible, always call the mark away from his work area to a specified location such as an office or conference room when subjecting them to one of the techniques outlined in this document. You are trying to create a conditioned response which associates being taken to specific geographical location with unpleasant experiences.
Targeting gay males or lesbians. Have someone of the same sex who is very good looking, press their body against the mark or moon him or her. Other techniques include pulling up the shirt or looking at the crotch area of the mark. Or female genitalia in the case of a lesbian.
If it is available at your company site, use auditory subliminal messaging to harass the mark. The type of suggestive and irritating messages to be vectored onto the background will depend on the profile of the mark, e.g. sexual orientation, psychological weaknesses, patterns of drug or alcohol use and etc. The company lawyer, security department, local law enforcement or outside security consultants will be able to set this up for you.
Inducing Psychosomatic Illness: Try to induce psychosomatic illnesses. For example, in the presence of the mark, have your accomplices pretend to have a cold - sneeze or cough or show symptoms of other illnesses. Many weak-minded individuals will pick up the subtle ques and develop a psychosomatic illness from the behavior of others.
Assign the mark a bogus billable task to a new feature or enhancement to a existing product. When they are finished, refuse to release it and openly criticize it in front of the whole group with requirements that were never given to the mark when they started the project. This will work best with an individual who is afflicted with the genius fallacy. It won't work well if they are smart enough to tie you down to a solid set of requirements before they start.
Scope out a vague but complicate task the individual that you know the mark cannot or will not be able to complete. Then when they hit a wall and cannot complete it, start harassing them. Asking them why they didn't keep going even though you know that they would not be able to. This plays on their guilt for giving up and not at least trying to complete the task.
Performance Reviews or Evaluations: arrange to have a performace review and call the mark into your office. Use criticisms that could be generally applied to almost anyone in any work situations but in a form that is designed to be a harsh criticism of the mark.
Steam Roller: Never let the mark finish a sentence. When he starts to talk, interrupt him before his second word. This may take some practice. But, pretty soon the mark will give up and be frustrated or outburst of anger toward you, which is a good result.
Verbal Repetition: Draw the mark into a conversation about a subject that you know makes them anxious. During the conversation, make the mark repeat himself/herself by feigning lack of understanding of to what they are saying.
Verbal Barbs: The following is a list of short phrases which can be directed to the mark to intimidate or "prick" the above mentioned guilt trips. These should be targeted at the mark when under stress when they are more vulnerable:
Note: In the last several years, there have been several incidents of violence in the workplace where SH have been implemented as a policy. Fortunately, the violence was chalked up to another crazy person on the rampage and no one in the media or legal community will go on the record to what was really going on. This is the ultimate proof that curn-and-burn and SH work!
This is the other half of the job. Now that the person has been harassed out of their previous job, it is now your job to humilate the mark who has now come to you looking for a job. You will be re-inforcing all of the ugly experiences to really put the message to the mark that they are not welcome in industry anymore. Your goal is to make the interviewing expericnce so embarassing and unpleasent that they will not want to repeat the experince. Since all of your real employees will be immigrants on visas or recent college graduates who where recruited just out of the major schools, your victims come in the form of blind resumes sent as a result or newspaper ads,online research or bullitin boards.
Once the mark has filled out the application and check the box that says its OK for you to contact the previous employee, give a call to the human resources person, company attorney or former boss at the mark's previous employeer. Feel them out to see if they are willing to give you the "dirt" on the mark. As in a sort of back handed way if there is anything they should know about this guy. At this point, they will tell you about their quirks, fears,sexaul orientation, partner preference, drug or alcohol use or what indescrctions the mark is guilty of and the best way to humiliate him or her. Remember, there are no legal restrictions on what information the previous employer can give you.
If possible, contact the department of the college or university that the individual graduated from. Since previous employers have probably contacted them also, there may be individuals there who are willing to put you into contact with previous employers who have grievances against this individual or give you more useful information to use against this perspective employee.
Checking the age of the mark, it is not apparent how old the mark is ask them when they graduated from high school. Although, it is illegal to ask them directly how old they are, if you get the date of high school gradution and subtract 18 years from it you can determine their date of birth and age. If you can't do that, then as part of the preliminary setup, have the interviewee, read a document with very fine print and see if they need reading glasses.
