Build an Alliance: This is the strategy that original winner (and tax evader) Richard Hatch pioneered and has subsequently been aped on every competitive reality program since. Why not use it to save your job? The trick is you can't hitch your wagon to people you actually like. No, you have to get in league with people who want to band together for self-preservation rather than camaraderie, people who will have your back because you'll have their back, not because they think you're fun and share a town car home with you after closing (those days are probably over too). And if someone starts to raise allegations about one of your "people" fight back, but not too loudly. The best alliance is one that no one ever knows about.

Be a Swing Vote: If you can't get into a good alliance, the only other suitable Survivor strategy is to be a swing vote. In this scenario, you have to align yourself with various warring factions in order to give them the strength they need to pick the other ones off. Build inroads into other departments and publications, so if they need your voice, you can chime in when and where you need to. They won't realize you played both sides of the fence until they're out the door.

Get an Immunity idol: The person with the immunity idol can not be voted out. You need to get one of your own. Gossip on the boss will only get you so far (and if you have some, please send it our way). Make sure there is one thing that only you know how to do to serve as your idol. Make sure that everyone knows that such-and-such will not get done unless you're still there, because the idol is useless unless you wear it around your pretty little neck like that bauble you stole from the sample closet.

You're Not Here to Make Friends: As this classic video reminds us, you are not here to make friends—except with the people from McKinsey. As for your coworkers, screw 'em. Make sure you do what is best for yourself, and don't think about anyone's feelings. Do you want to have a buddy to take to lunch or do you want a job to pay for it?

Do Your Job and Don't Stick Out: Among the first people voted out every season are the crazy (like poor Sandy, here) and the lazy. Make sure you are neither. Don't assert your individuality, and keep yourself busy. But don't fly under the radar for too long unless people think that your just floating by. After the first rounds of lay offs, start showing off all the hard work that you've been doing while everyone else was freaking out and popping Xanax.

Follow these steps and you're well on the way to a $1 million check. Or to the curb with your shit in a box, more likely.

What Will Happen?

We got some fascinating insight into the McKinsey corporate bulldozer process, from people who have experienced it firsthand. First, look for your chance to put your thumb on the consulting scale: "The McKinsey team and the management team will usually form a joint working group. That working group will often have several lower level people from the client working on it to gather facts, run analyses, and so forth. Get on that team. At least you'll see what's coming, and at best you might influence it."

But don't expect to feel too important: "The big firms don't bother interviewing individual employees (a la the Bobs in Office Space) - they'll gut entire departments that they deem strategically insignificant or issue edicts like 'cut out 50% of management at this level.' The actual firing is all done by the client firm's management (McK would never get their hands dirty that way)." Another vet confirms: "McKinsey doesn't give a shit, they are not interested in you. They want to get rid of entire divisions, not individuals."

What Can You Do?

Be Nice to the Consultants—It does not pay to be an asshole, unfortunately. One tipster advises you to "cooperate with the consultants (they always report back to senior management)." Another survivor says, " If interviewed by a McKenzie, answer everything question nicely. If you hold back, or are snotty, they fire your ass. Threee of my former collegues tried the stonewall approach and got canned."

Suck Up—Kiss ass, Kiss ass, Kiss ass. "Suck up to your own superiors, and their superiors, and theirs." It's just that simple. A brown nose could give you a minute edge on your fellow layoff-eligibles.

Practice Subtle Backstabbing—You don't want to be seen as a desperate bastard ready to sell out any and all of your colleagues to save your own job (even though you are). You just want to plant the seed. Take it from someone who's been there: " Don't talk shit about individuals, talk shit about DIVISIONS in a passive-aggressive way. Saying things like: 'Those fellows that work in [blank] division are really nice guys, but I've worked here for five years and I still don't know what they do' is a winner." Corporate espionage at its finest, ladies and gentlemen.

