Find someone who tells you exactly what to do. Then it's their responsibility to follow up on how you're progressing. As long as they don’t ask, you don’t have to lift a finger. And if it turns out to be the wrong thing, well, that’s not your problem, is it?

When someone makes a suggestion, don’t hold back with comments or criticism. But whatever you do, don’t make a concrete counterproposal—otherwise, you’ll be stuck in the mess too.

During the decision-making process, keep a low profile so you can leave all your options open for later.

Make no decisions yourself. Either let others decide or involve the whole group, ensuring you can’t be held responsible for the outcome or its consequences.

Before tackling a task, engage in an extensive discussion about the underlying process. Whatever you do, don’t just get started—make sure every single requirement is clarified down to the last detail. If you stick to this approach, you won’t have to do anything, and you’ll avoid making mistakes entirely.

Once you have a detailed, foolproof plan, stick to it rigidly, no matter how the circumstances change. Under no circumstances should you work iteratively or try experiments and pilots. Those might reveal that your plan isn’t perfect, forcing you to adjust it—and that would be a real waste of time.

When faced with a problem, don’t do what you think makes sense. Instead, try to figure out what your boss (or another authority) wants as a solution. Then work on that, even if you think it’s pointless.

Avoid proactively updating anyone about progress or obstacles. If it’s important, someone will ask. And if you do encounter obstacles, under no circumstances should you try to resolve them yourself. It’s enough to note in the ticket that there’s an issue—and clearly state that others are to blame if you can’t deliver.

If you’re tasked with handling a specific topic or area, either do it alone or, even better, involve the entire team. Under no circumstances should you assemble a smaller group of knowledgeable experts to work on it independently. You’d risk the team feeling left out, which would almost certainly lead to them undermining the outcome.

Feel free to share details about your family, hobbies, vacations, and even your worries—at least when asked. Positive feedback for your colleagues is also perfectly acceptable. However, under no circumstances should you bring up issues with a colleague’s behavior or work style. Addressing difficult topics or giving constructive feedback might seriously disrupt the team’s harmonious atmosphere.

Treat all your tasks as if they’re equally important. If you start prioritizing and actually stick to it, you might end up neglecting some tasks altogether due to limited time and workload—or worse, you’d have to delegate. It’s much better to start a little bit of everything and finish nothing. At least then, the sheer volume of tasks gives you a solid excuse for why nothing ever gets done.

You have multiple roles. Make sure to use them to discreetly push the agendas and implement the priorities that best serve your career advancement.

Focus solely on meeting the metrics, regardless of what the KPI is actually measuring or what the underlying goal is supposed to be.

Always treat your topic as the most important one, without discussing the bigger picture with your colleagues. Even if you notice that a colleague could use your help and it would benefit the company, stick to your own agenda and make sure you hit your target (see also: metrics).

When someone comes to you with a problem, under no circumstances should you engage with the content or offer solutions. Instead, shut it down immediately, citing processes and policies if necessary. This way, you avoid any risk and can easily absolve yourself of responsibility if things go wrong.

When working on a solution, always go for the most expensive and complex option—after all, if it’s good enough for Amazon and Google, it should be just right for your company. The principle of "Keep it simple" is strictly for amateurs. Plus, you can always use the complexity as an excuse for why the problem isn’t solved yet—claiming that more in-depth focus on the technical aspects is still required.

If you do opt for a simple solution, it will only be taken seriously if it’s entirely built in Excel or PowerPoint.

If you need to map out a workflow, under no circumstances should you use standard Jira workflows. Instead, instruct IT to create a custom workflow tailored to your unique and undoubtedly exceptional case. Be sure to use status and resolution options as inconsistently as possible, along with terminology that no one else understands.

Even for the simplest tasks and standard processes, use the most complex templates possible, complete with checkboxes and subtickets—ideally requiring a manual signature as well. Make sure filling out the template takes more time than completing the actual task.

Do absolutely nothing—literally nothing—without assigning a cost center. After all, ensuring transparency over how work hours are used is the ultimate priority.

As a sprint or PI comes to an end, make sure to close all tickets—even the ones that haven’t been worked on or completed. This ensures that you and your team look great. You can always create new tickets for the next sprint/PI. This approach results in beautiful statistics that, thankfully, bear no resemblance to the actual progress of the work.

