Ferengi rules for modern businesses
2 min readOct 15, 2020
Inspired by the Ferengi rules of acquisition from Star Trek, I’ve compiled a list adapted for modern businesses and managers.
- Don’t let your conscience take over your business reasoning.
- Hire working students. They come fresh and cheap.
- Don’t sell your friendship cheap.
- Don’t let the Covid situation soften your heart. Profit waits for nobody.
- Sell your employees on a purpose, they’ll always fall for it.
- Inspire them with something they care about so they work weekends.
- Tell your employees their work will help make lots of money but share none of it with them.
- Don’t let your care for your employees and customers interfere with your profit.
- Use candidate interview challenges to solve your current problems for free.
- There’s no profit in going down with a sinking ship.
- Giving something for free doesn’t pay your salary.
- Exploitation begins with your existing customers.
- You can’t let a sucker go unexploited.
- There’s no shame in taking credit for someone else’s work.
- Never cheat a bigger scammer than you. Unless you can get away with it.
- Trust is a useful trick. Use it.
- When in trouble, blame it on the ones not present.
- Pay your employees more than the competition, they’ll think you care.
- Give your employees a pleasant work environment to produce more work.
- Make them feel like you care.
- Never place care for employees over profit.
- Don’t let them know the game that you play.
- Employees are like chairs. Don’t hesitate to sit on them.
- He who throws others under the bus today gets to keep his job.
- There’s nothing better for business than a young employee without a personal life.
- Always ask yourself: what will I get from helping them?
- Help them now so you can profit later.
- Sell your customers long-term contracts so they can’t quit too soon.
- Learn from experienced managers and apply it to your reports.
- Sell your company to the highest bidder. Who cares about the culture impact.