During the interview process, send in younger people to interview the perpective new employee. They will see a bunch of younger people and be intimidated and this will trigger the age guilt trip. Since all the people in authority seem to be very young, they will hopefully get the message that older workers are not welcome.
Concentrate on why the mark left his previous job, since he was humiliated out of the previous one, forcing them to contront the issue again during the interview will increase the discomfort of the experience.
Increase the humiliation by repeatably asking about things outside his or her area of expertise. Make them repeat themselves by asking the same questions in slightly different forms during the conversation especially if you find subject that make them anxious. Keep going at them until they finally break down. Alternate, between Verbal Repitition and Steam Roller for maximum effect.
If your department or company is C.I.A. or D.O.D. front and you have any immgrants on salary for intelligence purposes, bring them in to intimidate the individual. Seeing immigrants gettting big salaries while they are still out "pounding the pavement" hopefully will increase the level of frustration.
It is during this period that you will be sizing up the mark in the event you decide to take on the challenge of bringing them in and using SH on them.
Review Section II above, during the interview ask yourself the following questions:
If you decide to pass on the individual, jerk them around as much as possible before you send them on their way. Pass them around managers and executives who have been trained in the techniques outlined in this document. The goal is to make the memories of the interview as unpleasent as possible and make them fearful of repeating the process.
If you decide to take them on, then you need to make a decision about salary. If you are planning to move them out quickly, then give them a fairly large increase in salary. This has two benefits: One it will be a good cover since common sense says you would givea bigger salary to someone you sincerely wanted to keep. Two, its a great incentive to get this idiot to accept you offer right away.
If you plan to screw around with them for a somewhat longer period then give them less of a boost or even a cut in salary since they are at your mercy.
In any event, set them up by making them believe that you are seriouly interested in their career and that you have interesting fofilling work that they are idealy suited for. All of this, of course, is not true. You are just setting them up for the traps outlined in the begining of this document.
Warning: The risk here is that the perspecitve employee may try to modify the letter of agreement to remove the loops holes, ambiguities and abuses outlined in the this document. If they succeed, they will compromise the employeer's ablity to use SH on them after they have been hired.
If all else fails and the employee is still sticking around, the final solution is criminaliztion. The compnay lawyer or attorney can help here. Most lawyers have worked with the county or state attorney generals offices and local law enforcement. Given the word from a powerful company, they can put the machinery into motion to rat fuck the mark or have the mark setup-up or framed for a crime. This is especially effective if they are gay or a recreational drug user since most law enforcement agenecies target them anyway. The public humilation, costs of defense and time invoved inclusing time in jail make it extreemly unlikely that the mark will be able to continue in your employment.
baby boomers: people born in the rapid expansion of the U.S. population after WWII-generally, between the years of 1945 and 1964. These individuals are now approaching retirement.
billable:adjective, generally an individual in whos work is not significant and the hours worked are used to bill a client for bogus work to bring money into an organization. Synonym, a person who is targeted to be quickly driven out of the company.
billable seat: a position in a company that is used as an accounting trick to funnel money in from a customer account into the organization. This work performed by the individual occupying the seat is generally tedious, redundant or ambiguously defined to maximize effort and increase frustration. Since the work performed in these positions is not essential for the actual operation of the company and workers are easily replaceable, they are generally high velocity seats with the individuals occupying targets subliminal or overt harassment and jerk training.
broken working model: the classic oxymoron in the software industry to generate busy work. Ussually,involves giving a mark suffering from the genius fallacy a bunch of code or documentation and the task of making it "work" - what ever that means. Since there is no description of the working model and no working model to demonstate, they are forced to re-create the non-product from scratch with no idea of what is supposed to do. This is the classic task in a software money laundering or government front company.
business model: logical or accounting organization of business or company based on how money or revenue enters, flows through and leaves in an organization. Legitimate business models provide services, physical products or add value to existing products or services. Two examples of illegitimate business models are money laundering time sheet businesses and high tech smuggling operations. Time sheet businesses just move money from one account to another but provide no services, products or added value. Laptop smuggling operations just have employees run up frequent flyer miles carrying laptops loaded with sensitive information or contraband items. Remember what Deep Throat said in All The Presidents Men: Follow the money.If you really want to know what business a company is in, just watch where the money comes from and where it goes.
