3 ms·

> (Barring "require", but I'm betting you're just exaggerating there.) I don’t think so. All you need is a simple quota that is too high to be achieved natural

> (Barring "require", but I'm betting you're just exaggerating there.) I don’t think so. All you need is a simple quota that is too high to be achieved naturally. A common example is credit card signups. The company requires some percentage of a worker’s customers to be signed up for the company card. That percentage is too high to be achieved by honest means. Result: workers lie about the card, get people to fill out the form by saying it’s just a bonus card, or just sign people up without their knowledge. I’d bet the same sort of thing happened here. They had a quota where a certain percentage of customers who came in for a free diagnostic had to be sold services. The actual percentage of customers who needed work done was lower than that. Result: workers fake the need for service, and executives keep their hands squeaky clean.

Bartweiss 8y ago
> a simple quota that is too high to be achieved naturally As I recall, Dilbert nailed this one decades ago. "Welcome to sales training. We don't ask you to act illegally, but it's pretty much the only way to reach quota. That's it for training." It works best at large, high-turnover companies; even if only 10% of the people you hire are willing to break the law, you filter out the honest people pretty quickly. And once fraud is common enough, it becomes culturally accepted, or inescapable via rules like "fire the bottom 20%". Sometimes it even ends up taught as a "best practice" to honest hires who don't know better. Hence credit card signups, hence fake Wells Fargo accounts, hence Comcast assigning reps to upsell on a percentage of all calls, even cancellations and complaints. Heck, this is pretty much how game dev 'crunch time' works too; it's not scheduled, so there's no one to blame, but development targets get set so that it's a predictable outcome on every project.
- naveen99 8y ago
  The other side is that the principal agent problem is real and people have different skill levels. Some people cheat to meet quotas, other people do it easily, lots fail and call the bluff that they won’t be fired for underachieving.

Bartweiss 8y ago

> a simple quota that is too high to be achieved naturally As I recall, Dilbert nailed this one decades ago. "Welcome to sales training. We don't ask you to act illegally, but it's pretty much the only way to reach quota. That's it for training." It works best at large, high-turnover companies; even if only 10% of the people you hire are willing to break the law, you filter out the honest people pretty quickly. And once fraud is common enough, it becomes culturally accepted, or inescapable via rules like "fire the bottom 20%". Sometimes it even ends up taught as a "best practice" to honest hires who don't know better. Hence credit card signups, hence fake Wells Fargo accounts, hence Comcast assigning reps to upsell on a percentage of all calls, even cancellations and complaints. Heck, this is pretty much how game dev 'crunch time' works too; it's not scheduled, so there's no one to blame, but development targets get set so that it's a predictable outcome on every project.

naveen99 8y ago
The other side is that the principal agent problem is real and people have different skill levels. Some people cheat to meet quotas, other people do it easily, lots fail and call the bluff that they won’t be fired for underachieving.