The Art of War as Interpreted by Desirous Software Engineers

Applications of Ancient Military Philosophy to Modern-Day Silicon Valley.

Preamble

In the post-modern, post-truth world, in a landscape filled with ego-tripping managers, sycophantic co-workers, psychopathic executives, rent-seeking venture capitalists, corrupt and often inept politicians, false idols (i.e. celebrities), and ever dwindling opportunities for a man to simply be free of all the fucking bullshit - in this hyper-modernity of a simulacra we call reality, it is left to us, the tragically atomized individuals, to erect an affront against the would be tyrants, the self-proclaimed Leaders of Thought, and the countless NPCs straddling the sidelines, ever watching, ever judging.

To better wage this Invisible War, we'll consult our forebears, and adopt their ancient aphorisms to serve us in navigating the modern office politics and dealing with imbecilic management.

The Five Considerations

1. The Way

whatever allows the people and their superior to be of one will, and therefore willing to live or die with him, undeterred by danger.

First, we must have our cause - a vision, an ethos, a unifying ideal for us and our people to believe in. We need like minded people around us, united under a superior. It is the way of men: no group shall prosper without a superior to lead them, much as no man shall live with no head. So either find someone strong to follow, or devise a purpose of your own and make others follow it. Steve Jobs knew this all too well, with his Reality Distortion Field he unified people under his rule and gave them purpose. They lived and died by his command, unflinching in the face of commercial failure. Unity in service of a cause leads to great things, for even going down the "wrong path" with single minded determination will surely yield Great Things.

2. The Heavens

night and day, heat and frost, in the seasonal rounds

We suggest picking someplace with a temperate climate to work at.

3. The Earth

Relative distances, the gradient and openness of the terrain, insofar as this makes for life or death.

Live near your office: long commutes stifle the soul and numb the mind. Don't be that motherfucker who always has to ice skate uphill; don't make things unnecessarily difficult for yourself, geographically-wise.

4. The Field Commander

defined by wisdom, reliability, humaneness, courage, and strictness

Your chosen Leader must be an exceptional man, for your efforts will be focused through the foci of his essence. Choose the wrong leader to follow and you'll end up a bitter old man, full of resentment. Assume the position of the Field Commander when not ready and live to suffer the shame of failing your men. Above all, the requirement of the Field Commander to be simultaneously humane and strict time stands out: without humaneness the men will demur and reject your leadership, without strictness the men will not obey when you tell them to handle that god damn JIRA ticket, already. Balance is divine.

In a different part of Art of War, it says of the virtuous commander:

There are roads he will not travel,

armies he will not strike,

walled cities he will not attack,

terrain he will not contest.

Nor will he accept and obey each and every one of the ruler’s commands.

And also:

the commander who is good at both offense and defense can preserve himself and achieve total victory.

A wise man indeed, he who knows his limits, he who knows when to stand up for himself, and more importantly, for his men.

5. The Regulations

organization and management, the delegation of authority, and the deployment of resources

We are hackers; organization, management, delegations - these are the very evils we are fighting. We shall do away with such concepts and instead choose to operate in small cohesive groups of like-minded individuals, where coordination happens almost spontaneously - not unlike beehives.

Now, deployment of resources, on the other hand, is very near and dear to us. The logistics of how we deploy our creations, the infrastructures we weave out of the fabrics of miscellaneous cloud services, these are the very substrata which sustains our creations. Thus, we shall make good friends with excellent Operations people, and have them be part of our team. Notice the intentional usage of "Operations" and not "DevOps" - we believe the conflation of development and operations to be an evil, much like pissing in the bathtub. Generally speaking, the blurring delineation between the responsibilities of developers, operations, quality assurance, and others, is an artifact of managerial/MBA-type thinking that understands nothing and yet seeks to optimize everything, all under the guise of being agile and "owning the product" (lies and false marketing designed to assuage you). While this may work for some, most peoples have undeniable inclinations towards certain types of tasks, and having everyone do everything smells eerily similar to communism.

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The Zen of War

Warfare is the art of deception.

So when you can, feign incapacity,

And when deploying troops, appear to have no such plans.

When close, seem to them to be far away, and when far away, seem near.

If the enemy commander is avid for advantage, use it to lure him in;

If he is volatile, seize upon that;

If he is solid, prepare well for battle

If he is strong, evade him.

If he is angry, rile him.

If he is unpresuming, feed his arrogance.

If he is rested, tire him out.

If his troops are like family, drive a wedge between them.

Attack him when he’s unprepared; appear suddenly when he least expects it.

We first need to ascertain what is the particular context within which we engage in "Warfare". We may engage in warfare as a) individuals, b) teams within larger organizations, c) companies within the eco-system of (the so called) capitalism. Depending on what context we operate in, the above advise changes in meaning, but not in spirit.

