That's true, but any incentive structure at all has similar hazards. (Ever seen the software quality bar lowered in order to meet a deadline?) So long as the co

That's true, but any incentive structure at all has similar hazards. (Ever seen the software quality bar lowered in order to meet a deadline?) So long as the company does have standards, and processes it trusts to enforce those standards, it's possible to guard against that failure mode, just as you'd guard against any other employee misbehaviour. If you do have employees (or execs) bypassing the process or lowering their standards in order to meet short term goals, that in itself is a cultural problem the company would want to address. Edit: it's worth noting that every manager who has more planned work than they can execute with their current head count already has a short-term incentive to lower their hiring bar and get someone in the door quickly. Managers get measured on executing to plan, so that's probably a stronger incentive than any bonus structure. So my point isn't that lowering the bar to game the system will never happen, but that it's a failure mode that already occurs and that the system should already have defences against.