Watch Office Space—Several of you sent this tip. Har har. This will only have value if you can bribe a McKinseyite with, like, a hijacked truck full of Office Space DVDs.

Slut It Up—"If all else fails: Find out who the senior partner at McKinsey is, and fuck them." This is experience speaking, people.

Despair—You may find it strangely comforting to accept the fact that—even if you employ all of these countermeasures—you may still get fucked by McKinsey, and not just by the partner you fucked on purpose. "As a consultant for [firm] who's worked on several optimization cases, I wish the Conde Nasters luck. That being said, there's little they can do personally to avoid the axe," says one tipster. He should know! Need more proof? This comes from a former McKinsey consultant: "it's a good idea to release any sense of control you might have over your future. Being nice, being useful, and doing a great job all have nothing do with it - they will be deciding what the company should be doing, not making HR-type decisions about who's good at their job. If you work in a function that they decide doesn't need doing, it doesn't matter how nice/useful/great-at-your-job you are - that function will be eliminated."

Your job: Enjoy it while it lasts.

We'd like to put together a guide to Surviving McKinsey, for the beleaguered Conde employees who want nothing more than to make it out of this thing with their jobs intact (expense accounts be damned). So we're asking you: Have you ever survived a McKinsey visit to your company, without getting canned or otherwise screwed? How'd you do it? Send us your brilliant tips for making yourself invisible to job-hungry outside consultants, and we'll incorporate them into our handy survival guide. Do it for the love of gloss.

Subject line: "McKinsey survival." Email us now!

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TOM: We're all screwed, that's what. They're gonna downsize Initech. SAMIR: Oh, what are you talking about Tom? How do you know that? TOM: They're bringing in a consultant - that's how I know.

First off, while Digg stopped keeping a "top user" list, there's a third-party list of the top 100 (and top 1000) users, updated daily. Just click a user name, then "Profile," to find a user's e-mail, site, or IM name.

Powerhouse blogger
Halfway down the top 100 is Nathan Makan, who's voted up over seven thousand items in the two years since he joined. His blog reveals that he's a teen, and he can put together a good sentence — a good paragraph, in fact. There's a good chance he'd be open to writing for pay, without demanding the wage of an overpaid journalist or spoiled "pro" blogger.

They don't just write about tech either. Digg now has a healthy collection of top news, "oddly enough" news, videos, and sports stories.

Top Digg users look at dozens — hundreds, even — of blog items each day, so they have a good grip on blog activity. If they spend time in Digg's comment threads, they also have a sense for how a crowd will react to a story. And they damn well know what stories make it to the Digg front page (and thus reap tens of thousands of pageviews). A Digger thus perfectly serves the needs of a commercial blog.

How to approach: Don't cold-call. Take a look at the stories they dugg and find someone who diggs and submits the same type of stories you need written. Now e-mail them. Many Diggers are also comfortable with talking business over IM. Explain that you've checked out their work; they'll be glad to know you're not indiscriminately trolling.

How much to offer: Industry blogging rates vary from $6 to $15 for a post, depending on length, difficulty, and the blogger's experience. Leave yourself some negotiating room, but remember than these users probably got approached for sleazier, lower-paying services in the past. Many of them are on the way to tech jobs that will pay $80-200k a year. Don't dick them around. Start with at least $8 per post or $15 per hour.

Forum master
Digg isn't just for clicking through; it's also the home of hundreds of conversations each day, carried out in the comment threads for dugg stories. Now, Digg is not known for carefully moderated discourse, but that's predicted by the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, and it's the reason you need a mod for your forum or the comments on your high-traffic blog. Thanks to Digg's comment-rating system, most clever, helpful, or insightful commenters rise to the top (just click "sort by most diggs"). You can find any user's comments from their user page. Mark a user as a friend to see which comments by others they liked.

