Undoubtedly one of the worst things about capitalism is the way it convinces people that their colleagues are their enemies, particularly when they’re made to feel that they’re competing against them to keep their jobs. An alleged former engineer at Dropbox has provided us with the perfect example of this problem, revealing that their former boss asked them to sabotage other teams in order to make theirs look better.

According to screenshots posted on Threads by software engineer Leonardo Creed, the ex-Dropbox engineer took to Blind to explain how their boss wanted them to sabotage their colleagues. They wrote, “Lots of the suggestions were specific to my team’s situation. For example the TL of the targeted team had recently taken mental health leave. My boss suggested that by bullying and undermining them in meetings we could push them into having a breakdown and quitting.” That’s cartoonish levels of evil right there.

But that’s not all. The engineer continued, “Generic sabotage advice was to exploit the PR (pull request) process. Delay as long as possible before giving reviews. When you get around to the review leave as many nitpicks as possible. Use harsh language which undermines the developers’ confidence and try to leave 30+ comments to further shake them.” This isn’t just sabotage, it’s psychological warfare.

There were more examples of sabotage including making developers resubmit PRs multiple times, keeping their reviews open for at least 15 days while giving easy reviews to other teams “so that the targeted team can’t complain about our PR metrics.” They were also instructed to seek revenge on anyone who complained about their conduct, with their boss telling them to prioritize some major refactors on the areas the complainants were working on. The ex-employee wrote, “We then land these PRs by surprise as soon as they finish their work. This way they have to do a difficult merge or even a complete rewrite of their finished work.”

Commenters were disturbed, with one person calling it “some of the wildest political backstabbing I’ve heard of,” although others argued that this was all par for the course in the corporate world. Yet more people said they guarantee similar things are happening at every tech company right now.

How bleak!