Comply in a maximally obstructive way.
Comply just enough to not get fired but not as much as someone who may be more inclined to please their boss.
Enlist other opposition and find ways to multiply your obstructive compliance into other departments.
There's tons of "how-to" guides on how to maliciously comply with work demands without getting fired.
I guess you could slow down the firing process for a bit? That would be a minor obstruction for a short period of time. Then what?
Anyways, "how-to" guides on malicious compliance probably don't tackle situations where an external team, acting on behalf of the president, come into your workplace with unparalleled authority to do whatever they please.
People are now routinely absolving GOP Congress critters, when they are the actual decision makers.
Play hardball, that's the job.
These only apply to countries where the judicial system doesn't bend to whoever's in power.
Subversion is the goal of them. To be successful requires time and not getting found out. It requires plausible deniability.
https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/the-art-of-simple-sabotage...
I'm not sure what you're asking at this point.
It's a book about sabotage over a long period of time, written in particular to partisans of various countries.
Plausible deniability is the CIA operating method.
"How to do shit to subvert large orgs covertly via death by a thousand cuts" is another title for the manuscript, in some universe, somewhere.
Doesn't apply, everybody knows what's going on already.
> Comply in a maximally obstructive way.
Doesn't apply, the whole point is that the executive wants to obstruct things, and that's what we're talking about fighting against.
> Comply just enough to not get fired but not as much as someone who may be more inclined to please their boss.
Doesn't apply, you can't half-fire the specified people, or give just a little bit of money to the people you've been instructed not to fund. You can comply, or not, and it's not going to be any kind of secret which way you chose.
If you want to go out in a blaze of glory and leave the building a day later than you otherwise would, with less dignity, go for it.
> Enlist other opposition and find ways to multiply your obstructive compliance into other departments.
It's just not that kind of role.
> Doesn't apply, the whole point is that the executive wants to obstruct things, and that's what we're talking about fighting against.
"Obstructive" in this scenario results in the organization keeping functioning effectively. Obstructive of something destructive allows it to keep existing.
Right, but with whose money?
They are saying, the action taken by the administration is to cut funding to the department. This can't really be "obstructed" short of the director using their personal funds to pay people's salaries. It would require either people to work for free, or an outside source of money.
None of the other points achives win in some kind of fight. They are just turning you into a bitter looser that will be set aside one way or the other - and who still has to do unethical ornillegal things in the process.
That's helpful for the conversation!
Should I just keep clicking through this entire site until an answer related to my question appears?
(It's a neat site, but... I'm not going to sit here playing go fish until an applicable one-liner appears)
Most link parsers, browsers, and sites will happily redirect you to available encrypted sites these days.
And even when they don't this is extremely dangerous advice to give for people who aren't technical.
Give a wrong time. Stop a traffic line!
I've mentioned it too often and sound like a stuck record, but Jaroslav Hasek's Svejk has it perfected [0]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Soldier_%C5%A0vejk 11;rgb:0000/0000/0000
"Fighting" isn't about magic moves that keep everything safe. It's about choosing when and how to accept the risks. Expecting a fight with no threat to your position is cowardice disguised as pragmatism.
I'm asking for concrete examples of what "subversive, incremental ways to undermine it" would be.
You basically just reworded the vague suggestion of "fight back". What are some specific examples of what the NSF director could have done that are subversive, incremental ways to undermine the orders which ultimately came from the president?
You simply do as you're told. Orders are never completely without ambiguity, and the person giving the order has less direct experience with the subject than the person receiving the order. There's wiggle room.
Concrete example: The order is "Do X". The person charged with executing it actually understands that the consequences will be that Y and Z (which the person giving the order cares about) will actually be on fire if you do X.
In a functioning relationship, you speak up and say "Happy to do X, but here's what'll happen, maybe we should consider a different way to achieve your goals". If you're going the subversive route, you say "Sure thing. I'll get right on X. I'll overdeliver on it". Then you do X, and nudge it towards maximally bad impact on Y/Z.
Followed by "Oh, who could've foreseen! Y and Z are in ruins! What would you like me to do, boss?"
I'm also not sure how to just... not fire people. Sure, you can delay it a week or two. Okay. Then what? Get fired for non-compliance? That seems about as effective of a tactic as quitting is.
*fact vs embellished fact vs straight fiction is always questionable on Reddit.
Can you give me some examples of how you would fight?
Boss comes in (or whoever more powerful than me, e.g. someone acting on the president's orders), says something with the gist of "Do this, or get fired". What are the next steps that I can take that won't get me fired, but also count as fighting back?