How to approach: Again, let them know you've done your research. Make it clear this is a business message, 'cause otherwise "I read all the things you write" can sound creepy. Let them skim your forum before they reply; moderating requires more dedication to the host site than blogging or reviewing. (That's why many forum owners find unpaid moderators from the forum's existing ranks.) It's unwise to hire a forum moderator this way before the forum's even full of messages. Remember not to talk down to the Digger just because they may be a teenager. If you don't trust their judgment, why are you wasting their time?

How much to offer: Start with $10-15 an hour, less if they're already a member of your forum or blog. Be careful in your search, since high turnover is particularly annoying when you have so much to teach a new moderator.

Savvy reviewer
Largely a subset of the powerhouse blogger, a reviewer from Digg is familiar with the latest gadgets and services. They've seen a headline about every major release and they know what CNET, Wired, Gizmodo, and Engadget say about the features. So even if they haven't played with every product, they've got a vicarious zeitgeist that can inform them when you hand them an mp3 player and ask for a review. But if you think it's cute to ask them to end each review with a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down," they'll give you a "thumbs in your eye sockets."

How to approach: Same as above.

How much to offer: More than a regular blogger. Reviews are worth more, sentence per sentence, since they require hands-on research. Letting reviewers keep the goods may be plenty of compensation, but disclose the gift in the final reviews.

Deep-digging researcher
Not every Digger can write. But the rest may still be diligent readers, or even just good at spotting a promising story. They're used to sifting through a stream of information for glints of quality. They can provide back-end research for blogs, magazines, and businesses. As with bloggers, find ones that are into your target topic.

How to approach: Do even more homework; explain exactly what you need from the researcher. Your offer is probably more complicated than hiring a blogger, where everyone knows the basics of the job. Be willing to interact through e-mail and IM more than phone calls; the average Digger is a good multi-tasker and one-line messenger.

How much to offer: If you don't know, try $15-30 per hour.

Demanding beta tester
Like the savvy reviewer, the demanding beta tester has seen what your industry has to offer. Now instead of reviewing your product for someone else, they're doing it for you before it hits market. They're interested in being the first to see new tech, and they're unafraid to tell you how many ways you screwed up. Diggers are often impatient, demanding, and quick to judge: great qualities in someone pushing your product or service to the limit and telling you how it went.

How to approach: A Digger won't be stoked if this responsibility comes with a non-disclosure agreement — but that's what you're paying them for. Still, see if you can loosen up on that. After all, if you deserve free publicity, why not let them give it? Just don't go too far and bribe them. This will backfire. Again, minimize non-online communication until you learn what they're comfortable with.

How much to offer: As with reviewers, giving them something to keep may be adequate pay in itself. But ask yourself if your beta-stage product is really worth that much, and whether an unpaid tester is all that motivated to give real feedback. You may want to offer a one-time sum that works out to $10-20 an hour.

No-bullshit consultant
As I've mentioned, Diggers are known for their bluntness, and they're not fans of bull. And given all the abilities covered above — an eye for hot stories, experience with research, the ambition to rise to the top of a million-member user group, and a working knowledge of consumer tech and headline news — they probably know something your business doesn't. They at least know enough to fill an hour or two, plus question-time.

How to approach: Flattery. Don't patronize, but do know that the average Digg user may be surprised to hear someone offering them money just for "giving opinions." Let them know their advice is respected. Again, don't make a big deal out of the age thing. Do let them know if they're in your 18-24 target market or whatever; give them some understanding that this is a real business proposition.

How much to offer: Sadly for you, happily for them, everything's twice as expensive on a consultant basis. You're only pulling them over for a few hours and you want them in person; ask their rates, but if they don't have a ready answer, edge them to the $30-60/hour range at least. They're adding up the same totals you are, and they need to be aware you're paying for good advice, not an hour of poorly-prepped dicking around. Make them aware that cost includes prep time, and pay their travel costs as well. A well-paid Digger is a happy and helpful Digger.

Nick Douglas also writes for Look Shiny and Prezzish (where Digger #43, Ian Blue, does daily research).