Evil tip: avoid "easy" things
My writing has recently prompted an anonymous commenter to declare that people like me are what's wrong with the world. Oh joy! – finally, after all these years of doing evil, some recognition! Excited, I decided to share one of my battle-tested evil tips, which never ever failed evil me.
An easy thing is a heads they win, tails you lose situation. Failing at easy things is shameful; succeeding is unremarkable. Much better to work on hard things – heads you win, tails they lose. Failure is unfortunate but expected; success makes you a hero.
Treat this seriously, because it snowballs. The guy working on the "hard" thing gets a lot of help and resources, making it easier to succeed – and easier to move on to the next "hard" thing. The guy doing the "easy" tasks gets no help, so it's harder to succeed.
Quotation marks all over the place, because of course what counts is perception, not how hard or easy it really is. The worst thing to work on is the hard one that's perceived as easy – the hard "easy" thing. The best thing is the easy "hard" one. My years-long preference for low-level programming results, in part, from its reputation of a very hard field, when in practice, it takes a little knowledge and a lot of discipline – but not any outstanding skills.