Turn every task, no matter how technical, into a User Story—regardless of whether there’s an actual user involved. Always use the template "As a ... I want to ... so that ...". If you can’t think of anything fitting, just start with "As a developer/architect/process owner ..." and you’re good to go.

Set document permissions as restrictively as possible to ensure that information flow is thoroughly obstructed and collaboration becomes impossible.

Avoid using a professional document management system. Instead, rely on descriptive file names to track the status of your documents, such as: Protokoll-new_v3.2_final_revKerstin_revJohn_revfinal_final-24-7-3.

Always save your files locally. This way, you stay independent of internet outages and avoid any pesky conflicts with colleagues working on the same document.

For maximum efficiency in decision-making, ensure your steering committee is composed exclusively of yes-men.

To highlight your team’s visibility and importance, send as many team members as possible to every decision-making meeting. This has the added bonus of maximizing your team’s time utilization—they’ll always be busy.

Make sure to weigh in on every decision, even when you have absolutely no expertise. To appear competent, rely on arguments rooted in fear, uncertainty, doubt, or risk (commonly known as FUD arguments).

When estimating workloads, be as dynamic as possible: use a different reference scale for each task, but keep the naming of your unit consistent.

Always remain positive and optimistic, even when the numbers and data clearly indicate otherwise. This way, you’ll keep your employees motivated until the very last moment and deliver the maximum surprise to your stakeholders.

To champion heroics, aim for the hockey stick shape in your burn-up charts. This way, you and your team can showcase how you heroically accomplish an infinite amount of work at the last moment. It also increases your chances of being named Team of the Year.

Seize every opportunity to present your project as red, only to skillfully turn it green at the right moment—proving that you and your team have what it takes to be real heroes. If that’s not feasible, the reverse strategy works just as well: keep your project green until the very end. This shields you from disruptive management attention and lets you step away just before it becomes glaringly, irreversibly red and crashes spectacularly.

Always stick to the motto DIY. Never use existing tools or standard solutions. A custom solution developed by you and maintainable only by you ensures long-term job security.

Make yourself indispensable by leveraging your experience and relying on tried-and-true strategies you’re familiar with, regardless of whether they’re the best fit for the specific situation. This way, you ensure you never have to bother with new approaches.

Block the use of proven solutions and instead force your employees to develop their own. This not only showcases your innovative spirit but also ensures your team remains occupied for an extended period.

Promote innovation in your company by banning the use of new tools due to security concerns. This way, you effectively force your colleagues to develop their own solutions - nothing drives creativity like reinventing the wheel under pressure.

Only hire employees who are, ideally, copies of yourself - just a few degrees less competent. That way, they pose no threat to your position and you can safely assume they won’t challenge your opinions.

Prefer hiring people who already know everything—and make sure they have that "know-it-all" attitude, too. This saves you the hassle of investing in their development. Performance reviews become completely unnecessary, freeing up your valuable time.

Hire highly specialized employees who are experts in one narrow area—and only want to work in that area. This minimizes the risk of internal transfers and saves you the trouble of backfilling their roles.

Use as many vague buzzwords as possible in your job postings, with a strong focus on SEO optimization. The goal is to generate the largest applicant pool imaginable—after all, the number of applicants is a key KPI when evaluating leadership performance - and the success of your empoyer branding initiatives.

Rather than going through the hassle of actually assessing a candidate’s qualifications, just focus on the number of years they've worked. Academic titles are another easily measurable indicator. Both make it much simpler to slot the person into the appropriate salary band - efficient and conveniently superficial.

To avoid being blamed for having too many open positions, make sure that once someone is hired, they’re never let go due to lack of competence or performance - especially not during the probation period, because that would clearly make you the one who hired the wrong person. And if you did make a mistake? Just promote the employee and transfer them to another department - so any future performance issues can be pinned on someone else.

As a recruiter, never respond too quickly to qualified applicants—you wouldn’t want to give them the chance to apply elsewhere. This ensures that hiring processes don’t wrap up too quickly, keeping your role relevant and in demand. Plus, you demonstrate budget consciousness: an open position doesn’t strain the payroll.

To minimize the hassle of people management, avoid regular 1:1s—or better yet, cancel them at short notice due to more “important” commitments. This sends a clear message: everything else comes before your employees. A great way to cultivate humility in your team. And if an employee’s performance isn’t up to par, leave it to someone else to break the news. That way, your own relationship with them stays perfectly untarnished.