Central Intelligence Agency: the U.S. government agency responsible for intelligence gathering outside the United States. They have lots of money and little or no oversite. Aerospace companies and divisions of large multi-national coporations are often fronts for C.I.A operations. It is ironic, that to fight communism, the U.S. actually setup a socialist system of government run companies.
conditioned response: a physiological response to outside stimulus programmed into an animal or human by associating a external stimulus with some experience that generates the response. The pioneering work done by Pavlov and his dogs is an example. By associating the ringing of a bell with feeding, he was able to make his dogs salivate even though no food was present.
cost plus contract:in the golden ear of aerospace, the government would set aside a chuck of cash and companies were allowed to bill the goverment for additional costs to fofill the contract. The alternative (see billable) put in place in the 1970s after the space race conculuded, is to force employees to match hours worked against a billable account - essentially pulling work out of nowhere or making salaried worker into wage workers for accounting purposes.
curn and burn: polite term of the management style used in companies to maintain a high turn-over ussually to dump workers after mergers or acquisitions.
dirty tricks: department or division of a company or organization responsible for planning and implementing attacks to destroy the credibility,reputation and sometimes the lifes of individuals who pose a threat to the status quo of the organiztion. In the private sector, individuals in these departments are often recruited from government organizations such as the C.I.A.
death row: a row of cubicles or section of an office where people who are being turned-over or being disciplined are placed. The area should be carefully chosen so that the various techniques discussed in this document and be implemented easily. Very often this area will be covered by some form of electronic surveillance and activities recorded for later review. Send out young mangers to practice the various technique outlined in this document on the individuals you have placed here. Afterwards, you can review the tapes, critique their performance and give them tips and helpful feedback.
Departmrnt of Defense: the government agency responsible for financing, maintaining the military and intelligence capabilities of the United State of America. People in this organization are fofilling and important role in maintaing a freedom and democracy worldwide. But they have an unlimited budget, little or no oversight and love to spend tax payers money often inventing threats when none exists to keep busy.
dupe:a individual put into a billable slot who is unaware that they are being used solely to bring revenue into the organization. In the golden era of aerospace, entire divisions of companies of dupes would be kept on staff and then layed off to blackmail politicians into awarding pork barrell money to companies.
embarrasment meetings: this is a departmental meeting called specifically for the purpose of humilitating an individual who is being moved out of the company where the individual being targeted has been purposefully assigned a task that has been scoped for failure. Call a group meeting and ask all the members to speak to the group and give the status of their work. This will embarrass member of the group who are targeted for turn-over and has not been given work to perform or work that is not performable. Since everyone else will have glowing reports of their work and the target individual will have nothing to report and feel humiliated. A variation on this, it to have the mark give his boss frequent status reports or keep a log of work performed. Since he is not being given anything to do, he/she will be embarassed not haveing anything to report.
fight or flight response: the physiological state of distress and panic that results for stress in the environment. The typical subjective sensations are accelerated heart rate, sweating, dilation of the eyes, release of adrenalin and a general feeling of panic and fear. In closed offices or areas of poor ventilation, phoremones released by the sweat glands can caused the effect to spread from individual to individual and room to room. When this is triggered in primates like humans, very often the reaction is to become hostile tword individuals perceived as vulnerable within the group.See Herd Mentality.
fix and shuffle: busy work where dupe attempts to fix "bugs" in a poorly defined or non-exsistent working model of a software product. The result of fixing one "bug" is the generation more "bugs" which when fixed generates more "bugs" that need to be fixed and so on in and endless cycle. Since, most of the charges to customers after the sale of a propriatory software product are in this maintenace period, this is an excellent way to maintain a steady flow of money into an organization for money laundering purposes.
