4 ms·

I work at a company with ~30 employees, and I can tell you that you're not always right. There's certainly a lot of gossip and speculation, but at 30 people th

I work at a company with ~30 employees, and I can tell you that you're not always right. There's certainly a lot of gossip and speculation, but at 30 people there's enough division that it's not automatically obvious that any given person is doing something worthwhile.

run4yourlives 16y ago
I suppose that depends on how you define worthwhile, doesn't it? Rewards encourage behaviour that earns them.
- semanticist 16y ago
  But that's exactly the problem with the 'unicorn' idea - the appearance of contributing to the company is more valuable than actually doing it. In a very small startup, you're not going to be able to fake it - but by the time the company's at 30ish people, it's not so clear cut. Who's the most valuable developer in my employer? I'm not on the dev team, so I don't know. They all seem to be doing great work, but I don't know the details. Do we credit the sales guy for landing this big contract, or the operations guys that made sure their trial system worked, or the devs who wrote their custom integration? If you're not involved in that project, it's going to be hard to judge whose contributions deserve what share of the reward. Basically, it's a neat reward system, but I don't think it scales very well at all.
  - mrduncan 16y ago
    If it's tough to fake in small groups, why not just split people into groups. For example, only people who work directly with each other can reward them. Obviously that's a little bit of an oversimplification but I don't see why such a split couldn't be made to work.
    - petercooper 16y ago
      For example, only people who work directly with each other can reward them. How would that apply to HR, accounting, or legal? Not usually the most loved members of any company and they're routinely involved in bureaucratic compliancy tasks that are more necessary than appreciated.

run4yourlives 16y ago

I suppose that depends on how you define worthwhile, doesn't it? Rewards encourage behaviour that earns them.

semanticist 16y ago
But that's exactly the problem with the 'unicorn' idea - the appearance of contributing to the company is more valuable than actually doing it. In a very small startup, you're not going to be able to fake it - but by the time the company's at 30ish people, it's not so clear cut. Who's the most valuable developer in my employer? I'm not on the dev team, so I don't know. They all seem to be doing great work, but I don't know the details. Do we credit the sales guy for landing this big contract, or the operations guys that made sure their trial system worked, or the devs who wrote their custom integration? If you're not involved in that project, it's going to be hard to judge whose contributions deserve what share of the reward. Basically, it's a neat reward system, but I don't think it scales very well at all.
- mrduncan 16y ago
  If it's tough to fake in small groups, why not just split people into groups. For example, only people who work directly with each other can reward them. Obviously that's a little bit of an oversimplification but I don't see why such a split couldn't be made to work.
  - petercooper 16y ago
    For example, only people who work directly with each other can reward them. How would that apply to HR, accounting, or legal? Not usually the most loved members of any company and they're routinely involved in bureaucratic compliancy tasks that are more necessary than appreciated.