Keep your employees’ goals as vague as possible. This gives you the flexibility to interpret them however you like and evaluate performance accordingly. It’s crucial to keep the actual intent behind the goals unclear—this ensures employees stay focused on hitting the KPI numbers without being distracted by the real purpose behind them. At the same time, you demonstrate financial prudence: since true goal achievement remains open to interpretation, you can easily avoid performance-based bonuses and salary increases.

If you notice misconduct from an individual employee, under no circumstances should you give direct feedback. After all, if one person is doing it, others probably are too. Instead, issue a new rule that applies to everyone—to prevent the behavior from spreading. When drafting the rule, make sure it contradicts existing policies. That way, you’ll always have something to hold against your employees when needed.

When it comes to communicating important decisions, avoid spamming employees with info emails, blog posts, or anything of the sort. Rely solely on the hierarchical cascade to pass things down. These decisions should also never be documented anywhere. If someone missed the meeting where it was discussed—well, that’s on them. After all, it’s a great incentive for employees to show up to every meeting, regardless of whether they’re on vacation, sick, or with a client.

To justify a promotion to the next level, simply cite the employee’s long tenure and the fact that they’ve asked for it repeatedly. Other criteria are usually too subjective and only spark unnecessary debate. And whatever you do, don’t make the mistake of checking whether there’s actually a suitable open position that needs filling at the higher level. If you wait for that, you’ll never promote anyone. Pro tip: just create new positions as needed. It also shows off your proactive mindset and strategic thinking.

If you're looking to cut costs, make the organizational purchasing process as complex as possible. This encourages employees to just pay smaller amounts out of their own pockets—after all, it's faster than navigating the system. A true win-win: less budget spent, and more initiative shown.

Only learn when explicitly asked to—and strictly during working hours, to protect your work-life balance. If you do need to learn something new, avoid practical experience or asking colleagues at all costs. Stick to passive consumption of learning content—that’s the most efficient way to stay safely uninvolved.

To demonstrate your commitment to cost consciousness, never book flexible tickets when traveling. It also signals just how much confidence you have in your own planning—after all, what could possibly go wrong?

Always have yourself picked up from the airport by a private taxi service with a driver. This ensures you won’t get lost in the maze of public transportation and risk being late to your meeting. After all, the car is cheaper than having three managers wait around. Plus, it’s a great way to demonstrate—or subtly obscure—your hierarchical status and reinforce your position of power.

If you change existing rules, publish the new version in a different location without deleting the old one. That way, no matter what goes wrong later, you can always refer to some version of the “current” rules—and you’ll never be wrong.

To make sure there’s a fitting version of every rule for every employee and every occasion, copy the documentation to as many different locations as possible. This way, the documents can evolve into wonderfully inconsistent variants—independently and unchecked—ensuring there's always some rule to support whatever needs justifying.

You never get a second chance to make a first impression—so make sure your colleagues know exactly what to expect from you right from the start. Avoid standing out through excessive friendliness, enthusiasm, or proactive questions. If you don’t understand something, just do nothing. After all, it’s the responsibility of the more experienced colleagues to provide you with all the necessary information—and to notice when you’re stuck.

From day one, retreat to your workspace and keep interactions with others to a minimum—you wouldn’t want to distract anyone from their work or disrupt their train of thought.

If you have a workspace with a door, always keep it closed. This protects you from unexpected visits or pesky requests for help from colleagues. And if someone does manage to enter, make sure to stare intensely at your screen and keep typing without pause—clearly signaling that you're not available and don’t wish to be disturbed. It’s a crucial tactic for demonstrating busyness and keeping extra work at bay.

During your first few months at HELL, a colleague will be assigned to you as a buddy to show you around and explain the rules. Don’t trust them. Assume they see you as a threat. Cancel meetings with them using the excuse that you’re far too busy and don’t have time for kindergarten-level onboarding. This sends a clear message: you’re already well-integrated and in high demand.

If you’re assigned as a buddy for a new employee, make sure you’re unavailable on their first day—and then conveniently leave for a business trip or vacation. The first few weeks are crucial for teaching the newcomer that no one will be there to help them find their way in this new environment. A valuable lesson in independence right from the start.