FUD(Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt):this was formally a technique for companies to keep customer from drifting to competitors. However, the technique is very useful for SH. You need to keep the mark in a state of fear( fear of loosing his/her job, reputation), in a state of uncertainty( about his/her future and skill set) and in a constant state of doubt( that he/she can perform his/her job and his/her skill set).
generation X: term coined by Douglas Coupland in his book "Generation X" which describes Americans born between 1964 and 1980. This individuals are now approaching middle age.
genius fallacy: the mis-guided notion that if person is "smart enough" and motivated enough, any task they are assigned is completable. It does not take into account artifically contrived situations in which the employee is being setup for failure. Any task can be scoped out so that it appears to be a legitmate task but the problem is so vaguely definded or a solution is not possible or the tools to carry out the task are withheld. People who subscribe to this philosphy are good targets for SH, since they have subconsiously absolved managment of all resonsibity determinting employee skill sets and assigning employees appropriate work.
guilt trips:subconsciously fears and social taboos that can be aroused within and individual to agitate, harass or make more vulnerable to manipulation. They can very according to race, religion, cultural background: age, sexuality, competency in job, financial security, standing in the community, health status, mental stability, the ability to communicate for non-native speakers of a language or cultural stereo-types to name a few. For females, marriage status (either not married - good target for lesbians) or pregnancy, menstrual periods. For W.A.S.P.s, age in white males, the ability to communicate for non-native speakers of a language or cultural stereo-types.
goon: in organizations like the mafia, the military, certain religious groups or corporations, an individual who is employed to intimidate, harass or physically harm targeted individuals generally to avoid tracing back to management.
H-1B Visa Worker Program: government immigration policy crafted by Washington high tech lobbyists, the big software monopolies and the U.S intelligence agencies to bring in cheap immigrant laborers into the U.S. under the pretext that there is a high tech labor shortage and that native American workers are poorly motivated and educated. The problem is that most second generation Americans want to work in legitimate enterprises and spend quality time with their families-not work long hours doing useless work. Also, the U.S. intelligence services need a steady supply of operatives from various foreign countries. This means that disposable immigrant labor is the only alternative. Immigrants on H-1B visas are essentially indentured servants and can be controlled with the threat of deportation. This make them ideal operatives for high tech money laundering, smuggling or intelligence gathering front companies.
headhunter : these are the vampires of the IT and software world and in many respects similar to lawyers in their ethical behavior. They are basically freelance spies for employers who will screw you under if you are not a hot IT commodity. You will find these organizations masquerading as legitimate companies in newspaper ads and on job hunting websites. Rest assured that if one of these leeches gets a hold of your resume from an online service, the first call they make will be to your boss. When doing job search, keep lots of garlic, wooden stakes and crosses with you because these unfortunate individuals are out there. There are no laws governing this profession and corporate recruiting is unregulated. These guys can destroy careers.
herd mentality: the property of herding animals to behave as a group especially in targeting weaker members of their herd for sacrifice when a preditor is near by.In the office environment this phenomena can be observed in humans, when indivdials are being targed with SH to be driven out of the company, the other individuals in the office will sense that the mark is being harassed and will either willfully or subconsciously engage in the process and be relieved when the mark finally quits. By helping dump the mark, others will feel more secure because while someone else is being the target, they themselves cannot be a target and they feel more secure. Herds of wild animals when being chased by a predator will often pick the weakest member of the heard and try to feed it to the predators to save the rest of the herd. Pheromones enhanced in a closed space can trigger hysteria and hostility toward the mark. For some reason, groups of individuals who are driving individuals out of their group seem to collectively think that the targeted individual has a responsibility to leave just because the others want them to leave. If the individual is stubborn and refuses to leave voluntarily, the group will often perceive that the targeted individual is acting in a hostile manner twords them simply because they won't take the hint and go. This can be used to provoke the targeted individual into reciprocal hostility twords the group even if it did not exist previously.