This is the art of the opposites. Whatever the circumstance, there is always an action to take that will get you closer to your goal. Only a fool pursues goals that are doomed to failure - that is part of the art: you don't force things, when forcing them is counter productive. It's about realizing what reality is, and acting in accordance with it. It is our egos that prevent us from living in accordance with nature and circumstance: the very egos that drive us to accomplish Great Things, also overstep their boundaries and presume to dictate reality itself, which of course is nonsense. Never identify with your circumstance, and don't conflate personal desires with actual strategy.

feigning incapacity - this is useful both for individuals who engage in hidden warfare against their overbearing managers, and for teams (and companies) that operate within larger scopes. Revealing your true capabilities is almost never wise. Use competency as a strategic tool, never showboat for sake of boosting your own ego. This rings particularly true when thinking of companies: you never see daddy Bezzos run his mouth about how great Amazon is, and how he has the world by the balls, now do you?

Acting in Accordance to Nature

Just as no one of the Five Planets is always dominant,

and none of the four seasons has a constant place,

the sun has shorter and longer days,

and the moon waxes and wanes.

Even celestial bodies of immense size, power, presence, and permanence (of billions of years compared to puny decades of human lives) act according to rules and nature. It is a deep disturbance in the psyche of man when his ego thinks himself to be above all rule. According to C. Jung this brings the man to the precipice of complete impotence, as his desire for power can never be manifested and so he withdraws into his own fantasy world, in which he is master. Resentment often follows, and so the man is left to sulk in his own bitterness and anger.

The human mind can think of false things, of pathological lies and deceptions. It can create entire twisted and sick worlds. Don’t let your mind desire these falsehoods, Don’t let your mind go astray. Keep nature (reality) in mind, and respect it - you have no choice. You would be stupid should you do anything else. Stupid in the sense of being evolutionary inferior.

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Lifting the tip of an autumn hair doesn’t mean you’re strong.

Seeing the sun and moon doesn’t mean you’ve got keen eyes.

Hearing a thunderclap doesn’t mean your ears work well.

Don't be a Dunning Kruger victim.

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To be prepared everywhere is to be strong nowhere.

The importance of focus and single mindedness cannot be overstated. This applies to all aspects of life. Try to learn all programming languages, and you'll end up knowing none. Fail to resist the temptation of feature creep and you'll over-engineer a text editor to serve as an email client and a browser (no, Emacs does not count - it's a Lisp-based OS, not an editor). And so on.

Choose what you wish to focus on, and block out everything else.

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On Waging War

Best in war is to target their strategies,

then their alliances (or allies);

and then their troops.

The least desirable option is to attack a fortified city.

Don't compete with companies in their own markets, where they have found perfect market-fits, unless you absolutely must ("competition is for losers"). Instead try to poach their employees, or demoralize them by shitposting on twitter. Start nasty rumors about key employees, then let Cancel Culture do its thing. Even better is to target their alliances - approach the companies and strategic partners they aligned with and incentivize them to align with you instead or to drop their deals with your competitor outright. Best is to out-compete them by having the better strategy, better vision of the future and how to implement it.

A victory that does not surpass the understanding of the vulgar crowd is not the best sort of victory.

Nor is the finest way to win a battle one that the whole realm applauds.

Disregard the opinions of others, they are but the vulgar crowd. Nasty and opinionated comments on Hacker New, circlejerks on reddit, and shitstorms of virtue signaling on twitter, even the whispers of co-workers in the corridors of whatever soulless open-space you call your office: they matter not. Haters gonna hate.

Know the enemy; know yourself, and you will meet with no danger in a hundred battles.

If you do not know the enemy, but you know yourself, then you will win and lose by turns.

If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will lose every battle, certainly.

winning a hundred victories in a hundred battles is not the best possible outcome. Best is to subdue the enemy’s troops without ever engaging them on the battlefield.

Of old, those who excelled in battle thought first to make themselves invincible, and so they waited for the moment when their enemies could be defeated. It is you who determine your own invincibility, but whether the enemy can be conquered or not rests with him. Therefore, whoever excels in battle can make himself invincible, but he cannot always make the enemy vulnerable. Hence I say, “The conditions for victory can be known, but they cannot be forced.”

he who excels in battle doesn’t have a name for cleverness,

nor does he garner accolades for his courage.

He never errs in winning battles, because he places his men where they are bound to win,

and he conquers those who are already lost.

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Keep Your Head About You, Make Others Lose Theirs

Even amidst the tumult and clamor of battle, he remains unperturbed.

Despite the churn and blur,

with an enemy bearing down on him with a force like that of primeval qi,

he may appear to be encircled and nonetheless be unbeatable.

those who excel in battle compel the enemy and they do not let others compel them

It is beneficial to the enemy if he can come of his own accord,

and a hindrance if you prevent him from arriving on schedule.

A position is weak when one force makes preparations against another,

and stronger when one forces others to prepare for it.

Keep your head about you, no matter the circumstance. Losing your temper is the worst thing of all. Modern day memes have condensed this wisdom to a single word-question: "lolumadbro?"

Don't be mad, bro.