You won’t understand everything right away or use every tool correctly—and that’s perfectly fine. Your colleagues don’t either. There’s no point trying, since shortcuts, processes, and tools all change every 6–12 months anyway. Just use everything the way you think makes sense—no need to Google or read help pages; after all, you have a degree, and only losers read manuals. If someone points out a mistake, just say it was a test and ask them to demonstrate the correct way. That way, you won’t be exposed—and better yet, they’ll end up doing the task for you.

When you receive a meeting invitation, neither accept nor decline it. This keeps you flexible and avoids the need to explain yourself—perfect for maintaining maximum ambiguity with minimum accountability.

If you attend a meeting, make sure to arrive at least 10 minutes late. Make your entrance count: in an in-person meeting, slam the door, shuffle chairs noisily, and open your laptop with a dramatic sigh. Interrupt the speaker to apologize for being late and explain that you were urgently needed in another important meeting. In an online meeting, unmute yourself immediately upon entry—but leave your camera off. Complain about your bad connection, then type "brb" in the chat and go get a coffee. This way, you effectively demonstrate importance, confidence, and a strong sense of self-care.

During meetings, keep your eyes glued to your phone or type constantly—after all, multitasking is one of the most vital management skills. If you want to climb the career ladder, you need to show that you can handle everything at once. Chime in occasionally, regardless of the topic. Prepare a few go-to phrases like: “Sorry, customer escalation—where are we right now?” “That still feels too vague to me. What exactly are we talking about here?” This keeps you looking attentive, engaged, and strategically important—without the burden of actually following the discussion.

When organizing a meeting, make sure to invite more people than necessary—you have to account for no-shows, after all. The meeting title should be as vague as possible, and don’t include an agenda in the invite. This keeps things flexible regarding what the meeting will actually be about, and avoids setting any misleading expectations about concrete outcomes.

Avoid making decisions during a meeting. Instead, point out that key information or essential stakeholders are still missing—clearly justifying the need for another meeting. This demonstrates your deep appreciation for the gravity of such decisions. Plus, it conveniently spares you from having to take sides in any potentially contentious situations.

No meeting without PowerPoint. If you’re short on ideas, just borrow from the archive—anything you find in the intranet or scattered across the various storage systems will do. All you need is a fitting title, delete any source references, and add plenty of animations to sufficiently distract from the actual content. Since you can’t assume colleagues are really paying attention, repetition is not only acceptable—it’s encouraged. It’s always helpful to begin each meeting by repeating everything that was already covered in the last one.

To support your career ambitions, feel free to shamelessly reuse the content and ideas of others—just rephrase them slightly and present them under a flashy new name as your own groundbreaking innovation. Using bold buzzwords, catchy acronyms, arbitrary statistics, and lots of visuals will help your presentation gain maximum traction with management.

When someone comes to you with a problem, just solve it yourself—preferably with a sigh and a visibly annoyed expression. Avoid giving any helpful explanations. This way, your colleague learns nothing new and won’t develop beyond you. Plus, it’s quicker, earns you respect, and ensures you remain indispensable—not just to that one person, but to the whole team. Your legendary status as the office hero will spread in no time.

A company’s success is, of course, measured by its numbers. And if those numbers don’t quite look the way they should, don’t waste time digging into root causes like poor quality, customer dissatisfaction, or lack of efficiency. Instead, reach for the trusted tool of financial engineering: twist, shift, and massage the figures until they shine—at least for now—regardless of what’s actually going on. The real problems? Simply push them into the next fiscal year, where they’ll either become someone else’s issue or, with a bit of luck, can be creatively rebranded once again.

Sales bonuses are based on order intake and revenue—so focus entirely on getting the customer’s signature. Ideally, this means you’ll earn your bonus for the order intake in year one, and then continue cashing in on the revenue in the following years—regardless of whether the projects were successfully completed or if the customer is even remotely satisfied.

To avoid being disturbed by colleagues, make strategic use of the status function in Outlook and Teams. Set yourself as “out of office” to subtly suggest that no one should expect a response. Important: your OOO message should always reference a conference or workshop—never imply actual time off. On the flip side, show extra dedication by answering emails even while on vacation or sick leave. And for maximum effect? Delay sending your replies so they land in inboxes in the middle of the night. Nothing says commitment like a 2:47 AM timestamp.

As an engineer, you’re expected to master complexity—which means solving problems with solutions so intricate that even you won’t fully understand them after a while, let alone your colleagues or customers. That’s the clearest way to demonstrate your true expertise.