high velocity seat: a position or role in a company that is purposefully drab, depressing and awful so as to facilitate the person who is occupying it departure from the company as quickly as possible. The work performed is generally irrelevant billable tasks. The physical environment is generally extremely hot or cold with poor circulation often in a small closed off room. Also, see Out the Door Tasks
jerk:an individual or line manager type of person who uses intimidation, harassment to manipulate and control workers, subordinates or customers. Generally, they put forth a image of the kind of people you want to avoid. The jerk is the "front soldier" for corporate America. The snobby receptionist, the company bureaucrat,claim adjuster, account manager, these are the human "obstacles" that are used to slow you down and discourage you from getting what ever it is you want from corporate America. They are as important as the "brain trust" and there is always demand for them at all levels of the private and public sector. The term may have originated from the jerky movements intended to intimidate or harasses individuals. Individual who are schizophrenic, neurotic, psychopathic, pathological liars or have other behavioral abnormalities are often unpleasant or intimidating to be around and are ideally suited for these positions.
jerk farm: a small company, division, subsidiary or department of a P.S.O. that is used as a training ground for jerks (management trainees) that is staffed high velocity seats. Very often it doubles as a money laundering front.
kiting individuals: similar to kiting checks in banking. This involves hiring and then turning over an employee as quickly as possible so that it appears that the indivdual is moving quickly from job to job but not staying anywhere to long. HR can spot an indivdual being kited becase there will be many jobs of short duration and periods of unemployment on the resume.
know your customer: banking policy in the U.S. implemented by the F.D.I.C to comply with international laws designed to detect illegal money transfers ( money laundering) and the identification of tax evasion attempts. Under KYC regulations, every financial transaction will be monitored, and all banking activity will require identification. Anyone who will not provide identification will not be allowed access to banking services and the institution must make a suspicious transaction report. As a result of these rules and the boom in the tech market, front companies in the software and internet areas, similar to the government front companies set up during the cold war, have been created to fill the gap. The interesting thing is that these companies get research and development tax credits so the U.S. government is actually subsidizing the money laundering that it implemented the KYC rules to stop.
legal telepathy: the method used by lawyers to communicate information about clients and cases to other lawyers or outside parties circumventing attorney client privledge. In most cases it involves a lawyer "tipping off" and employeer when a disgruntled employee consults them about workplace harassment.
mark: an individual who is being hired and then targeted for subliminal or overt harassment to be quickly driven from the company. From the slang term for the target of a "sting" or confidence scam.
money laundering: the covert movement of funds circumventing the scrutiny of conventional banking system and its auditors under strict Know Your Customer Rules. Historically this has been associated with money obtained from illegal sources such as drugs or racketeering; however, legitimate businesses and government agencies often use it distribute funds to avoid oversight by regulators and foreign governments. or as cover to keep D.O.D. projects in the "black" or keep intelligence operatives on salary. See H-1B Visa Worker Program.
mooning: the act of bending over to expose the buttocks to cause sexual arousal. Generally used with male homosexuals. For heterosexual males or lesbians, a variation used the female breast showing cleavage.
nervous vocal edge: a human voice that sound anxious or frightened with a high frequency "edge" to it can create a reciprocal response in the hearer. With practice this can be used to trigger the fight or flight response in individuals or groups.
out-the-door task: a task seat or position whose unit of work is menial, tedious and unpleasant environment designed to facilitate the individuals departure from the company. Also, see High Velocity Seat
oxymoron: contradition of terms. Classic examples are "military intelligence" and "computer science". The former because many individuals cannot find intelligence in the military and the latter becuase there is no real science in "computer science" as practiced in the software industry. A true science require repeatability, independent verification and full disclosure - three things would mean a lot less work for SEs and destroy the big software monopolies. See The Broken Working Model.
patomine horse: a slot or position in an organiztion used sole to employ individuals such as the kids or in-laws of executives,lobbyists or other indivuals who the organiztion my find useful to keep on payroll but cannot find a legitimate position for and cannot perform useful work. From the the Monty Python sketch of the same name. These indivuals are generally not targets of SH.
peer_pressure: subtle social pressure (generally non-verbal) exerted by members of a group to make individual members conform by arousing fear within the non-conforming individual that if they don't conform their behavior to what the group perceives it should be, they will be ostracized from the group. For example, in an office where the management coerces individual to work late hours without extra pay, individuals leaving early might get dirty looks from other member of the department when leaving the office. Another example, would be keeping everyone in a department busy with work but withholding work from specific individuals.
phoremones: airborne hormones or chemical messengers responsible for triggering feelings of hysteria, sudden fear or panic often in a closed poorly ventilated space such as an office. They are similar to blood borne hormones such as adrenalin;however, these chemical messengers move through the air and effect large groups of people even creating a "chain reaction". It is believed that they are responsible for group behavior such as mob violence in riots and hysteria. See Herd Mentality.
