[harimau777]

There's a quote that's apparently not actually by Sun Tzu but a similar/related source that says:

    The skillful employer of men will employ the wise man, 
    the brave man, the covetous man, and the stupid man.

    The wise man delights in establishing his merit
    The brave man likes to show his courage in action
    The covetous man is quick at seizing advantage
    And the stupid man has no fear of death

    - Su-ma Ch’ien

I wonder if a similar strategy could be applied to software teams. There was an article on Hacker News a while back talking about how developers can be broken down into camps depending on whether they care most about elegant code (artists), performance (hackers), or solving practical problems (makers). Perhaps one could say something like:

    The skillful employer of programmers will employ the artist,
    the hacker, the maker, and the tester.

    The artist delights in writing code that is elegant
    The hacker likes to show that his code is performant
    The maker is quick at meeting the spec
    And the tester has no fear of integration errors

[empath75]

> I divide my officers into four groups. There are clever, diligent, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and diligent -- their place is the General Staff. The next lot are stupid and lazy -- they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the intellectual clarity and the composure necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is stupid and diligent -- he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always cause only mischief.

— General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord

[User23]

We ran the Clausewitz vs Sun Tzu A/B test and we know how it went. "War is merely the continuation of politics by other means"

[NetToolKit]

For extra mischief points, you get to map these four groups to the four groups of developers listed above :)

[Aperocky]

{

:Wise => Architect that actually writes code

:Brave => The guy who refactor old code

:Covetous => Project manager

:Stupid => Count as -1 head because it take half an engineers time to help him and another half to refactor any code he's written.

}

[teddyh]

The Noble’s Sword uses intelligent and courageous people as its tip, honest and honorable people as its body, and virtuous and good people as its edge

— The Three Swords, Zhuangzi

[Aperocky]

Or if you didn't miss one of the malicious compliant story on reddit.

Hiring (transferring) stupid in for the time when the department is trimmed per order.