I wouldn't use such a pejorative term, but if you want to employ 'minions', you don't need to do anything particularly elaborate - just hire people who want to

I wouldn't use such a pejorative term, but if you want to employ 'minions', you don't need to do anything particularly elaborate - just hire people who want to be minions. You can select for this in your interview process. There's plenty of people out there who want to be told what to do and don't care to spend time thinking about the moral ramifications of their employment, including a great many skilled and experienced programmers. As long as they can choose how to implement what you want, they'll happily implement what you want, collect their paychecks, and go home. Of course, that means you'll have to write extremely detailed specifications, which is a big pain in the ass. And you'll be the only one trying to figure out whether your product is actually something people want, so you damn well better be right.