P.S.O.(professional services organization: a business organization that does not provide a distict product or service but provides services to other companies. They offer office space and personal to projects out-sourced to them from other companies. Basically a bunch of rich "old boys" playing with people and bank accounts. These organizations are the perfect cover for smuggleing , money laundering and other illegitimate operations where legitimate activities and clever accounting can be used to mask illegitimate ones
put out for it:slang term that refers to engaging in sexual relationships to be hired, continue employment or advancement.
put out policy: unofficial company policy on quid-pro-quo sex for work, advancement, salary or work.
research and development tax credit: U.S. companies are now allowed to claim 150% of any research and development costs as a deduction. This means that anyone that can incorporate and set up a bogus R&D department and get an additional 50% relief for any costs they will incur, including staff costs and rent on workshops and offices.
reverse engineering: this is reputed to be the opposite of the forward engineering process. The forward process take a defined process and creates software and interfaces to automate it; the reverse process is to take the working model provided by the software and interfaces and deduce the originally defined process. Thus, the reverse process will fail if there is no working model. This can be used to generate useless tasks unproductive tasks. See The Broken Working Model. A non software related real world example might be to take a immigrant lawyer with no knowledge of the U.S. Constitution then give them a copy of a divorce case and a personal injury case, then instruct them to reconstruct the Constitution of the United States word for word based on just the two documents given. Somewhere out in the infinite universe there might be someone smart(psychic) enough to do it, but is the a legitimate task for a lawyer? Probably not. But, many SEs afflicted with the genius fallacy can be duped into treating reverse engineering like a legitimate task even if there is no working model to reverse engineer.
rat fucking: the use of anonymous tips to law enforcement and employers and etc. designed to undermine the credibility of an individual. These "tips" generally involve allegations of misconduct such as sexual indiscretion, drug use or tax evasion. These are most effective when use against members of an underclass since they are already unpopular and people are looking for more reasons to hate them.
software: software is consensus.
sofware engineering: the colaborative process involving at least two individuals(engineer and end-user) of observing and documenting information flow, transfer and modification by human agents or natural processes then creating machine code and user interfaces to automate the process in a repeatable and independently verifable manner. The central unit of work is the "demonstratable unit" defined during the analysis phase, implemented by coders and verified by the QA people. Software is what you can demonstrate: if you can't demonstrate it doesn't exist. Bugs are variations of a previously existing working model that deviates form the definition of the demonstrable unit. By not coding and releasing a demonstrable working model, everyone else in the development chain afterwards is forced to waste time reverse engineering the product in order to carry out their tasks greatly increasing the effort required and artificially driving up the costs.
scoping a task: the process of creating job tasks that are designed to be difficult and unpleasant. Remember three points: never make the goal of the task definable, never disclose a method to achieve it and never give them the tools that they would need to achieve it. In a legitimate business, there is a effort to set and achieve goals;however, to keep people busy doing "busy work", this must never happen. If the company make a enterprise type of software product, make sure that there is never a working model available; none of the basic functionality should ever be demonstrable. Normally, the software engineering process would start with the statement or definition of a problem to be solved which would be followed by a set of requirments and then a specification that the end product of the process is supposed to fofill. Allude to a problem but never define it, hint at requirements and processes but never disclose them,use vague lists of items but never allude to a process that can be easily analyzed, documented and coded. The key here is to use poorly written documents(or not documents at all) to trap the mark into the genius fallacy or into wasting time reverse engineering a useless broken model.
smuggling: the covert movement of valuable physical items such as jewels, precious, metals, valuable works of art, religious items or possibly contraband items across internationl or state borders to avoid taxes, fees and tariffs.
subliminal messaging: modulation of background noise or music with messages intended to subconsciously irritate or manipulate specific individuals or groups of people. This technology was developed in the private sector and the U.S. military and has been in general use in the retail industry and law enforcement for over thirty years. It has been shown if to be very effective at targeting psychologically vulnerable groups such as homosexuals, women and people experiencing emotional distress. Since the phenomenal effectiveness of this technology is one of the industry's best kept secrets, there is very little case law on it except bogus work in the area of subliminal messages in rock music tracks.
turn-over: the rate at which employees enter and leave a job over a given period of time or the probablity that a given individual will continue in the job for a given period of time. High rates of turn-over can increase profitability becuase employees are not around long enough to become expensive. More experienced workers also tend to know all the tricks are less easily manipulated than "fresh" employees. Remember, there is never a shortage of people with technical skills; the U.S. government will bring in as many as you need.
underclass: a subclass of the dominant society whose members are group together because of common characteristics such as race, religion, gender, political affiliation, sexual orientation, age, national origin, physical handicap or educational background who are often subject to discrimination, ugly social stereo-types, violence and abuse because their common characteristic is considered immoral, repugnant or unpleasent to the majority members of the society. Members of these classes tend to be under constant stress and have a high rate of turn-over.
under thirty rule: no one over thirty is to be hired, promoted or given meaningful work. Individuals in the mid-career and older are to be keep billable and kited from job to job until they voluntarily leave industry.
virtually fired: a legal term that refers to the termination of the at-will agreement on the part of the employeer by having the manager intellectually decide that the employee no longer works for them and simply stops giving them work. The employeer is not required to communicate to the employee that their services are no longer wanted. The courts have held that this is still legal even if the employee does not have mind reading skills.
W.A.S.P(White Anglo-Saxon Protestant): a citizen of the United States of Northern European descent who is member of or who family was affiliated with a Protestant Christian denomination. These individuals are generally affluent and not very "street wise". Of all cultural groups, they tend to be the most un-imaginative, predictable and generally intolerant of other individuals who are different than themselves. They tend to be politically and socially conservative.
Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
Preamble
The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software--to make sure the software is free for all its users. This General Public License applies to most of the Free Software Foundation's software and to any other program whose authors commit to using it. (Some other Free Software Foundation software is covered by the GNU Library General Public License instead.) You can apply it to your programs, too.
When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things.
To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it.
For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights.
We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the software.
Also, for each author's protection and ours, we want to make certain that everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free software. If the software is modified by someone else and passed on, we want its recipients to know that what they have is not the original, so that any problems introduced by others will not reflect on the original authors' reputations.
Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all.
The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and modification follow.
GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION
0. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License. The "Program", below, refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on the Program" means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law: that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in the term "modification".) Each licensee is addressed as "you".
Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.
1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.
You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.
2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:
a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.
b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.
c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively when run, you must cause it, when started running for such interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this License. (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on the Program is not required to print an announcement.)
These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.
Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Program.
In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License.
3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)
The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable. However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable.
If distribution of executable or object code is made by offering access to copy from a designated place, then offering equivalent access to copy the source code from the same place counts as distribution of the source code, even though third parties are not compelled to copy the source along with the object code.
4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.
5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it.
6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License.
7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.
If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under any particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to apply and the section as a whole is intended to apply in other circumstances.
It is not the purpose of this section to induce you to infringe any patents or other property right claims or to contest validity of any such claims; this section has the sole purpose of protecting the integrity of the free software distribution system, which is implemented by public license practices. Many people have made generous contributions to the wide range of software distributed through that system in reliance on consistent application of that system; it is up to the author/donor to decide if he or she is willing to distribute software through any other system and a licensee cannot impose that choice.
This section is intended to make thoroughly clear what is believed to be a consequence of the rest of this License.
8. If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in certain countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the original copyright holder who places the Program under this License may add an explicit geographical distribution limitation excluding those countries, so that distribution is permitted only in or among countries not thus excluded. In such case, this License incorporates the limitation as if written in the body of this License.
9. The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of the General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns.
Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation.
10. If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other free programs whose distribution conditions are different, write to the author to ask for permission. For software which is copyrighted by the Free Software Foundation, write to the Free Software Foundation; we sometimes make exceptions for this. Our decision will be guided by the two goals of preserving the free status of all derivatives of our free software and of promoting the sharing and reuse of software generally.
NO WARRANTY
11. BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.
12. IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS